The Celestia Citizen (The Gobbler Edition)
Hello, fellow Celestians! Welcome back to another edition of the new Celestia Citizen! We’ve got a jam-packed edition here, brought to you first by our generous sponsor dancing for your enjoyment! He’s just getting his groove on for the upcoming turkey day here in the States! Yes, Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 25th! Expect copious amounts of culinary sides, drinks, and all the dark-and-white meat the groovy gobbler above will bring to your tables in a couple of weeks!
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker News
We are now in the homestretch for another 2 years of juicy MSQ, boss fights, gear, and dancing catgirls in Limsa Lominsa more!!! For those who have pre-ordered Endwalker, Early Access will be available on Friday, November 19th December 3rd (Please note that as of the Live Letter event on Friday, November 5th, 12/3 is the new Early Access date). This taste of what is to come will be available until the ensuing maintenance arrives a couple of days later. After that, Tuesday, November 23rd December 7th will be the Official launch of Endwalker!
Why the last minute delay?!
To put it simply, a game like this has been one of Square Enix’s big moneymakers of the prior decade. Normally, a quality project of this making would have had a fixed schedule for every couple of years. This expansion, it is trending closer to nearly 2 and a half years between expansions. With COVID-19 having caused the world to adjust itself for the sake of business in 2020 and 2021, it is expected that any prior standard held for the production of a FFXIV expansion will also have to adjust.
During the Live Letter presented from the Producer, Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P), he had expressed deep regret for the 2 week delay of the game’s new expansion. While this may inconvenience some folks who took time off for Thanksgiving week to enjoy Endwalker, it demonstrates the sheer quality that Yoshi-P has envisioned for the game since A Realm Reborn (ARR).
The next 2 weeks of delay is being implemented for QA (quality assurance), testing, launch preparations to ensure a minimum of traffic problems, and to guarantee that the game will release with that quality that Yoshi-P has kept continuous since ARR. And ultimately, it is to give the development team some breathing room to ensure the game meets what they had envisioned over the last couple of years.
The linked Live Letter announcement here has more detail:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/78fc5efd11286b91080f60cbb55ce5b1eab136ee
Remember that ‘a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad’ – Shigeru Miyamoto.
Use this time to enjoy current events, such as the Moogle Tomestones event, and to get another 2 weeks of enjoying legacy content out of the way. For any who may have felt that the game releasing soon would eat into their plans to be ready, you now have 2 extra weeks to prepare. Use it wisely!!!
Be sure to get lots of Gil saved, lots of tomestones saved, as much end-gear as you can possibly manage to jump right into the story, and all sorts of other things you may need for quick and easy XP come patch day.
Here’s a hint: The two new jobs, Reaper and Sage, will use the Maiming (Dragoon/Lancer) kits and general Healer kits, respectively. Go to Rhalgr’s Reach over the next couple of weeks, and stockpile Lv70/i400 armor and accessories for these two jobs. BUT NO BELTS! (Belts are going to be gone with the new expansion. You won’t be able to equip them, but you can sell them, desynth them, or just keep them for nostalgia)
And above all else, be thankful for the man Yoshi-P ensuring that we will all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year with an amazing FFXIV expansion!
Social Events
First, let us cover the last month’s events for October!
The first of these events involved our murderous and mysterious Murder Mystery! This year, the downfallen special guest for our annual episode was the esteemed Harliqyn Mave! Riddled with tense moments and commercial breaks (especially for our resident Lalafellen), this culminated into a conclusion more juicy than a roasted turkey! In the end, the wonderous whodunit was solved by our own Z’atannia Tsu!
Secondly, our other major event of the month was our Halloween Contest! Who dared to bring as much innovation to their choice of XIV-wear as could be humanly possible?
The boldest of the lot was our own Jethra Vess, who proved that anything could be a monster capture game with enough effort!
There was also the niche theme of this year’s contest: The Ugliest Costume!
The most imaginative of the lot was Urbosa Vah’naboris, who had shown off how courtly a jester can be.
The next upcoming event will be the Free Company Room Decorating Contest, which is due to end by November 5th at Midnight PDT! Be sure to sign up on the Discord channel under #Social-Event for this and any other upcoming events you wish to participate in! Expect the winning results to be published in the next Celestia Citizen! And please commend our winners this month for their amazing efforts! Understand that in the coming weeks, future newsletters will also reflect winners of not just FC social events, but also other contests and giveaways (such as our Nitro-exclusive giveaways, our donation-exclusive giveaways, and special ones privately hosted by contributive members of our FC at their own cost and contribution to a lovely FC!).
Regarding Account Security in Final Fantasy XIV
While this may seem a bit out of place to have on our monthly newsletter, it reflects a very important aspect of enjoying your online lifestyle: Account security.
Recently, I had made a goodwill post on the FC Discord regarding the recommendation and benefit of 2-step verification or multi-factor authentication.
Can you have your XIV account hacked? The answer is Yes, absolutely. You may have been enjoying a wonderful walk through one of the major cities, and all of a sudden, you see a tell or message come your way. Want lots of Gil for cheap real-world currency? Or are you being asked to advocate on a forum post at a link that looks ‘official’? Or is someone asking you to go to a specific page and vote for something? In any case, these direct messages to you are nothing special except to the ones who send it.
All these hackers need is to get your login username and password for your Square Enix account, and then they can jump in-game and kill your Gil and item storage. What’s worse is if you’re also in a Free Company and have access to some or all of the FC’s chests, these same hackers can hijack that content the same way and leave your fellow FC members reeling hard from loss.
How do I keep these sus hackers from getting my account accessed?
Good question. Fortunately, Square Enix offers THREE different ways to secure your account.
In FFXIV: Go to your Mog Station page (where you can manage your licenses, go to the shop for buying stuff, etc) > Square Enix Account Settings > “One-Time Password” > Select your choice of “token” or authenticator (per the image attached):
Security Token (key ring type, physical token): Retails for $14.99, no software on phone to juggle
Software Token (smartphone app): No cost, and uses Square Enix’s official Software Token app
Software Authenticator (smartphone app): No cost, offers flexibility on choice of authenticator app (Google, Microsoft, IBM, Authy, etc)
Once you have picked one of these 3 options and successfully registered it to your account, you are all set! Just be sure to grab your Emergency Removal Password from your SQEX account page and store it somewhere, such as across any accessible emails you keep for your own use.
What is an Emergency Removal Password?
Consider this in closing for this section: Is a few extra seconds to login worth lowering your risk of account loss to nearly zero, or is losing your account worth more than giving up a few seconds of time for login?
Conclusion
Well, here we are. Just 4 weeks from the first taste of Endwalker and then a few days after that to the next 2 years of our Eorzean lives! This is also the time of year where we’ll be on the lookout for Christmas movie marathons, freshly baked goods, frigid weather, and the end of a very long year.
It is very important during this month to have a general idea of one single factor: Gratitude
As we go into November and get closer to Thanksgiving, we are given to think of what we are thankful for. Be sure to look deep inside of yourself and fish for what you are grateful for in this year. Is it to be healthy, safe, and alive? Is it well wishing a friend or family member? Is it finally having a new XIV expansion? Whatever it is, acknowledge it, and use that to serve as your mark of gratitude for 2021. As much as I could wax poetic about gratitude, I’ll instead leave it to this nifty URL that presents 50 thankful quotes to remind us that gratitude must exist for the sake of being good:
https://parade.com/937289/parade/thankful-quotes
Until next time. See you space cowboys Warriors of Light.
