Dear Squaresoft,
I have a few L337 suggestions to make FFXI even more r0x0r. Please forward this and this forum thread to Mr. Hironobu Sakaguchi, as I'm certain he gives a @#!7 about what we have to say, and will respond immediately.
First, is the playonline viewer. The viewer needs to be streamlined so that it takes more clicks to get into the game. YEs, I know people ask for the opposite, but I think it only builds anticipation for the greatness of FFXI if we have not 7, but 15 clicks to get into just the starting logo! And from there, another 20-30 clicks to select the character, and a dozen or so to confirm that you want to play the game. I mean,... REALLY want to play. Yes, really. Add to that a new disclaimer that says "FFXI:Chains of Promathia is really about CHAINS to YOUR FREAKIN SOUL and will SUCK the LIFE from your friends, family, school and work until you are a lifeless Wendigo of a human". Bundle this into a newly branded Playonline Service Viewer (P.O.S. Viewer) and I think we have a winner.
Now, the game. Meh, it's ok at the moment, nothing special. What would really make it FUN and invigorating would be to make it more cross-cultural! Yes, so that we can communicate better with not only the kinky schoolgirl in Japan, but also the Chinese gil farmer slave kid who just got fired from Nike and is looking for a new break. Cuz it's all about making friends. So I suggest installing a little voice module that lets us NA players view and speak to the characters on the other end. And it would let us play WAV files and such to our hearts content, so as to entertain our foreign friends. For instance, I could cue up themostannoyingsoundknowntoman.wav and play it over and over again for my friend the chinese gilfarmer. Because we NA players know what's best in all things, this would only be one-directional, so we can play sounds for them, but we don't need to hear in return. Also, the game would give us the exact email and physical address of these players, so we can pay them a friendly visit the next time they steal my NM for the thousandth time.
Chains of Promathia sounds fun! I look forward to the new music by Nobuo Uemustsuck. But I have a wish list for the new audio tracks. See, I just got a used '87 Casio keyboard for my barmitzfah, and it cranks out a remix of the 'chicken dance' and 'macarena' when I press the 'demo' button. I would be more than happy to send you a recording, which I'm sure will BLOW YOU AWAY because you know all about quality music and sounds. Speaking of sounds, I think I have a suggestion for the crazy fireworks audio. I say we replace the sound of our footsteps with the audio of the freaking gun shot fireworks. Good times! That way every step will be announciated with fun and good cheer much like Summerfest was. And when you cast Sneak, the sound changes from gunshots to the Japanese Reggae, because we all know how good that sounds.
Well phew, I've said a boatload, and I'm sure you programmers at Square are busy trying to protect honest players from bots and whatnots, so I'll sign off now and just wanted to say that I love you guys and can't wait for the goodness that will be Chains of Pathetica,...er, Promathia.
Sincerely,
Altego