Not all that Glitters is Gold

Hey! Do you guys remember this thing from FFXI?

Yeah, me neither until this reminded me of it. It's the Tidal Talisman; a modestly useful teleportation necklace that took up yet another space in your inventory for the payoff of being able to teleport between major cities every 40 hours.

I didn't buy it either, but if you're one of the few who did, you know that in addition to the lackluster ingame benefits, you also received a real-life version of the item. I guess so you could cosplay as your avatar. Surely, you wouldn't wear such a thing during everyday events, would you..? WOULD YOU?

SE Company President Yoichi Wada has revealed that we'll be seeing much more micro-transaction items in FFXIV than we did in FFXI. He said, “we soon learnt that there are a lot of people who want that kind of model, so we would like to introduce more pay-as-you-use items into the game."

Excuse me? Where was I when this survey was taken? I'm going to have my people call your people, SE; I've never heard any positive remarks about micro-transaction from the FFXI crowd. I know there are people who like collecting the real-life items, and that's cool and stuff, but I hope the items they make available in FFXIV aren't necessities, not while they're making us pay a monthly fee, anyway.

In other and completely related news, the official site has been updated with several interesting features, not the least of which being Beta signups for PC. I'll be waiting for the PS3 Beta, myself, but if you're computer has the digital balls to run FFXIV, go for it.

The backstory has also been fleshed out:

And then... war were declared... What? They take card games seriously in Japan. That Galka, I mean Roegadyn, lost his Bahamut Zero card in that duel. I'd be pissed, too.

Well, there is a war. During a huge battle, the adventurers(you, me, and everyone we know) come in contact with the "Echo"(the plot), which gives them the power to relive their past experiences. The "Echo" is the major story of FFXIV which will over-arch the many other sub-plots and side-stories in the game. I know it sounds kind of lame when I say it, but check out the site. They say it in that cool Lord of the Rings prose that makes everything sound like an adventure. "Go forth and wash thy car" and all that.