Final Fantasy XIV Orr What?

Over the past weekend, gamers across the world celebrated the revival of Final Fantasy XIV with praise on Twitter, live streams on differing internet video sites, and long gaming sessions, the volume of which caused sustained connections problems in certain areas of the world.  Long promised and much hyped, Final Fantasy XIV seems to finally be having the deep impact on the world that Square Enix banked on.  However, the impact this game is having may not be what Square Enix intended.

In an interview with the Playstation Blog, Final Fantasy XIV's Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida made several claims about the game as it goes forward.  One of the more significant claims was this one about upcoming updates to the game:

"We’re planning on doing a major update every three months once the game has been released, and continuously adding large-scale content. Ongoing support for the game will be included in the monthly subscription."

This comment has been met with skepticism given the prolonged delays in this game's development and release.  This comment also appears to have motivated a change to the way that a certain politician is approaching a city's revival.

On July 18, the largest municipal bankruptcy occurred when the city of Detriot filed for bankruptcy citing sustained population loss, significant entitlement liabilities, and the continued effects of the Great Recession.  This filing has caused more national attention to be paid to Detroit's Emergency Manager, Kevyn Orr.  Specifically people have looked into the effectiveness of other Emergency Managers in Michigan, how exactly Mr. Orr was chosen for this position, and the general displeasure the people of Michigan have toward Emergency Managers.  This displeasure among the people of Michigan lead to a referendum doing away with the position of Emergency Manager, a referendum that was ultimately overruled by the Michigan Legislature.

Rather than changing his approach to his official duties or the way he interacts with the citizens of Detroit, Kevyn Orr, pictured above, seemed to have dug himself in, insisting in public statement that the bankruptcy, rather than being due to anything he did, was caused by a feeling of entitlement in the city of Detroit.  In a interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Orr said "Detroit has been the center of more change in the 20th century than I dare say virtually any other city, but that wealth allowed us to have a covenant [that held] if you had an eighth grade education, you'll get 30 years of a good job and a pension and great health care, but you don't have to worry about what's going to come."  This, and other statements, has caused the former bankruptcy attorney to be slapped with the name "Motown's benevolent dictator".  However, Kevin Orr's approach to the public seems to have changed within the last twenty-four hours.

The Detroit Emergency Manager's Office released a statement that is significantly cheerier and optimistic that statements seen in the past.  Buried in this statement is the following line:

"We’re planning on doing a major update to the city every three months, and continuously adding large-scale content. Ongoing support for the city will be included in the all new monthly newspaper to be put out by this office, to be called The Patch."

Based on this line's close resemblance to one of the lines from the Playstation Blog's interview with Naoki Yoshida, either someone in the Detroit Emergency Manager's Office is pulling a prank, or Kevyn Orr has finally seen the good in working with the public that he will need in order to turn Detroit around.  Given the response to this statement on Twitter, the public seems to believe it to be a joke.  We will continue to follow this story as it updates.