Final Fantasy: August-September Announcements

Now that final adjustments have been made to the upcoming North American release of FINAL FANTASY XI, the development team has turned their attention to the updates that will be implemented in the near future.

Updates will now take place every several months due to the smaller amount of changes being made.

This also takes into account the time required for the simultaneous development and testing of both the Japanese and English versions of the game.

According to this new format, the developments made in September will be included in the October update.

The updates below reflect the announcement made today during our online strategy press conference concerning the development and overall direction of FINAL FANTASY XI for the next six months.

The Update for October, set to take place just before the start of the North American release(Windows version only), will contain the following:

-New high-rank missions and quests for each nation
-New motions for sitting and mining/harvesting
-New sound varieties for the <call> function

Other scheduled updates include a third Mog Safe expansion quest and a new search category that allows you to search by comment.

Other updates considered for implementation within 2003:
-The unlocking of "limbo" areas
-The raising of the level cap to 75

Announcements will be made when more information is available on these and other updates.

The development team is currently working on further expanding the previously mentioned "limbo"(with battles in town areas), and implementing a"PvP System(Player vs. Player, allows battles between PC's)" that will affect the conquest results between nations.

These changes are scheduled to take place between January and March 2004.

The number of North American users is expected to dramatically increase with the release of Sony Computer Entertainment America's Internal Hard Disk Drive unit in March of 2004.

The Internal Hard Disk Drive will come with the PlayStation 2 version of FINAL FANTASY XI: Rise of the Zilart pre-installed.

Finally, for Windows users, new benchmark software is now available from our official web site.

Not only can this software be used to check compatibility of FINAL FANTASY XI: Rise of the Zilart on your computer, but it also contains scenes from the game. Check them out!

FINAL FANTASY XI Development Team

(This is straight off the Developers room announcements)