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ZAM Interviews FFXIV's Naoki Yoshida & Sage Sundi

From ZAM:

Members of the ZAM team are currently at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and Editor-in-Chief Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff was lucky enough to get the chance to sit down with Final Fantasy XIV Producer/Director Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida and Global Online Producer Sage Sundi to talk about the future of the game.

We discussed various topics, such as the upcoming official forums, the team's plans for new quests, when you can expect to see some battle system changes (as well as a new high-end dungeon), and how you'll earn class-specific armor. Yoshi-P also explains how he hopes to bring both old and new players back into the game. Keep reading for the full interview!

Patch 1.16 Notes (03/03/2011)

Patch 1.16 is now live! All of the changes mentioned in recent days have been implemented, including the introduction of several new sidequests, and continued improvements to playability and convenience via system-side adjustments begun in patch 1.15a.

View all of the official particulars.

Eorzeapedia Exclusive Interview with Naoki Yoshida

From Eorzeapedia:

December brought change for Final Fantasy XIV that no one saw coming.  Hiromichi Tanaka, the game’s Producer stepped down, taking full responsibility for the poor condition of the game.  The development team was reshuffled and former Director Nobuaki Komoto shifted to Lead Game Designer.  We were then introduced to Naoki Yoshida, someone who no one had really heard of before. Now known to players as “Yoshi-P”, he took on the role of Producer/Director for Final Fantasy XIV.

Since then, he’s written numerous letters on the Lodestone which outline the changes the team is working on as well as a few personal touches here and there.  He’s already had several interviews with Japanese media outlets such as Famitsu and 4Gamer. He has just recently completed a visit to Square Enix’s headquarters in London to talk with a few European fan sites.  Now, it’s our turn.

We were invited to Square Enix’s El Segundo offices to sit down and chat with the team behind Final Fantasy XIV including Naoki Yoshida, Sage Sundi, Yasu Kurosawa and Robert Peeler.

Patch 1.15a Notes (02/02/2011)

Patch 1.15a is now live! All of the changes mentioned in recent days have been implemented, with a focus on improving playability and convenience via a number of system-side adjustments.

This will begin a series of small patches that attempt to get the game to where it should have been in September.  They are supposed to occur about every two weeks.  The new dev team most likely decided to go this route after the results of the Jan 1st player’s poll which indicated that rapidly occurring updates were important to the players.