More worthwhile blog over AX because I don’t actually do anything at AX

(Not going to do the usual day formatting because I kind of want to talk about the actual panels and whatnot instead of all the random other things that happened)

Registration

• I got there pretty late (around 6pm) so there was no line. But apparently this went super smooth for everyone (probably because badges were generic this time and didn’t have character names on them)

Keynote

• Seeing the Stormblood trailer up close was hype! I liked the Heavensward themes more but honestly Stormblood looks really good too. I wish they had the budget to do more CGI cutscenes :( I guess the Coil ones were a one-time thing because it was bridging the gap between 1.0 and 2.0.
• Lots of debate over the kinpatsu’s job but most seem to be convinced that it’s MNK. I think it’s still possible for her to be DNC, even if she’s Yda, because it wouldn’t be the first time a Scion changed job and perhaps she was DNC all along but wanted to hide it for ‘reasons.’
• RDM!!! I am hyped for this. Finally a sword user that isn’t a tank! Sword caster!
• When they were showing the useless skill animations leading into the “battle system overhaul” slide I actually didn’t understand at first because I didn’t recognize the animations… just goes to show how useless they are lol.
• I really hope they don’t screw up Eureka like they did with Diadem.
• Not much information on anything else but that was expected since it was like that last time too. Looking forward to Tokyo Fan Fest but still waiting to see if I can win lotto for second chance tickets ;_;

Dev Panel

• I actually missed most of this since I was in the merch line and audio didn’t travel very well to the far wall… I heard it was great though (too bad attending doesn’t come with complimentary stream access). I did catch a few of the Ozma parts though; WTB Ozma Savage!
• I want to go back and watch this properly sometime; Nakagawa seems like a cool guy and looks like he brought a lot of interesting stuff to share.

Q&A Panel

• Most of the questions were taken from question cards that every attendee got. I kinda threw mine for the sake of making a joke (“Why doesn’t the Creator BLM weapon have spell speed on it???”) and I’m sure it got filtered out before it reached the bag lol.
• Hyperion……….
• I was pretty disappointed in most of the audience questions; wasting their chances to ask unfiltered questions on glamour and things that have already been mentioned in previous live letters and dev posts :| At least there was that one guy who asked about abolishing accuracy requirements.

Cosplay Contest

• I didn’t watch this; we went to go eat instead. I saw most of the cosplays on the event floor anyway. That DRG definitely deserved their win! Lots of really nice cosplay around overall.

Piano Concert

• This was really nice. Thordan Borderless (my memory was mixed up… long week, don’t ask) was a bit of a stretch for me around the middle; sometimes I lost track of where in the song the pianist was. But everything else was great.
• Susan’s voice is lovely; so glad I got to hear her live.
• Soken’s The Scars of Battle was hilarious! Every time he kicked the box I was in tears. Equilibrium was really nice too. I was also impressed by how he played these without sheet music.

Lore & Localization Panel

• Koji is my hero
• A lot of people complained about how there was too much localization and not enough lore in this panel, but as a translator that really looks up to Koji, I enjoyed it very much lol. Since I bought the lore book, that’ll cover my lore fix for quite a while anyway.
• Hearing the story behind the Equilibrium lyrics was really cool. Basically, a girl’s father dies (at sea? don’t remember exactly) and her mother can’t cope and ruthlessly abuses her daughter. The girl prays to the goddess, who tells her that the balance in her family was broken when her father died. Sophia is neither good nor evil; all she cares about is maintaining balance. So she tells the girl to kill her mother to restore balance, and the girl does. Then she tells the girl that her family is unbalanced again, so she should kill herself as well. The girl jumps off a cliff, leaving “an empty hearth down by the sea.”

PvP Tournament

• Only caught the tail end of this because I was doing other things. Pretty cool though; that second last match was super tight. Last one was a faceroll though lol. I guess it’s unlikely for most of the really good premades to be attending fan fest together.
• It was obvious from the start that the dev team would lose because they don’t have any practice with Feast strats, but then they picked such an awful comp too LOL (DRK/SCH/MNK/BLM???)

Live Letter

• It kind of annoyed me that some of the stuff was repeated from the Q&A panel but oh well.
• Yoshi-P  grilling Koji about the Dueling Circle was absolutely hilarious; you could tell they were having a lot of fun with it.
• New Palace of the Dead screenshots look neat. Pretty excited to try out the solo rankings, just not sure how many hundreds of hours it’ll take…
• Paissa house!!!!! I need to buy a mansion now…

Primals Concert

• Soken is awesome
• Koji is awesome
• Band is awesome
• Fiend was my favourite that they did. Except in my head I was going “tethers… earthshakers… spread out…” the entire time lol.
• Poor Soken getting flak for not listening to audience requests when the band didn’t even learn those songs lol…
• The Locus hype was real!
• Brute Justice for Fan Fest 2018 please!

Proto-Ultima Challenge

• This was pretty easy; the DPS check was a faceroll and it’s easy to carry as a healer. Even when alliance A randomly blew up it was still a oneshot. The hardest part was getting people to change to the right job comp to queue in =_=

Trial Roulette

• I didn’t try this because of time constraints and not having enough people that I trusted to be able to handle the handicaps lol. Maybe next time :(

Loot

Free Stuff

• ADS stress ball!!! So cute! So useful for trap parties…
• IRL allagan tomestone!!! Pretty nice 16gb size, but not actually usable because the cover is so wide it’ll block the adjacent ports lol
• Cute job stickers using the PotD sprites
• Lanyard with the PotD sprites
• Sabotender strap
• Blowup balloon of the wind-up cursor minion, for effective pointing
• Triple triad cards; the loot bag gave you 5 of the same one and you’d have to trade with others to collect the full set (Aymeric, Ysayle, Sabotender, Godbert, Julyan). There were also 4 other cards you could get from doing the quest book (Estinien, Haurchefant, Minfilia, Hildibrand&Nashu).
• No free T-shirt ;_; no “I beat ______” shirts either ;_;

Merchandise

• I was very lucky and was able to buy everything that I’d planned on getting. Day 1 merch line was basically a catastrophe though. There are a million complaint posts about that line already so I’m not going to talk about it. Instead I’ll just review what I did buy.
• Fan Fest T-shirt & Hoodie – I’m actually not that fond of the art on these but still bought them cause, y’know, Fan Fest exclusive.
• Minion T-shirt – I’m actually not that fond of the art design on this one either but still bought it because succubus >_>;
• Lore Book – 10/10 Qs would font again (but real talk, there is so much good stuff in here and you could tell that Koji was really proud of it)
• 2017 Calendar – Haven’t even opened it but I saw photos of the art and it looks good.
• Cait Sith Doll – I bought it for the item code >_> it’s cute though.
• Emerald Carbuncle Plush – Carby!!! I already have the Topaz one from the SE store so I didn’t have to buy it again.
• Delivery Moogle Plush – I bought it for the item code >_> it’s cute though.
• Moogle Hooded Blanket – So cute!
• Dragonsong Tapestry – This is really nice. Good art and has all the main Heavensward characters.
• Before the Fall & Heavensward OSTs – Bought these ones since the item codes are still valid. Eventually I want to get all the OSTs; Soken is just so amazing at composing vastly different genres. And it was cool seeing the JP translations of the primal lyrics in the booklet.