I wanna be a hot dancer.

I doubt anyone will get the reference the title of this entry is making, and no of course it isn't just to the new job, Dancer. Anyway, if you do figure it out, post a comment.

So, I was out of town for a lot of the big announcements over the weekend, but I want to do that later. First, my recap. Thursday night, we did a second tier Limbus. It was really simple and we only had to deal with two of the two hours from the Mystic Avatars. Only Ifrit and Carbuncle, and I think only one person died the whole time, just Potpressure, who with something like 117 HP normally isn't much for taking AoE damage. LOL Here he is scurrying any from Carbuncle to make sure he didn't die again. :) Two more runs and we will have another Ultima set, also next week we are going to do another Omega, but luckily this week we have a week off from Versus, so I will get to have some time to level my MNK a little more and maybe head out to an HNM camp or two and see if I can finagle some Black Belt items. :) Speaking of my MNK, it is now 69 and I finally get a new hat at level 70! King has started stalking me just so that he can get into my level up pics. Its a little creepy... actually it is a lot creepy. But we have been doing well in parties and I got 68 and 69 yesterday while XPing after I got back from my trip. This is what I found interesting, I got 250 in Hand to Hand while I was still level 67, which is 4 levels before when I should be able to get it, and thus be able to unlock Asuran Fist. I am finally getting closer to the end-game fun of MNK! New gear, new abilities, new WS. It all starts at level 70. :) While we were XPing, a group of RMT came in an camped on top of us again. They are just horrible, all level 75, just killing Imps, and since they don't care how fast they get XP they just stay there forever and screw it up for normal people. I did get a GM to show up to try to scare them, but they already know that GM's wont do anything to them, so they just keep going. The lack of ability of GM's to do anything is just horrendous and really is a failure by SE in supporting the real player base. Oh well. I also got some decent XP on my MNK in Besieged, and I was surprised because I was still 67, I thought for sure I wouldn't have gotten very much XP at all, but it looked like I got the maximum amount for that Besieged. In addition to XP I got to spend some time as a frog. :)
Now, onto the expansion information! First, Jess's observation on the temporal paradox that is going to happen. Now is lunch time, but here are some more pictures for you.

So what do we have here? Three examples of the new beastmen mobs including Yagudo, Orcs, and Quadavs. These are much more detailed than the old design more akin to the level of detail you find on NM's or beastmen in the new areas. Then we have new mobs including but not limited to Gnats, Pixies, and Sandworms. The former two are actually pretty small models, while the last on is huge. Its not clear whether it is an HNM or just a very large regular mob. If it is a regular mob, it may be the largest of all the regular mobs. All these pictures have been up for a couple of days now and speculation has been rampant. There are some other notes that should be presented, like the video that is now up on the POL website. This video is awesome, especially in HD. Some notes from the video that should be mentioned include the new WS that appear. There are for from what I can count. First, a RDM is doing a Tachi: Kasha like weapon skill which instead of a Lotus appears to be a Chrysthanthemum with thorned vines surrounding it. The second is a PLD doing a WS on a Pixie, this weapon skill appears to start with some kind of ball of light that is then shattered by a swing of the PLD's sword through the ball then white light shooting up from the ground. The third is a PUP that appears to charge up for a moment then follow with a straight punch that impacts with a ball of fire. Finally, there is a WAR that is using Great Axe, that when swung makes two overlapping effects, one is a triple loop that almost forms a star, then overlapping it is a blue implosion. None of these are current weapon skills. Interestingly enough prior to this is a few scenes of a Dancer using weapon skills, and I believe that the one that the Dancer uses on the Sandworm may be new. Watch the video, in HD if you can, it is astounding.

Finally, there are some other shots that are worth mentioning also. In this shot behind the Dancer you can see what appears to be a gate blocking a passage in Windurst, which has a striking resemblance to the entrances to Assault. That means that the new instanced areas will likely be in the past versions of the starter cities. I hope they are more expansive that the Assaults that currently exist and that they have less restrictions than Salvage has. A good old dungeon crawl would be awesome. The last thing worth mentioning is the Cavernous Maw: This appears to be the entrance to the past and almost identical to past variations of Atomos in previous Final Fantasy games. I hope you like all this information as much as I do. :)