One of the most popular Japanese MMO held a festival for about 2000 fans in Las Vegas. Filled with jaw dropping cosplays, lots of sneak peeks for upcoming releases, and of course gambling and alcohol, check out a recap of my three day adventure at the Rio Hotel.
Please note, there will be a mixture of photos from my camera and phone so the quality may vary.
Day 1
Arriving the day prior with some colleagues, the first day of the event was dedicated primarily to badge pickup. We waited approximately 2 1/2 hours before we got ours.
Once you got your badge, there was a separate line for the goodie bags that contained a program guide, quest booklet, a t shirt, 3 rub on tattoos, and a nifty FFXIV branded USB battery charger with some Allagan themed markings on the sides.
Reception
The only event on the schedule for Day 1 other than badge pickup, was a reception held outside at the pool of the Rio Hotel. Many fans had opted to line up for the reception after they had picked up there badges. Before entering the main reception, there was an area where you could take photos with some cosplayers. The reception area was decorated with some really cool banners and artwork. Tables with the Fan Fest logos were setup all around for people to socialize. What I would have liked to see are tables or areas labeled for specific servers. By the end of day 3, I had luckily bump into several people by sheer luck who are on my server and now we play together in game. If you had coughed up the extra $80 for VIP tickets, you were provided a single complimentary drink ticket else they had a cash bar outside. We stayed roughly for about 15 minutes before leaving for some light entertainment in the casino.
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Day 2
With the long lines from the prior day, the first day line was even longer. Surprisingly at 9:30, the line started to move and within about 15 minutes, everyone was inside. Kudos to the staff.
Opening Keynote
The keynote was headed by FFXIV Director Naoki Yoshida who announced the patch 3.0 expansion Heavensward which will be available in 2015. New level cap will be raised to 60, players will be able to visit the northern holy city of Ishgard, new dungeons, a brand new original Primal, airships, new areas such as the Chocobo Forest and Dravania. You can also find out most of this information from our twitter account live posts.
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After a few slides of some of the new areas and environments, Yoshida also talked about the upcoming patch 2.4, Dream of Ice.
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As the keynote was wrapping up, people began rushing to line up for the goodie store or to the various in game and in person event booths. Note, there were no event exclusive merchandising. The most popular items included the moogle delivery plushie and the official artbook which both will be available online.
Afterwards, I wandered for a bit and found some pretty awesome cosplayers.
Developer's Panel
This panel was lead by Battle Director Mitsutoshi Gondai and Yoshida reminiscing on the minuscule size of the actual development team and schedule they had during the 2.0 ARR relaunch. They also talked about the team structure and some of the individual members and what they do. Please see our twitter live feeds for for additional details.
Towards the end, Yoshida invited Sound Director Soken Masayoshi onstage to watch the Heavensward trailer again. This was Masayoshi's first time seeing the completed trailer since he had finished the music for it just recently.
Yoshida noted that then entire band was currently in a nearby recording studio and has been since they arrived to Vegas. Since they were all together, Yoshida suggested Masayoshi and his band to perform on the last day as part of the closing ceremonies. To the dismal of Masayoshi, it was under the condition that they must finish recording before the performance.
I was also in attendance with several members of my Free Company. Since there were huge lines for everything, we decided to join the 72 player PVP Frontline.
As a note, throughout the event, there were technical hiccups. A reoccurring issue I ran into was related to the headsets. Either the way they were setup or linked, there are times where I can't hear certain members of my party, or only some of them can hear me, or the wrong members are in my chat channel. We opted to shout across the rows of computers which seemed to also work.
Before we talk about some of the available in game challenges, all challenges give players a 3 minute setup time adjusting settings, UI, etc.
Odin Primal Battle
Not much to say about the new Odin Primal challenge as we beat it our first try. The release version will probably be significantly more difficult. Odin had many of the same moves and abilities as he does in the normal Fate battle. As a healer, I mostly casted AOE spells like Medica and Medica II. For the final phase, I switched to Cleric Stance and attack Odin. For more information regarding the fight, please check out the video below.
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Day 3
Live Letter Panel
The Live Letter was broadcasted for this day. As most of the notes will be available on the official forum shortly (and a video is available below), I won't go into full details. Most of the information pertains to patch 2.4. Some of the highlights included Atma drop rates increasing in patch 2.4, Dark Knight hinted as the next class, new optional pay in game items, and more information on Ninja.
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Cosplay Contest
Not much to say other than to check out our cosplay contest gallery!
Some of our esteemed judges out of cosplay.
Yoshida and the other judges during the contest.
A fan video of the cosplay contest can also be found below.
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