EDIT: Success!!! No more borkage! We’re now on hostgator.
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After much voting, and a few delays, the results of our first poll have been tallied and gathered. And some of what users nominated and voted for the most memorable moments of the Compilation are quite surprising.

The moments that made it into the top ten will proceed to the next tier of voting to see which moment is the most memorable of all. Below you’ll find the results of which moments made the cuts, the moments that didn’t, and the personal commentary of members who picked out these events for their memorability. So enjoy, and see what ends up making the cut next time, when only the top four are selected.

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Zack’s final moments on the outskirts of Midgar.

Aerith’s rescue from the Shinra Building.

The final confrontation between Cloud and Sephiroth high above Midgar.

Vincent and Lucrecia’s moment after the climactic ending of Dirge of Cerberus.

Out of all the moments of the Compilation of FFVII… Which moment stood out to you the most?

That’s what TheLifestream.net wants to know, and with that, we’re holding our first contest on which moments of the Compilation of FFVII are the most memorable.

The forum community has nominated twenty-one of the most memorable moments of the series, and we want to know which is the most popular and memorable of all. The first round of voting will be for the top 10. After that, the next voting bracket will be for the top 4. And from there, we will look for which single moment from the Compilation of FFVII has stood out most in the hearts of fans.

So if there’s a moment you want to win, be sure to vote for it here! If you haven’t registered for the forums, be sure to do so, so that you can have your vote counted. We will publish the results of each vote bracket on the front page, so be sure to check back, and above all else, vote and have fun!

Allakhazam has posted earlier a huge compilation of what Hiromichi Tanaka and Nobuaki Kumoto said to Famitsu, 4Gamer and GameWatch. They gave us a lot of details about Final Fantasy XIV mechanics and development.

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As a complete surprise, FF14 was just announced at Sony’s E3 presentation, complete with a short trailer.

It is currently set for release exclusively on PS3 in 2010.

And here is the trailer for it right here.

Be sure to check back for more updates!

Last week some of the Square-Enix staff, namely planning director Takashi Arakawa and Yoshinori Kitase (director, writer and producer) were present at a gaming event in Munich, Germany. Below is a translation (thanks to Tetsujin) regarding their writing of the scenario and possibly ideas for a sequel.
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We just received news that as of today, Final Fantasy VII International is available on the Japanese PlayStation Store.

The “International Version” included all the additions that were made to the US and European editions of FFVII such as the optional WEAPON battles as well as a few added cutscenes. However, it is in Japanese only.

The game is sold for 1.500 Yen.

Thanks to TLS member Shademp for bringing this to our attention.

Source: Gamefaqs, PlayStation Store

We’re currently transferring the forums to vBulletin, this post will try to keep you updated on the status. Times will be in my local time since I cba to convert it, but it should get the point across.

16:20 – Closed the forums, started copying it to a subfolder for archive purposes.

16:36 – Whilst the files are downloading, I’m re-installing vB on my local system to transfer the tables.

16:38 – Also downloading the forums database now, fgj.

16:44 – Database download complete (all 70 MB of it), installing it on my local system now using the sexcellent script Bigdump.

16:48 – Database installed locally, 275379 queries executed. Finished vB install (on my local PC), going to import the posts and stuff now.

16:50 – Minor hitch, apparently phpMyAdmin or Bluehost didn’t properly download all tables and stopped short at 80%. Downloading the last remaining tables now, I had the same thing yesterday, so it’s all good.
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We’ve reached a milestone today with the publishing of our 100th article, published by our very own Makoeyes987, who’s been a dedicated staff member since TLS opened. During the lifetime of TLS since late September ’08, we’ve been covering pretty much all the news concerning the Compilation, including translations of the 10th Anniversary Ultimania, extensive coverage of Final Fantasy Dissidia, and updates on Advent Children Complete, the ‘Director’s Cut’ of what started the post-FFVII Compilation.

Next to the frontpage, the most active component of our site must’ve been the forums, which have opened last December but which has already amassed nearly 20,000 posts, a good 500 topics and nearly 200 members, figures that are sure to increase with TLS’s rising visitor figures.

In the near future, we’ll be bringing you more details, and coverage on Advent Children Complete, as well as finish the translations for the Dissidia Ultimania.

As for me personally, I’d like to express my gratitude to our excellent and dedicate site staffers, that have made the site what it is now, our translators, that have spent an awesome amount of time on the scribblings the Japanese call a language, and our forum staff, that have managed to keep the masses in check without having the masses revolt and make the forums a nasty place to be at.

I’m confident that we’ll pass the 200 post mark before the year is over, as well as further increase the quality and user-experience of The Lifestream. If there is anything you’d like to see happen, or if you’d like to comment on TLS, feel free to post on the forums or to contact us. We’re also always looking for people who are willing to help out, by writing articles, translating stuff, or simply provide feedback on our content – that means you’re free to offer your help, if you feel you’d be able to make a valueable addition to TLS.

A new  scan from VJump Magazine featuring Advent Children Complete has confirmed that the mysterious OVA included with the movie will be “On the Way to a Smile: Case of Denzel”.

Source: FF7AC reunion

Thanks to TLS member KuraudoStrife for pointing this out.

With The Lifestream moving to a new host (and said hosting being twice as expensive as the previous hosting, which was paid for a year but only used for a few months), the issue of finances has come up. With TLS up until now being financed completely by one person (and the hosting being relatively cheap), this issue wasn’t really a problem, but with the site’s growth, the move to the new host, and a possible move to vBulletin as the forum‘s software (which is paid software compared to our current software), it wouldn’t be possible or financially healthy if said single person would keep paying for it.

Out of the various alternatives, including adding advertisements to the site and whatnot, we’ve decided upon offering the option to donate to TLS for now. Through PayPal, it’s now possible to donate a certain amount to The Lifestream, starting at $10. On the donate page, you can select an amount you’d like to donate to The Lifestream through PayPal, the online money transfer system, as well as read about the conditions and, probably more important, the benefits to donating to The Lifestream.

Donating to The Lifestream will help keep it ad-free and keep it online, so donate today, for great justice!

Update 4: Move (almost) complete!: Last night, the domain name propagated (or something) to the new host, meaning that you’re now visiting TLS through Bluehost! We’re currently working on getting the forums back up again, be patient plx kthx. We’ll be doing some regular maintenance once the forums are back online (= update the frontpage software), but that probably won’t cause any problems.

Once again, we thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.

Final update: We’ve restored the forums to working order – no or very little posts will have been lost. We had to re-install the forum software to get it to work again, but that didn’t cause any problems. We’ve also re-installed some of the addons (such as the pretty URLs and the video embedding) on there, but that went well as well. Enjoy, ^_^.

Final update 2: We’ve updated the frontpage software to WordPress 2.7, which mainly adds features to the administration panel, but also offers functionality such as threaded replies out of the box (where they were earlier added through a plugin).

Update 3 (Monday evening): We’ve decided to open up the forums again temporarily, at least until the domain has been moved to the new server. If I’m right, if you see the closed message again, it’ll mean the domain transfer is completed. Once that happens, I’ll get the database from the old host and upload it to the new one again, so no posts or anything will be lost. So, for now, feel free to post at the forums again, for great justice.

Update 2 (Monday): The old host indicate it’s out of their hands now, and right now we’re going to have to wait on the old domain registrar (i.e. the organization that manages the domain) to transfer the domain to the new registrar (Bluehost). This is a process that could take up to seven days according to some, so :/ at that. Sorry about the delays, I’ve only had one other experience with moving a site to a different host, and that was relatively easy because the registrar didn’t have to change (I think).

I’m hoping the seven days is the most pessimistic estimate evar, but who knows? In the meantime, FFOF is where you want to be, fgj.

Update: The files and database have been moved, but we’re having a bit of difficulty getting the domain to transfer properly. Apparently, there’s still something that needs to be done by the old host, but seeing that it’s past regular working hours and I doubt they’re working on Sundays, I don’t think the move will be able to complete this weekend.

In the meantime, feel free to visit and/or post at FFOF, for great justice. There’s also a thread on the matter there.

With TLS’s increasing popularity over the last few months, we’ve kinda out-grown our current host – not due to excessive visitors or anything, but both too much bandwidth usage and the host’s fair use policy being too low (imho). Because of that, we’ve decided to move from Dutch hoster Mijndomein to the popular Bluehost, which claims to offer unlimited bandwidth at a reasonable price.

We’ve already arranged the hosting and have unlocked the domain, so we’re all set for moving the site and the forums now. We’ll initiate the move this afternoon, so expect some downtime (up to 24 hours due to the domain name alterations having to propagate through the internets, although that shouldn’t take more than an hour for most people) later today. We will attempt to reduce downtime to a minimum, for your convenience.

During the move, the forums will be closed for posting for a bit to prevent posts you’ve made during the move from being lost. Also, we will attempt to upgrade the frontpage’s software to WordPress 2.7, which brings some features that are mainly important to site staff, but can also be useful to people with an account on the frontpage – the dashboard has some large changes compared to the current version.

No big problems are expected during the move, and we’ve got very recent backups of Everything, so nothing should be lost.

Also, we will open up a donation option to members, so that we can afford future webhosting and possibly an upgrade of the forum software to vBulletin (which is both a much requested feature and contains much requested features compared to our current forum software SMF). But more on that in a future news announcement.

We will initiate the move in a few hours, so finish up your business on the forums and prepare to lose your favorite site for a small amount of time, =D.