Now that we have the dirty business of getting the official review out of the way we can start talking about more forward looking issues surrounding A Realm Reborn. For those of you die-hards out there this may not be news but it is still worth talking about.
Before the recent Tokyo Game Show (Japan's own "E3") even began Square Enix threw out a little tease to the world. They would have a Titan Challenge. But not only would they have a challenge but if the players at the show won, the players all over the world could win. For each team that defeated Titan they were allowed to draw the name of one world out of a box. That world would win a pair of Cactuar Earrings. When I first read this all I could think about is how much whining and crying there would be on the servers that did not win a set of earrings. (I may or may not have joined in on that whining.) Much to my delight every server ending up winning a set of earrings. In fact they even added Bomb earrings into the mix and another 61 groups of players beat Titan and every world won those earrings as well. Keep an eye on your mailbox because you should all see a set of these earrings arrive soon. I do not normally care for pure fluff items, but when I do it is usually of the iconic FF variety.
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In addition to everyone winning some fluff across the world we also had some information confirmed about the Crystal Tower due out in Patch 2.1. It has been speculated that some of the bosses in the Crystal Tower would be from Final Fantasy III. It turns out that all of the bosses in Crystal Tower will be from Final Fantasy III. This will also be a 24-person raid put together using the duty finder. The difficulty will be somewhere between the hard mode primals and the Binding Coil of Bahamut. I’ll choose to remain hopefully optimistic about how this is going to actually work out. It is one thing to have a Looking For Raid mechanic with encounters that are dumbed down to be taken on in a LFR group. It is a whole other beast to go pugging 24 person PVE content in a brand new MMO.
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We also got our first look at the FATE that will feature Lightning from FFXIII. I talked a bit about the fact that these crossovers are nothing new in Final Fantasy in a previous article. In that article I mentioned that FF fans did not have any reason to be concerned that their world would be soon overrun with characters from other Final Fantasies. I am going to say I was wrong, but that is ok. First the video of the FATE Lightning shows up in is far superior to anything I had expected. If you take a look at the video you will see that Lightning and her enemies that she brings with her fit right in Eorzea. This FATE will be released on November 14th. We also received information about two more FATEs that would feature characters from Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy XI. I have a feeling if these FATEs are popular we will not see an end to these crossovers anytime soon.
The Tokyo Game show did a lot to rejuvenate my excitement for FFXIV. While at first I was not very excited about the Lightning FATE I am now very interested to see where her story takes us. I also want to see how the duty finder works out for 24 man content. I have heard that it will act more as three eight-man groups working independently towards a common objective and less as a 24 man cohesive group but we have nothing concrete to report. What do you think of the Crystal Tower? Are you happy with seeing things from Final Fantasy new and old popping up all over Eorzea? Let me know in the comments below.
Robert Lashley / Robert Lashley is a Staff Writer and Online host for MMORPG.com and RTSGuru.com. Rob's bald and when he isn't blinding people from the glare on his head talking in front of a camera you can find him spending his free time in Eorzea pretending he is a Paladin in the Midgardsorm realm or you can chase him down on twitter @Grakulen
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