Final Fantasy XI: Wings of the Goddess (New expansion pack) announced

http://www.playonline.com/ff11eu/altana/index.html

Square Enix has just announced the fourth expansion pack to FFXI, called Wings of the Goddess. Interestingly though, from viewing the first screenshots and teaser trailer found at the above link, it seems this expansion is returning to the main storyline on the western continents last covered by Chains of Promathia, instead of continuing the Aht Urhgan storyline, as the image on the expansion site (found at the above link), shows what appears to be Garliage Citadel, but at an earlier time where it was still intact and inhabited.

Other images on the trailer apparently show other zones on Quon and Mindartia at different time periods as well, evidentally pointing towards time travel as a possible element of the expansion’s storyline.

Apart from that though, not much is known at this point, other than what has been mentioned on the main FFXI site:

Official Site for "Wings of the Goddess"! (12/05/2007)

The development of "Wings of the Goddess", a new FINAL FANTASY XI expansion disc, was announced today at the SQUARE ENIX PARTY 2007.
In conjunction with this announcement, a new site has been created to provide the latest development details as they become available, as well as give fans the opportunity to view exclusive images from the expansion.

Personally, I’m intriguied by this new expansion, but, as so little is known about it at this stage, we’ll have to wait and see what else it is going to feature – I’m hoping for new Jobs myself; Time Mage and Dancer in particular 🙂 .

Either way, this expansion looks promising.

I wouldn’t say it looks very promising yet. All we have is a name, and a few minutes worth of skimpy video footage. Most of the video just recaps scenes from the previous expansion packs, although it does seem to hint at time travel. We’ll just have to wait for SE to release more info before we can jump to any conclusions, really anything said about the expansion now is just pure speculation.

For more info on "wings of goddess" expansion read this interview

http://forums.ffxiclopedia.org/viewtopic.php?t=5032

Looking like its going to be a fun expansion

Until they finally toss the PS2 limitations bullshit out the window and stop working for PS2 players, we are just going to get the same watered down events and areas, shown obviously in this expansion with using old areas base models, im sure its gonna be a great expansion due to it being worked on by the CoP team and the TOAU lead, even still, you change the substance of the game to something new and different, they needa toss the PS2.

Its not the PS2 thats limiting this – The PS2 limits graphical improvements and remodeling.

The main reason for the way updates done is that almost no coders (just script writers) are in the FFXI team now. So only re-scripting of existing code is possible. To really improve this they need to get programmers back in but from SE’s point of view that would be too expensive for the number of people playing and would very quickly make FFXI an un-viable proposition for them.

Until they finally toss the PS2 limitations bullshit out the window and stop working for PS2 players, we are just going to get the same watered down events and areas, shown obviously in this expansion with using old areas base models, im sure its gonna be a great expansion due to it being worked on by the CoP team and the TOAU lead, even still, you change the substance of the game to something new and different, they needa toss the PS2.

Shut-up. You obviously know nothing about what your talking about, they could easily upgrade the graphics for the PC and Xbox users without dropping PS2 support, and truth be told, the PS2 is actually more capable then a lot of PCs being used to play FFXI.

Also the majority of the Japanese fan base plays to the PS2, so if they dropped PS2 support they would probably cut their profits in half, resulting in loss of servers, which would increase lag and lower graphic quality. So in actuality, dropping the PS2 would most likely make the graphics worse than they currently are, even though they aren’t too bad at all.

I don’t just speculate this either, Square Enix has mentioned this multiple times when asked if a graphical update would come any time in the future or if the PS2 would be dropped.

Next time you decide it would be best to drop support of a large fraction of the player base, think about who your affecting, thousands of people would lose their ability to play FFXI, and that would be a major injustice to the ones (like myself, I will add) who have been playing faithfully for years.

So is SE going to drop PS2 support? No.