The bevy's gonna break.

The title is a play on words, that likely will only make sense in my head. Yesterday, we were inundated with news from SE, one might even say it was a bevy of information concerning the new expansion. It was like a proverbial flood, or as described by Led Zeppelin, as if the levee's gonna break.

Yeah, it sounded awesome in my head (maybe this headache had some influence on it).

Anyway, lets take an in-depth look at what we have got so far:

Here are some pictures of the expansion that have been posted and some speculation and discussion has arisen around them. These look to be Ochu from older Final Fantasy games, but there is already a Morbol type mobs with the name Ochu, so either they will be changed or these guys will be changed, or maybe they will explain it with some kind of genetic mutation?
This is pretty obviously a Basilisk. The design is right, and SE hasn't even used the Basilisk name, although they have used something close "Basilic" probably some kind of alternate translation.

The rest of the pictures are of new zones with some indication that they are related to old zones. Some obvious relationships occur with the church in the center of Davoi, fortifications in Ronfaure or Jugner Forest, areas that could potentially be pre-Crystal War Lufaise Meadows or Misareaux Coast, shots of a much more vibrant Gustaberg, Konstacht Highlands and finally an area that appears to be a far more fortified Castle Oztroja. Honestly, these shots make the zones look amazing, but they are very limited. I get the distinct impression that we aren't seeing the really neat things yet because they are either being the traditionally tight lipped JP company or they haven't finished development of the most neat-o areas like Jeuno.

I guess the only other definitively undefined information that has come out of E3 so far is that there will be new jobs. Yes, plural. 2? 10? Who knows. But there is one very obvious option for a new job considering the content of expansion. That is Time Mage. How would it work? Well, I already made my suggestion sometime ago in a blog entry around the time of the initial announcement of the expansion. I think it is a workable job, but I am not a game designer and they have far more to work with than I do. I also want to make a comment about several complaints I have seen about the new expansion that were actually made the last time around too. The complaint is that there are things that still need to be done with current expansion and older content. The problem with this logic is two-fold, the first simple critic is that SE perceives the same issues as the problem with things that need to be corrected. SE just isn't going to "fix" something because you don't like it, they are going to fix it if it really is a general problem. The second problem with this logic is that it presumes that the FFXI development team can only work on one thing at a time. This presumes incorrectly that the development team is some how monolithic and can only focus on one programing issue at a time. The quick logic check on this is to apply it to another company, for example a car company, like Ford. Ford makes Mustangs, Mustangs have problems, therefore Ford should do nothing but improve the Mustang until it has no problems at all before they move on to making F-150's. (Maybe Ford is a bad example, because so many Mustangs have problems. XD) Anyway, the point is that the development team for FFXI is broken down into many sub-teams. To be efficient, it is actually a bad idea to have everyone working on one issue at a time. Fixing old content, working on current content and developing new content do not trade off. If SE needed more people to work on FFXI they would just hire them, if they had to many people, they would let people go, but ultimately the point is that they have the right number of people to do what they think needs to be done. Posting on forums to complain that SE isn't doing what you think they should do only speaks to your mentality and ability to understand these concepts. That might sound a bit harsh, but put simply these are generally the most harsh critics of SE and their development of FFXI. So bring on the new expansion and the new jobs!

Other quick mentions about activities that will be included in the expansion include large-scale Besieged like battles, mostly high level content (at this point that should pretty much be a given, because a larger and larger portion of the population is at end-game) and other trinkets, but nothing else really to sink our teeth into.

Well, I will be waiting for more expansion information, but I wont be able to post about it tomorrow because I am on a conference for work. So, see you monday!