Exodus' Write-up  

Final Fantasy 11: Online Fan Festival 2007

By: Elvis “Exodus” Fernandez

What do you get when you mix moogles and the Hilton Hotel in Anaheim? Three days of wackiness! From the moment you step into the crowd, the ambience alone moves you. It’s not every day you get to talk to someone who actually plays your crazy addicting game (don’t you just love those “Have you beaten it yet?” questions?), but this event was LOADED with people who all enjoy spending time in Vana’diel. Just by looking around, you could tell this would be quite the event to remember…

Thursday

I get there at around 1 PM or so and am scooped up by the Shuttle guy. Mind you, that was an experience of it’s own. I was given front seat view in his little blue van of every step you take if you want to get into a major car accident. I sat there quietly hugging my bookbag just wanting to arrive to the hotel in one piece. Luckily, I lived through this.

If there’s one thing that royally sucked about this hotel is that the moment you step in you lose cell phone signal. Matt Hilton (SE Community Rep who deserves a medal) had warned Pikko that the reception was awful and man oh man, he truly wasn’t kidding. It made uniting with the rest of the Allakhazam crew just a tad difficult.

That aside, I was floored at the amount of people that showed up hours before registration. Only thing running through my mind was “is Fafnir’s window open?” A few people were even readily in cosplay on the first day, too. The energy in the hotel was just out there with people dieing with the anxiety of the event. Heck, I had no idea what to expect either.

Eventually, I was able to meet up with Pikko, Imperial Ninja, and a few others and we went ahead to setup our booth. The first mission? Internet connection. From what I’m thinking, SE had rented all the computers they had with the game installed. That said, all those computers needed to have not only FFXI installed, but fully patched. I think the fasted I was able to download anything that day was at 0.10 kb/s. At least we were kept occupied not only by the tour Matt Hilton gave us with a brief explanation of what to expect, and we were greeted by several Allakhazam posters at our booth!

Friday

The first official day of Fan Fest. Had some breakfast (my usual ham and cheese omelets) and headed over to the booth for a bit to wait for the opening ceremony.

It was quite the opening ceremony, to say the least. The announcer revved the audience while the curtains remain closed. FFXI music was blasting in the background, adding to the whole environment and the realization that you are, in fact, at Fan Festival 2007. Everyone was able to seat themselves with other members of their server, so it just added to the experience. That’s when everyone’s attention was drawn to the stage as the curtains fall and in the middle stood Hiromichi Tanaka, officially beginning the Fan Festival.

Along with Matt Hilton they welcomed everyone to the fan festival and spoke of some highlights and good things to expect, but what caught everyone’s eye was that they made it look like someone had goofed with the projector screen. On it was just the PlayOnline website, but it was suddenly interrupted by what looked like MSN Messenger; receiving an IM, no less. We all laughed, thinking “well that’s just classic”, but it seemed that the joke was on us. The IM was asking the user to get on FFXI, only for the user to reply saying “I already am.” That’s when he dragged what we thought was a live feed of the game which is typically on the PlayOnline website and stretched it. It was the actual game itself running in windowed mode! I almost went deaf from the cheers of the audience.

As Tanaka and Matt Hilton step off of the stage, up came Kenichi Iwao wearing a Samurai helmet (he wanted to enhance Meditate) and gave us the historical breakdown of the events that lead to the Crystal War. It was kind of funny seeing “The Age of Exodus” up on the screen, I might add. ;)

Once he was done, the battle director Akihiko Matsui came up on stage to discuss the new jobs. While he did so, the two new jobs came up on screen demonstrating only a tiny handful of it’s capabilities, which left the audience salivating.

At that point, we were released until the next official event. There were TONS of activities to choose from to pass the time which included BCNM fights, Atomos Challenge (which was leveling a character up from scratch), a Tarutaru marathon, the Wings of the Goddess tour (which allowed us to run around as the two new jobs briefly) several physical activities (how well can you handle a nerf arrow thing?) and of course the Live Quest, which was required to complete if you wanted extra in-game goodies.

Pikko, Imperial, and I were then pulled away to have a 30 minute interview with the development team of FFXI shortly after the opening ceremony. For the details on that, just click here.

Once we returned to the booth, we began to meet and take pictures with a bunch of FFXI players, both those familiar with Allakhazam and those who weren’t. It was easy to make friends some of the people that showed up to greet us. We also had two computers setup so that people can look up stuff for the Live Quest on our site, had some posting on the forums, and even some uploading pictures of the event live. It was quite the thrill, to say the least!

Eventually, it was time to migrate back into the auditorium to get ready for the highly anticipated developer panel. Before the panel, though, they handed out some GOOD prices which was based on things like “first to sign up”, “last to sign up”, “dead center”, etc etc. Some of the prizes were breath taking; they gave away several brand new computers by the time the Fan Festival was over!

Once that finished, it was time for the developer panel! They started out the night by giving a complete overview of what to expect from Wings of the Goddess which to quote them, “is almost a brand new game of it’s own.” They also made several announcements about new things they want to introduce to the game, including a Lottery in which a player could win a VERY valuable item (Sage Sundi mentioned the Ridill as an example.)

They then began answering questions that was dropped into a box by players during the Fan Festival event. One of which consisted of the possible birth of a cheese sandwich recipe. While I deny having anything to do with that, I will admit that I’m jealous I didn’t think of that first.

After the panel, a group of us went to go eat at some sporty ESPN restaurant whose name escapes me. The food there looked pretty decent and I was able to enjoy a few of their chicken wings since Imperial Ninja isn’t used to US portions of food.

Saturday

The final day of the festival. By now, most of us are already beat, but we still push forward to see what else SE has in stored for us.

The morning they just recapped what happened the day before, so nothing all that exciting there. What was exciting was what partook later on that day, which was the winners of all the contests they had: Art Contest, Cosplay Contest, Atomos Challenge, Craft Contest, and Video Contest . My two personal favorites were the Video Contest and Cosplay Contest.

The cosplay was amazing. You could tell that they all placed a lot of effort into the design of their outfits. The judges consisted of Tanaka, Sundi, and Yasu, who selected 5 finalists from a group of 20. The 3 winners were decided by the audience through applause and cheer.

After all the contests, we were greeted by the developer panel one last time. This time, they had a in-depth discussion of what the STF unit is doing to battle against RMT, which even included charts showing the steady decline of RMT activity as the STF continues to crack down on them. They also further answered more questions that were given from players into their drop box, which included the future plan to release a video showing hints on how to defeat Absolute Virtue.

At the end of the day, it was time for the special event, which was a performance by “The Smash Brothers”. They played various songs from the game completely rocked out all the while having crazy lights flickering and visualizations on the screens next to them. It was an all out rock concert.

Also, Kumi Tanioka (one of FFXI’s original composers) played three songs from FFXI on a piano solo: Distant Worlds, Awakening, and a new piece from the expansion. I was floored. She was amazing (and quite comical, too.)

Unfortunately though, the special event was also the last event of the festival. Our small Allakhazam group gathered for one last time at the In and Out Burger joint and it was time to pack up and go home. (Special thanks to susperia and Pachichachi for making the drive!)

It was a great event and I have tons of memories that will forever be with me. I’m grateful to have been able to attend this event and can’t wait till next year (hopefully they’ll have another one next year!) I encourage everyone who didn’t go to this event to save up for the next one. It’s truly something one would regret not going to.