Hello, everyone.
Producer and Director Yoshida here.

To kick off the first PR event for North America in 2016, FFXIV joined the masses at PAX East in Boston! Since this year the event was taking place close in proximity to Niconico Choukaigi 2016, the project managers and the community team members were holding down the fort in Japan making preparations. It was only Koji Fox and myself this time around, so it's up to me to give an event report!

PAX is held in two different locations at two different times throughout the year. PAX East takes place around February-April, and PAX Prime takes place around August. We headed to east coast of the United States this time around for PAX East. By the way, the name of PAX Prime actually changed this year to PAX West because the "Prime" name suggested that PAX East was not as big. Perhaps there was an outcry by those on the east coast for the change (lol).

Last year PAX East was held at the beginning of March, and it was deathly cold outside; however, this year it was much warmer! (Just in case I brought along my down jacket, but it ended up staying in the suit case.)

With each year PAX East has been growing in size, and each booth definitely got bigger and became even flashier than last year's event. The Square Enix booth was positioned in the same area as last time, right smack at the entrance of the event hall. Luckily, this year we had better luck with all of our equipment and the setup--last year the truck carrying our booth materials flipped over and we had to have local Bostonites create new materials for us.

Any attendees that swung by the Square Enix booth were crowned with a fun hat designed after FFXIV's dragoons. As usual, we held our traditional battle challenge, and hordes of dragoons gathered to face off against Sephirot.

(Attendees donned various other types of head equipment as well making for a good laugh!)

One of the groups that fought the fiend featured a husband and wife that entered battle while carrying their children! Their daughter was way too cute and became an instant celebrity.

She was fascinated by the dragoon hat--so much so that she stole it from her father and wore it the entire time. I'm happy to report that they successfully beat Sephirot!

There was even a tear-jerker of an event that occurred during one battle challenge where a brave adventurer proclaimed that he would propose to his significant other if his team won the battle challenge. (The PAX East blog written by Bayohne has all the details on this!)

I even witnessed a group of all warriors take down Sephirot!

I hear that all the members of this group belonged to the same FC, and one of the ladies who mains warrior was shouting out orders for the timing of each action and ability. It was a spectacle to see the coordination as well as the group successfully clear the fight like this.

On the second day of PAX East we held the first live Q&A session to take place in North America. I'm extremely grateful that so many people gathered for the panel early in the morning.

The Q&A session was held in a spacious hall at the convention center, but it was filled to capacity!

(Right before the session began we snapped a picture of everyone when I prompted the attendees with a big "Cheese!")

A big thank you to everyone who attended! There were many attendees who mentioned that they would meet me next at Fan Festival, and I am greatly looking forward to seeing all the North American players again in Las Vegas.

P.S.
By the way, I participated in the battle challenge to fill an empty spot from time to time, and I um... sort of fell off the platform despite it being the normal mode of the fight. Clearly it's because I have done extreme so much that I couldn't remember the mechanics of normal!