POL News: What You See Is What You Get.

The Update Notes are out and there really isn't anything more than what they have told us about already.

The Union System is in there, but there are still no details on what it entails and what it means. It looks like you just join an alliance, then join the Union and then lot on the rewards when things drop. This does look like it could be abused a lot though. Will people try to Ninja lot things? Is this supposed to be something you only do with people you trust? Do the items drop from Campaign mobs? Are people to pull and hide mobs all the time? I am guessing they considered all of these factors, and we still have no idea what it is going to look like. Here's hoping it's good, but honestly it sounds convoluted and rife for abuse.


New missions, new quests, new synths, new BLU spells. We don't have any specifics about these except for the fact that the new BLU spells will probably come from the two new mobs that they have added to the new past Northlands areas.

Personally, I think the new "evil Walrus" looks way better than the Gargoyle, but that's just me. The new MMM stuff is in there, and so is the FoV stuff, but there is no mention of these new synths for weapons that you trade with the Fairies. I wouldn't be surprised if that got cut from the update, which I believe will be the first time they had a major announcement about something then cut it from my recollection. The Circle abilities look decent, but if they are still on a 10 minute recast with a 30 second duration then they are still just about as useless as they were before just with better buffs. They even mentioned that the main problem was the duration, but mention notion about changing the duration in the update notes.

The new Ninja JA's are in there, but we already knew everything about it. I think this is probably the only solid known improvement in the entire update.

They will definitely be useful for NIN, but the shared timer on a 5 minute recast can make it even more difficult for NIN that need to switch between DD and tanking quickly. There is also no mentioned of the diminishing effect over time, so hopefully they got rid of that part of it. Also, the Mijin Gakure change is nice, but like so many things that SE does, it should have happened from the beginning if not a long time ago.

Dragoon got a tiny buff to Empathy in that they can now wake up their Wyvern with Spirit Link. Again, should have happened a long time ago. There was mention that the effect of the rage timers for some HNM was changed but in standard SE fashion, they don't tell us how at all.

Finally, they mention that there are some new furnishing from Campaign and the Campaign bodies are now available. A new item called the Pendant Compass was introduced that will give you your coordinates, [i]when you wear it[/i] and it will be used for some event that has nothing to do with the game, like many of the things that SE has been adding lately.

Ok, I am done. This update has nothing new, no surprises, no avatars, nothing interesting. Just like the last update, it just feels like that slapped some things together, tossed in a new JA and called it an update. I, for one, am not pleased at all.

Click here for a full list of the update notes.