Greetings, everyone!

After an eventful Niconico Chokaigi 2016, which included a hot scoops-filled Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXIX, the development team is back to their regularly scheduled program of getting content ready for Patch 3.3!

Today, in fact, they gathered a bunch of staff members to do a play test of the next phase of the Void Ark alliance raid series, The Weeping City of Mhach! Luckily, we took some screenshots of the action to share.

Come with me if you want to see a sneak peek of the content!

These play tests are often performed for content that is in-development in order to check the time required to complete the content as well as the battle difficulty--in other words, it's a large scale balance test.

The alliance was comprised of the battle content staff (of course!), programmers, designers, community reps, and staff from various other FFXIV-related teams.

One interesting thing is that regardless of their day jobs, when it comes time for these kind of tests, everyone becomes the Warrior of Light, and often times the feedback is quite varied between the members: "Isn't this mechanic too hard to understand?" "Aren't the enemies that spawn during this phase of the fight too tough?" It's amazing how content takes shape based on the feedback that is collected.

Anyways, enough of my musings--onward to The Weeping City of Mhach!

The Weeping City of Mhach is a part of the "The Shadow of Mhach" chronicles of a new era quest, and it is the next destination adventurers will head towards along with the Redbills.

I'm not going to give away any spoilers about how you reach this area, but I will show off some screenshots that were taken during the team's test session.

Mhach is a legendry magic city that was said to have flourished long ago; however, it has fallen into ruin and has been overrun with monsters.

Speaking of which, you probably want to be careful with these big mouths, or it won't be a while until we see you again crocodile.

Just as Yoshida mentioned during the Letter LIVE, as you progress through the raid, the environment will change quite a bit.

Escaping the jaws of our gator friend (and various other things that will remain secret for now), adventurers will find themselves at the center of Mhach characterized by its geometric design.
The team has prepared a wealth of landscapes for this content, so I hope you are all looking forward to exploring this new and mysterious land.

Oh--speaking of geometry, I'll just go ahead and leave this screenshot as a parting gift.

:O

-Camate