ハワイでファイナルファンタジーXIのイベント Final Fantasy XI Event In Hawaii

Last week Saturday I went to Pearlridge Shopping Center to meet my friend who was visiting from Osaka and to show him around. I heard something about a Final Fantasy XI event being held in the area, so I decided to take a look since I was there anyway. It was hosted at a local computer game store, PC GAMERZ. Here are some of the highlights.

The picture on the left has a listing of the bosses and prizes included in the BOSS BATTLE BASH. In this contest, players team up to kill a boss. Survive, and get a prize. Eat shit, and receive ridicule from your fellow geeks. On the right, you can see a row of computers set up for various displays.


Wow, females in a sea of dorks! Salvation is at hand! The girls in the left picture controlled the reception desk and were very friendly. I talked to these gamer girls in awe, as if bearing witness to some mysterious, mythical creatures that have eluded my grasp for ages. What is this "gamer girl" you speak of? I know not of what you say, for until now I have heard nothing but fantastic legends of awesomeness.


Such as this, this impossible photo. This girl, this manifestation of all that is good in the world; she is not real, she cannot be! A cruel trick designed to tempt my soul and give my hopes false strength. A feeble mind such as mine own cannot comprehend the scope of such magnificence and immediately deems it fake. A clever Photoshop, perhaps, the original photo being nothing more than a Walkman, three avocados, and a lampshade. The possibility of this photo's authenticity warms my trembling heart down to its soft and chewy core, yet alack! No, no, 'tis too good, too holy, too grand to be real. My world is torn asunder. The Princess is in another castle... /despair....

*ahem*



Anyway,


Here we see some of the Square Enix employees. The left picture is some guy. I forgot who he is. But that's not important. Take a look at the right picture. Here we see the developer chat that took place. From left to right: The MC, Yasu Kurosawa (North American Online Producer), Ken Tanaka (Assistant Manager of Online Community Relations), Haggan (ffxi.allakhazam.com Administrator), and Pikko (ffxi.allakhazam.com Administrator). They did a question and answer segment along with the developers of FFXI in Japan via video conference. Translation took a while, and I don't think the Japanese developers understood some of the questions 100%. For example, the questions about real money trading and the abuse of packet sniffing programs kinda resulted in lousy "I don't know what you are trying to say so I'll just give you a lame non-answer" answers. Other than that, however, the chat was quite entertaining. It was funny because the MC kept making mistakes regarding Pikko's name. Her sign says "Pikko Pots" and the MC kept referring to her as "Pots" who comes from someplace called "Pikko". Give the guy a break, though. It was a 12 hour event.

(UPDATE: Oh, I see what's the deal with the whole "pots" thing. There is a someplace called "Pikko Pots" that she runs. It's about gardening in your Mog house. It looks very interesting. I dabbled in gardening myself for a while, but it was rather hit and miss for me. I didn't really understand how it worked, and I didn't feel it was worth my time to look up all the kanji I didn't know just to learn how to make pretty plants. Looking through the site, I see that gardening is actually pretty cool. Thanks Pikko!)


Actually, Haggan from Allakhazam has a good summary of the event along with some nice pictures. Check 'em out. You can kinda see me in this picture:




Models cosplaying as Mithras (playable characters from the game) were also present to entertain us and pose for photos. On the right, we see another contest, known as the "Tarutaru Cure Marathon". A bunch of tarus run through Misareaux Coast and then get PWNED by the wildlife. The first one to cast cure on a character placed somewhere on the map gets first place. Many cheers were heard as taru upon taru got aggroed and met their untimely demises. I have to say, however, that the cameramen sucked and at one point they lost track of all the tarus. ALL of them. Sheesh. (UPDATE: Oh yeah, apparently one of them DIED, too. Somehow the camera guy got aggroed and was killed. Much laughter was had by all in attendance.)

Haggan has better pictures of the Mithras here:


On the left we have the grand prize for the raffle contest, a custom built FFXI PC. That baby has stuff like a P4 3.4GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, a GeForce 6800 Ultra, and a 160GB Hard Drive. Unfortunately, I did not win it.

I did get a free mousepad. I also got it signed by Yasu Kurosawa! When I asked Yasu for the autograph, I spoke to him in Japanese, and he seemed really surprised. A second later, he remarked that a lot of people in Hawaii can speak Japanese. Generally speaking, that's true. Due to the large numbers of Japanese-Americans as well as the large numbers of Japanese tourists, many people in Hawaii are at least casually familiar with the Japanese language. Many Asian languages and cultures have integrated themselves into local Hawaiian culture, as well as made a significant impact on our local creole dialect. But that's another post for another time.

What's left? Hmm, ah yes. During the course of the event, there was a contest to see who could imitate the tarutaru's /panic action the best. Here's video of one guy doing /joy, and then there's video of this guy doing /panic. I commend both for their valor, but in the end there can only be one. The first guy won.

UPDATE: Hey look, an online article in the Star Bulletin about the event: http://starbulletin.com/2005/04/28/features/story1.html

SECOND UPDATE: I just found the blog of the guy who won the custom PC in the raffle. He chalks his win up to the power of karma. Go here: Life of a Tarutaru

Also, I wonder if there have been a lot of people running away from FFXI and heading off to World of Warcraft or something. Perhaps Squeenix feels threatened and needs to implement that Return Home to Vanadiel program. When I was talking to Ken Tanaka for a bit, I mentioned to him that I had canceled my account a couple months back, as you can see here. He then tried to get me to come back by listing the cool features of the Return Home campaign.

I said that I wasn't planning on coming back anytime soon, if at all, but what would interest me is if I had the ability to purchase my own Chocobo. The idea of mounts from World of Warcraft sounds really cool to me, and ever since I was a high enough level to get my Chocobo license years ago, I had always pined to own a Chocobo myself. I love the idea of not having to pay a vendor each time I need to ride. I love the idea of not having a timer on my ride. I love the idea of calling my Chocobo from anywhere in the world (within reasonable bounds, of course). I mean, look at Guild Wars. You can teleport back to town whenever you feel like it.

I want to own Chocobos. I want to hunt for wild Chocobos. I want to breed them, raise them, sell them, and race them. I want to enter my prize Chocobo "Choco-Hamster" into the Jeuno Derby, bet all my gil on him, and then cry like a baby when he comes in last place! I want to accessorize my Chocobos with sunglasses and cute hats and then play with them in my Chocobo barn. I want to enter them into frisbee catching contests and Chocobo shows. Err, wait, no, that's Nintendogs. I guess I miss the fun of Chocobo rearing Final Fantasy VII style. Now THAT was great! Inbreeding your Chocobos until a genetic freak appeared (i.e. the Gold Chocobo) was never so much fun.

I feel that the whole concept of Chocobos, especially considering their strong connection with the Final Fantasy brand in general, is very underutilzed in the current game world. I mean, when one's not leveling up or completing missions, what's there to do? Craft? Fish? Item farm? Garden? Camp NMs/HNMs (boring!) ? Not enough, I say! Bring on the Choco-derby gambling! It'll attract a whole new niche of gamers. The possibilities boggle the mind.

Judging by Ken's response, however, I doubt we'll be seeing any of those features.


THIRD UPDATE: Here's another shot of Yasu:

Also, here are a few more reports about the event.

I can't believe I missed this one: In addition to Haggan's write-up, Pikko did one as well. I linked to Haggan's report earlier in the post, but for some reason I forgot to put a link to Pikko's as well. Here is her report: Pikko's write-up

She also has a bunch of pictures that you can check out here. I found myself in one of them. One interesting item is this picture regarding a Boss Battle Bash team that won. I didn't see them myself, but I hear that it was a team of only white mages who fought Time Bomb. They simply cast reraise on themselves, and when Time Bomb asploded himself, everyone came back to life and won. Har.

In addition, we have this report on Livejournal by Jaysensen. There are a few new pics, including this sneaky photo of the Mithra models' butts.

FOURTH UPDATE: Another obvious place for pics and commentary regarding the event would be from the website of the place that hosted the event, PC GAMERZ. They have a lot of photos from the setup of the event, among others, located in their photo gallery. Enjoy more snapshots of cute girls at gaming events!


I have to say that PC GAMERZ is by far one of the nicest places I've seen to get on a LAN and get your game on. This place is much more than just an internet cafe. They have regular gaming events and a fully loaded snackbar to fuel you through your day-long click fest. Furthermore, the price can't be beat. Most other game centers and internet cafes charge $5 an hour to use their crappy PCs, but at PC GAMERZ walk in guests get access for $4/hour while members ($25 membership fee) are charged $3/hour.

What catches my eye, however, is their offer to build custom PCs for those who ask. The info on ordering custom built PCs can be found by clicking on the "Stuff" link at the top of their main site. The prepackaged systems optimized for value and performance seem like a good deal, and if you want, you could opt to inject more bad-assery into the rig. I wonder if they come with any warranties or customer support...hmm. It would be nice to support a local company the next time I get a new PC.

FIFTH UPDATE: I found another blog that has a write-up with pictures. It is brought to us courtesy of ZodiacBrave on Livejournal. The direct link to her report is here, but if it's a little hard to read, you can check it out from the main page here. Chances are, it'll still be the first post. Also, for your information, there is background music on the site, so if you don't want your speakers going off, be sure to turn 'em down. (UPDATE: Actually, just go here. It's easier to read and it has more comments from other people.)

I see that she is a member of the group that hangs out in the lounge at the University of Hawaii. Heh, heh, that's where all the geeks go to hang out. My kind of people! I go there sometimes myself, when I'm tutoring the cute Japanese girls who are learning English :)

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SIXTH UPDATE (5/31) : OK, this should be the last one. Square-Enix has put up their own write-up about the event, and you can check it out here: http://na.square-enix.com/events/ffxi/tour2005/aiea/index.html

They also made a short video of the event where you can see a lot of the activities that took place. It is here:

http://na.square-enix.com/events/ffxi/tour2005/aiea/movies/ffxi_hawaii2005.wmv

Also, there are some other write-ups I missed that had been posted on the Allakhazam forums: http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=10&mid=111494297020702865&num=39

For those of you who are interested in this mithra model, here are a couple links to some of her pictures:


Patrick Talent Agency Profile


Midweek 2005 Swimsuit Issue


I couldn't find any info on the other models, but it doesn't really matter because the one pictured here is the hottest one anyway :)




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