Final Fantasy XI: Dancer and Scholar Interview

[Cody Bye]

The war to stay ahead of the competition has been underway in the massively multiplayer gaming marketplace for nearly a decade, but only within the last few years has the struggle really reached critical mass. Subscription and retail box numbers are tossed about with growing rapidity, and the press rabidly analyzes any new statistics that come to their attention. One of the more popular games over the last five years have been Final Fantasy XI, and it continues to sell boxes and garner thousands of subscribers. With the release of their most recent expansion, Wings of the Goddess, the FFXI developers unveiled two new jobs – the Dancer and Scholar – and the Ten Ton Hammer staff recently talked with Mitsutoshi Gondai to learn all the details of these two new additions.

Gondai: These jobs were added for several reasons. With Final Fantasy XI's unique job change and support job systems, these additions create choices even for players who prefer a specific main job. And as well as introducing interesting new game mechanics, the dancer was designed to provide a melee job more suited for solo play, and the introduction of the scholar swells the ranks of the relatively few magic-using jobs.

To read the entire interview, click here!

What do you think of the new FFXI classes? Have you played the game before? Let us know!

[BahamutKaiser]

Before the released the expansion before last, I wrote a suggestion promoting the Geomancer, Blue Mage, and Dancer as job classes for the game. So far 2 of them ended up in the game, as prime choices, it was hard to come up with something else. What I don't understand is why they decided to make the Corsair, Puppetmaster and Scholar instead of a Geomancer, seeing as all three of those have less relavence than the Geomancer in the FF series, and Corsair being the only one that has any greater attraction than a Geomancer.

None the less, the gameplay and community control in that game was too dated and mundain for me to continue, and I don't think they could add a class or mode to the game that would overcome my dislike for the combat scheme, grind, economy, and flat out ignorance of American feedback.

[Liltawen]

This sounds fascinating.
At LOTRO I was hoping they'd make a Luthien Tinuviel
dancer/loremaster type class but they haven't.
As a student of bharatha natya which is a South India religious/magical dance style for many years I am especially interested in this; although from your description in the article is sounds like what you're talking about is closer to the Kerala warrior style of Indian dance called Kathakali.
Either way I'll probably get FF-XI just to find out what this is all about.

[Beerkeg]

Is FFXI still running?

[kitsunegirl]

Thread necromancy desu!

Also, you have to be able to do some time-travel quest just to get to the scholar/dancer class options. And you dont get to do that til later on in the game... atleast thats what I was told.