WoW Patch 10.0.5 To Drop The Same Day As FFXIV Patch 6.31

Last Friday I wondered if Blizzard and Square Enix would alternate months for releasing content. Yesterday we got the answer. Dragonflight patch 10.0.5 will release on 24 January. Not only will the patch drop in the same month as Final Fantasy XIV's patch 6.3, but the WoW patch drops the same day as FFXIV's patch 6.31. For those who don't play Final Fantasy XIV, patch 6.31 introduces the new Ultimate raid, The Omega Protocol.

On a somewhat bright note, one of patch 10.0.5's new features, The Trading Post, won't go live until 1 February, so that pushes some of the content back. But with the new Storm's Fury world event, I can imagine some players might be torn between games.

I stopped playing World of Warcraft a month or two after the opening of the Ahn'Qiraj gates back in 2006, so the dueling patches we apparently will see between the two games throughout 2023 doesn't really affect me. But during the great WoW refugee migration in 2021 I met a lot of refugees. Sometimes some would stay in Eorzea while their friends would return to Azeroth to check out the latest. I talked to a couple of sad players in that situation.

I was hoping that the release cycles would allow for players to bounce between games, constantly consuming freshly released content. And what individuals could do, groups of friends could do as well. Of course, that might not please the beancounters who depend on statistics like monthly and daily active users. But for players who don't stick with just one game? The situation probably would have worked out quite nicely.

The New Gathering Role

I decided to do a little gathering this morning because I ran low on two items. I make my gil in Final Fantasy XIV mostly by gathering and cooking. By doing some gathering before work, I hopefully have time to do some fun things in the evening. Apparently I didn't read the patch notes carefully enough, because upon gathering from my first bush, a tutorial pop-up appeared telling me about gathering roles.

The actions all gatherers can now use

Simply put, all gathering classes now share the basic gathering search abilities. Botanists can spot mining nodes, miners can find bushes and trees, and fishers can do both. Before the advent of the gathering role, players could do the same, but the system for doing so was clunky, and after putting the Truth abilities on my hotbars, I quite frankly ignored the system.

As a max level botanist, miner, and fisher, the two gathering role abilities I have on my gathering classes hotbars are Truth of Forest and Truth of Mountains. The abilities allow your character to detect unspoiled, legendary, and clouded nodes in the current zone. Those are special nodes usually worth more than the normal nodes and sometimes I stop what I'm doing to go gather from them. So my botanist always runs Truth of Mountains and my miner always runs Truth of Forests. When fishing, I should run both, but if I'm fishing, I'm either doing so to get particular fish, or to relax. I usually don't feel like rushing around.

Apparently, I'm not the only gatherer who didn't use the old system. The developers probably saw the usefulness of allowing gatherers the ability to see all the nodes, or just selected nodes, in an area. I can see wanting to run both Prospect (sees mining nodes) and Triangulate (sees botany nodes) when exploring a new area. I imagine the ability would also help when leveling gathering classes. 

Some might think a better way for searching for gathering nodes is to update the mini-map with new filters. But I'm wondering if the easier solution was to create the gathering role. Either way, searching for more than one gathering classes' nodes got a little easier in Patch 6.3.

Changes To The Gold Saucer In 6.3 And My New Mount

I admit I am somewhat addicted to the Manderville Gold Saucer in Fiinal Fantasy XIV. A mix between a casino and an old school game room, the Gold Saucer offers everything from a weekly lottery drawing to a timed basketball hoop shooting game. Home to FFXIV's triple triad tournaments, chocobo racing, and minion battles, I've heard the Gold Saucer described as World of Warcraft's Dark Moon Faire, but much bigger and better.. And did I mention the jumping puzzles? Not content to settle for the status quo, the place received some changes in Patch 6.3.

First, two new prizes were added to the redemption center.

The new items in Patch 6.3

I had slowed down my play in the Gold Saucer as I approached the cap of 9,999,999 Manderville Gold Saucer Points (MGP). The new Blackjack airship mount put a big dent in my wallet at 4 million MGP. When I finished up at the Gold Saucer, I went back to my island and took my new mount for a spin.

Floating over my island in Blackjack

The other item is a minion. The Mama Automaton floats around characters, doing up and down motions if motionless for too long.

Mama Automaton floating behind me

The developers also added a new jumping puzzle area to the Gold Saucer named Sylphstep. Each of the three areas have different layouts within the areas that changes each time opened up. For those interested, Yoshi-P tried to complete Sylphstep on stream during the Producer's Live Letter. While he's a world class Black Mage, he wasn't able to complete the course.

For those who have never visited the Gold Saucer, one cannot just enter a jumping puzzle and run it over and over again. Every 20 minutes, the proprietors of the facility offer Gold Saucer Active Time Events (GATEs). The GATEs randomly select one of three events in which players can participate. The new schedule for Patch 6.3 is:

Every hour, on the hour (Earth Time)

• Air Force One
• Cliffhanger
• Leap of Faith (The Falling City of Nym)

Hourly, 20 minutes past the hour (Earth Time)

• Any Way the Wind Blows
• The Slice Is Right
• Leap of Faith (The Fall of Belah'dia)

Hourly, 40 minutes past the hour (Earth Time)

• The Slice Is Right
• Air Force One
• Leap of Faith (Sylphstep)

I don't have screenshots because I wasn't lucky enough to draw Sylphstep, so hopefully the image from the patch notes will do.

Sylphstep from the patch notes

I didn't really need more than the new mount, but a new Leap of Faith map will definitely help keep the content from becoming stale. Now, to go off and try to finally see the new jumping puzzle.

My Very First Look At My Island Sanctuary In Patch 6.3

I woke up early to download Final Fantasy XIV's Patch 6.3 this morning. Since I didn't have time to do anything very serious, I decided to look at the changes on my island.

Of course, the first thing I did was see what new stuff I could buy. I had saved up 135,000 seafarer's cowries, one of the two Island Sanctuary currencies, for the occasion. The price list of the new items is below:

New in patch 6.3

The selection is pretty nice. A new minion, fashion accessory, triple triad card, and two accessory kits to enhance a character's adventurer plate. Plus four outdoor furnishings for homes, which might come in handy if I ever get the itch to move out of my apartment.

The new umbrella and one of the new poses

With the window shopping done, I next moved over to Felicitous Furball, who now had a quest icon over his head. I talked to the little mammet and received the receipe for an iron axe. Making the iron axe opened up 5 new types of material to gather. Of course, I had to find the spots myself. So off I went exploring.

Four of the five new materials are gathered from existing nodes. I put the existing material that corresponds to each tree so players can use the sanctuary gathering log to find the spots.

• Mahogany Tree - Wood Opal (Island Log)
• Apple Tree - Beehive Chip (Island Apple)
• Tualog Tree - Resin (Island Branch)
• Palm Tree - Coconut (Island Palm Leaf)

The new gathering node is the multicolor blossoms which yields Multicolored Isleblooms. The map where I found them is below.

If you want to hold a small beach party with 14 of your closest friends, the northern island marked is a good place.

I also tried out a couple of the new UI improvements. The collect all for harvesting my crops and leavenings from my pasture worked wonderfully. I also captured a new animal and was able to release an animal under the mammets' care with no issues. Just remember to go to the pasture and tell the mammets you want to care for the new animal if you are lazy like me.

Next came the improvements to the workshop UI. Figuring out what to make was a real pain point due to all the switching back and forth between screens. For 6.3, the devs put in some really useful filters.

Finding the best products for the week

But wait, there's more. The devs also updated the UI used to select items to manufacture items.

Don't really need the Supply/Demand page anymore

If a player desires to just build from a category, all that is needed is to open up the category and figure out the best items to make. All the information is on the page now. Personally, I would still use the Supply/Demand page to find the categories I want, but from there go to the Set Agenda page to further refine my choices.

For those who wanted more information, I can just say I only had a few hours before work to explore a bit and write this post. The leveling process from 10 to 12 will take me some time, because I don't plan to kill myself. Hitting level 11 requires 42,000 experience points and I only gained a little over 10,000 today. I do need to gather a lot of the new materials for my workshop this week, but no where near enough to reach a new level. Besides, island sanctuary is meant as side content. I have a heck of a lot of the main content to go through before patch 6.4 is released in May.

A Producer's Letter Brings A Roadmap, Expansions Back To EVE Online

An important lesson I hope CCP learned from the "Chaos Era" is that EVE players do not like being treated like mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed fertilizer). The new framework for the roadmap seems a concession for players' desire for knowledge. Starting at the beginning of 2020, players will receive the names and theme's for the upcoming three months, and the name of the theme for the following quarter.

- The Nosy Gamer, 29 October 2019

One important thing I've learned through the years is players like to know that not only that content is coming. Knowing the general what is coming is probably as important as when. Perhaps the gold standard in the MMORPG industry today is the Producer Live Letters streamed by FFXIV's Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida. He gave his 75th last month. Not only do players have a road map of when content will come out, but they also have a general idea when Yoshi-P will give an update.

Blizzard seems to have learned the same lesson. For the first time World of Warcraft has a road map letting players know what will come throughout 2023. WoW Executive Producer Holly Longdale wrote the following in December.

A WoW expansion is not a single moment in time but a journey —we know that the merit of an expansion hinges on the sustained quality of its entire arc. Years after its release, Legion is remembered fondly as much for the 11-week content update cadence that served as the framework for its first year as it is for artifact weapons or Khadgar's brilliant dad jokes.

In planning out the road ahead following the release of Dragonflight, we've been mindful of the duty we owe our players to nurture this living world and, frankly, the need to do better than we have at times in the recent past. Our goal for Dragonflight is that there should always be something right around the corner, with a new update hitting our test realms shortly after the last one is live and in your hands.

All of this leads us to Friday's Producer's Letter from CCP. Since Andie Nordgren left as EVE's Executive Producer in 2018, CCP as tried to abandon providing roadmaps to players. The first failure was 2019's Chaos Era which led to the Quadrant system which ran in 2020 and 2021. In February 2022, CCP announced the end of the Quadrant system:

This update comes without a Quadrant theme to kick off the year. That is because it has been decided that after 2 full years, it’s time to evolve from Quadrants into something new, taking the good and combining it with learnings from previous efforts (such as the Invasion) as well as former expansions.

It’s been a great journey, and we’ve learned a lot along the way. However, as we look ahead and into the future, there are some bigger topics we want to tackle that will take more time than Quadrants allowed, making this the perfect time to take those learnings and enter a new era.

The lack of a roadmap lasted one year. For 2023, CCP published a high-level roadmap.

Yes, the two expansions a year model that dominated EVE's first decade is back. However, the explanation sounds like a load of fertilizer. Or perhaps gaslighting. I'll let the reader decide.

Over the last couple of years, we have carried out important, foundational work that enabled us to build Uprising, our first expansion since 2018. We aim to continue releasing expansions of this caliber going forward, with additional updates, more shiny toys, and riveting world events like the stellar transmuter incident in-between to keep New Eden vibrant, active, and well-balanced.

The Uprising expansion seemed more a reaction to the player uprising against Pearl Abyss' desire to put NFTs and blockchain technology into EVE. The success of the player revolt against such content was confirmed on the Pearl Abyss Q3 2022 Investors' Call held in November. CCP is still the studio working on web3/blockchain technology, but will do so in the Icelandic studio's upcoming game in development.

The roadmap does need a little work. The graphic above shows the introduction of the Microsoft Excel plug-in for EVE occurring in the first quarter, but won't officially launch until the second quarter. But perhaps players can get excited about EVE in 2023 with the knowledge of two major content drops coming in the second and fourth quarters.

The Heavensward Dungeon Upgrades Are Complete

On Tuesday, Creative Business Unit III finishes updating all of the main scenario quest duties for Final Fantasy XIV's Heavensward expansion with the release of patch 6.3. Not only will the following 4-character dungeons be part of the Duty Support system, but other things, like floor tells, will also be brought up to modern standards. 

• The Great Gubal Library (level 59)
• The Aetherochemical Research Facility (level 60)
• The Antitower (level 60)
• Sohr Khai (level 60)
• Xelphatol (level 60)
• Baelsar's Wall (level 60)

With the last of the Heavensward MSQ dungeons complete, the developers only need to upgrade the 8 MSQ dungeons in the Stormblood expansion over the next two patches to complete the task. Also, patch 6.3 completes the modernization for the complete free trial for Final Fantasy XIV.

The upgrades do not eliminate the need to group with other players to progress through the MSQ. I counted 8 8-character trials in A Realm Reborn and 4 in Heavensward required to complete the main story of FFXIV.  And of course, players still need to complete the three level 50 alliance raids that comprise the Crystal Tower quests to enter Heavensward. 

The upgrades also do not eliminate the need to group to complete non-MSQ content. So no, Yoshi-P did not turn FFXIV into a completely solo game. Looking at the list of content, not even close. But for Final Fantasy fans who haven't tried FFXIV because of the forced grouping, the game is a little better now.

Will World Of Warcraft And Final Fantasy XIV Take Turns Releasing Patches?

One of the truisms I've believed is expansions and meaty patches help retain, if not grow, the player bases of MMORPGs. I watched CCP usually launch 2 expansions per year during EVE Online's climb to 500,000 subscriptions in the game's first 10 years of existence. Perhaps the end of major expansions with Kronos in June 2014 didn't cause EVE's player decline, but I maintain the reduction of the release of large injections of content played a noticeable role.

Another game with even worse issues releasing content on a timely basis was World of Warcraft. The existence of content droughts became acute during the Shadowlands expansion when Blizzard launched the game on 23 November 2020 and did not release patch 9.1 until 29 June 2021. A 220 day dearth of content did not go over so well with a lot of WoW players. I experienced the wave of "WoW refugees" migrating to Final Fantasy XIV during that time. Many reasons were cited, but do the WoW players even give FFXIV a glance if all was well in Azeroth?

FFXIV Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida believes in providing content on a predictable basis. Back in February 2022 the man fans fondly call Yoshi-P provided a roadmap for the release of the 5 main post-expansion patches following Endwalker. He also announced a slowing of the release cycle to every 4 weeks, with a .5 patch released approximately half-way through the cycle. Players can expect patch 6.3 released on Tuesday, with patch 6.4 to release in May and patch 6.5 in September. Patch 6.55 should release sometime in November.

New WoW Executive Producer Holly Longdale decided to introduce a roadmap herself and did so two weeks ago.

WoW's Roadmap for Dragonflight

I think her words brought some joy to players.

A WoW expansion is not a single moment in time but a journey —we know that the merit of an expansion hinges on the sustained quality of its entire arc. Years after its release, Legion is remembered fondly as much for the 11-week content update cadence that served as the framework for its first year as it is for artifact weapons or Khadgar's brilliant dad jokes.

In planning out the road ahead following the release of Dragonflight, we've been mindful of the duty we owe our players to nurture this living world and, frankly, the need to do better than we have at times in the recent past. Our goal for Dragonflight is that there should always be something right around the corner, with a new update hitting our test realms shortly after the last one is live and in your hands.

In total, we are planning to deliver six content patches, fairly evenly spaced, over the course of 2023. This will include two major updates, the traditional pillars of our expansions—with new zones, raids, and seasonal rewards—but in between those, we want to keep expanding and evolving our world with new world events, updates to systems, and evergreen holidays, new dungeon experiences, new narrative chapters and cinematics that can serve as epilogues or as prologues to the next major step in the adventure, and, most importantly of all, more opportunities for us to respond to feedback and change or add elements based on what we're hearing is most needed by our players.

During the WoW refugee crisis of 2021, I heard many talking heads on YouTube and Twitter speculate about a competition developing between WoW and FFXIV for which was the top game. Some foresaw a future where players could bounce between the two games. Run though the content of the latest patch? No problem, the other game just released something, so run over there for a month.

Is 2023 the year we see WoW's and FFXIV's schedules align? Here is the tentative schedule for the two games this year.

• January - FFXIV patch 6.3
• February - WoW patch 10.0.5
• March - FFXIV patch 6.35
• April - WoW patch 10.0.7
• May - FFXIV patch 6.4
• June - WoW patch 10.1
• July - FFXIV patch 6.45
• August - WoW patch 10.1.5
• September - FFXIV patch 6.5
• October - WoW patch 10.1.7
• November - FFXIV patch 6.55
• December - WoW patch 10.2

Schedules could change and patches could launch in the same month. But will we see the two companies take turns launching content throughout 2023? I really hope so.

Looking Back At Square Enix Stock Price In 2022

Unlike Pearl Abyss and Cloud Imperium Games, I don't have years of experience looking at any of Square Enix' financial information. But I figure I should close out my look at gaming companies with the maker of my current main MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV.

The Square Enix investor relation page has very nice functions, including allowing a user to compare the price of its stock against the Nikkei Index on the Tokoyo Stock Exchange. 

Square's stock price throughout 2022

Square Enix Holdings Co. Ltd. finished 2022 approximately where it began the year. The stock opened the year at ¥6100 and opened this year at ¥6130. Trading fell as low as ¥4965 in April and as high as ¥7150 in November. More importantly, the stock outperformed the broader Nikkei average. While Square's stock only increased by 0.5%, the Nikkei Index fell 9.7%.

But what about the U.S. dollar value? Turns out the Wall Street Journal calculates the price based on the dollar.

Square's stock price in USD, via Wall Street Journal

In U.S. dollars, Square's stock price fell 12.9%, from $52 to open the year down to $45.31. Still, a better than average performance than found on U.S. exchanges. For example, information technology stocks in the S&P 500 fell in price an average of 29%. The Nasdaq performed worse, down 33.1% last year.

The performance of Square's stock is a contrast to Pearl Abyss'. While the Japanese studio produced some games that didn't do well, that is a lot better than what our overlords in Anyang managed to do. Add in the good games Square also sold and the financial performance of the two companies, at least their stock prices, are explained.

Looking Back At Pearl Abyss' Stock Price In 2022

With two financial posts about Cloud Imperium and Star Citizen under my belt, I thought I should turn my attention to something related to EVE Online. The next Pearl Abyss earnings call isn't until February and Pearl Abyss Iceland likely won't submit its paperwork to the Iceland Revenue and Customs office until April at the earliest. That leaves looking at Pearl Abyss' stock price for 2022.

Pearl Abyss stock price, 3 Jan 22 to 3 Jan 23, from Wall Street Journal

I knew Pearl Abyss was not doing well financially going into the year. Operating revenue had dropped 17.4% down to ₩403.8 billion from 2020 to 2021. In the 4th quarter of 2021, the company used a non-gaming subsidiary, Pearl Abyss Capital, to buttress its earnings for the quarter and for the year. In March 2022, Chief Operating Officer Jin-young Heo also became Chief Executive Officer, replacing Kyung In Jung.

Overall in 2022, the price of Pearl Abyss stock on the Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ) fell by 68.6%, from ₩133,600 per share on the first day of trading on 3 January to the closing price on 30 December of ₩41,950. That equates to a market cap loss of ₩5.9 trillion, or $4.6 billion using today's conversion rate.

The largest single day price drop occurred on 27 April when the stock fell 24.3%, from ₩98,000 to ₩74,200. Some die hard EVE players might believe the price drop had something to do with CCP announcing a 33% price hike for one month of game time on 22 April. The reason was far more rational.

On 26 April, Pearl Abyss finally launched Black Desert Mobile in China. After a brief time in the top spot, BDM began a descent off the charts. Pearl Abyss' stock price followed, as the introduction of the game into the Chinese market was Pearl Abyss' big hope for increasing revenue during 2022.

Not a very happy story for Pearl Abyss shareholders last year. But releasing a new game should help the stock bounce back. Our overlords in Anyang will release Crimson Desert in 2023, right?

Cloud Imperium Games Records $113.6 Million In Sales For 2022

The Nosy Gamer is not becoming a Star Citizen blog. But with financial figures for both 2021 and last year coming out within three days of each other, I decided to dedicate two posts to Cloud Imperium. Yesterday I covered Cloud Imperium's 2021 financial report released on Monday. Today's article looks at the information we know about 2022.

The funding counter which records sales of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 finished the year at $539.8 million for the history of the project. For December, CIG finished with $8.1 million, making the 2022 total sales amount $113.6 million. Cloud Imperium's confirmed revenue since its founding in April 2012 is now $621.8 million, broken into the following categories:

• Sales/Pledges: $539.8 million (through 31 December 2022)
• Subscriptions: $27.8 million (through 31 December 2021)
• All other sources: $54.2 million (through 31 December 2021)

We also learned in 2022 Cloud Imperium added 113 employees. The financial report let us know the headcount at the end of 2021 was 748. In Friday's Letter From The Chairman, CIG's CEO Chris Roberts revealed the headcount at the end of 2022 was 861. Combine that with the 139 open positions currently posted on the Cloud Imperium website and CIG plans to expand the workforce another 15% up to 1000 employees in 2023.

Now for a bit of a prediction for what players will see when the 2022 financial report comes out in December. Between expanding the workforce by 15%, additional capital expenditures required due to moving into the Frankfurt and Manchester offices, as well as general inflation, I expect to see another increase in CIG spending of 25% (spending in 2021 increased by 24.2%). Such an increase would raise CIG's burn rate to $10.5 million per month, or $126 million for the year. While the $113.6 million in sales did not cover the amount, subscriptions and other sources of income increased overall revenue to $128 million. At least, if my assumptions hold true based on CIG's recent history. So expect the company to post another profit in approximately 51 weeks.