Good news and bad news.

The good news first. The new update is a lot closer than I expected it to be. Coming in mid-March will be the Mid-March Version Update! Original name of course, but I am not too concerned. I am not going to do my normal dissection of the sole picture that they provide in the update teaser because I always end up being wrong or creating something random whole cloth. The obvious pictures include Synergy, Missions and Campaign. So we will know we are getting at least that much. You can speculate on exactly what is happening in the picture on the right, but I have done all the eye-squinting I feel compelled to do to figure out what the hell is happening.

The bad news isn't really bad news, it's bad reporting of news. As everyone has probably already heard, there is a rumor floating around that FFXI is shutting down this year. As Omoi would say this is "utter claptrap". The initial report was in reference to a blog that doesn't now and may have never existed from a "high ranking HR SE employee". There are so many problems with this rumor and it's source that it is a joke to start with, never mind the reality of the situation and statements from SE questioning the credibility of the statement. I mean, come on, if you are going to make up a rumor at least have it coming from a more credible source than the HR department.

The point I want to make here is not that the rumor was picked up by the interether, but that it was posted by a semi-credible website and that website didn't even take the 30 seconds to Google the report to see if there was any credibility behind it. Thankfully, our friends at Limit Break Radio posted a list of evidence disputing the claims of that semi-credible website.

I mean it is one thing to post a rumor, but to post it without any research, especially posting AFTER the freaking head of Square Enix had already squashed the rumor just makes you look like a toolbox.

Playing WoW doesn't mean you are qualified to report on the entire MMO industry...