As you may have seen in my review of Final Fantasy XI"s recent download-only "add-on A Crystalline Prophecy I didn"t give the time-wasting, $10 fetch-quest ($10 on top of the normal monthly fees, that is) particularly high marks for what should have been included free with the MMO"s recent April update. With that in mind I approached the development team -- Masato Kato (Scenario writer), Koichi Ogawa (FFXI Director), Toshio Murouchi (Global Community Producer) -- with a batch of questions regarding ACP, the newly-released security token, and the future of PlayOnline. To their credit -- particularly Koichi Ogawa -- they roll with the punches and do their best to answer my blunt line of questioning.

1UP: Mr. Kato, you seem to have the luckiest job of all: Explore the stories that you originally wanted to tell, but couldn"t for various reasons. How satisfying is it to be able to get these stories out there?