A Realm Reborn: Final Fantasy XIV Online

[Conan The Politician]

Beta is back up tonight.

For those that don't want to use SE's terrible(imo) Torrent updater, go to http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/12719-open-beta-megauploadutorrent-links-install-instructions/ for megaupload/standard torrent options for the client and all patches/updates as well as instructions for setting it all up.

Seems characteristic, an mmo series supposedly known for slow progression in-game would have a slow progression of installation for its sequel. Regardless, I still would love to give this game a shot. I'm dl'ing via the regular client right now, so I may give this method a try.

Edited September 1, 2010 by Conan The Politician

[Deathtank]

could anyone already try the beta???

[Conan The Politician]

Truly, I've never seen an open beta with so many strings and constraints associated with it. The registration code page is closed to new applications at the moment, and after 10 hours my client download by conventional means is only up by 1 percent.... gave it a try when I could actively download the megaupload and hotfile parts. Fortunately, I'm awake to give this a shot all over again.

Edited September 2, 2010 by Conan The Politician

[prophetik music]

it's square, what do you expect? =)

[EdgeCrusher]

I stayed up for 2 and a half hours last night, and finally got a working beta key, and registered it. Was able to create a character this morning at 6 AM, and logged in long enough to run around a bit before the server shitted itself and died.

[Doulifée]

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH! Pre-ordered that collector's edition. I can't WAIT.

same here hop to play with the ocr crew. and fffixto of course

[ZealPath]

They also killed existing beta testers access with this open beta needing a code process so it's all out war to get a key, which to me, says that "open beta" might ironically be one of the hardest phases to get into, unless they re-open registrations soon.

[TehDonut]

Playing with friends on Lindblum if anyone gets in/decides to play

[EdgeCrusher]

Playing with friends on Lindblum if anyone gets in/decides to play

I'm on figaro with the SA goons.

[Thin Crust]

So how is it? I won't be able to play for at least a year, but I'm beyond interested.

[Calum]

I'm finding it difficult to play. Reducing the buffer size and texture filter/quality reduce to lag so that it's just about bearable but the graphics then look really quite horrible and ruin the game experience as I can barely make out the NPCs or their names.

I'm using NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS graphics card and have 25.1GB free on my laptop. Does anyone know of any ways in which to decrease lag?

I also chose to be a fisherman as my main, so I may not have had the best start in FFXIV life.

[EdgeCrusher]

I'm finding it difficult to play. Reducing the buffer size and texture filter/quality reduce to lag so that it's just about bearable but the graphics then look really quite horrible and ruin the game experience as I can barely make out the NPCs or their names.

I'm using NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS graphics card and have 25.1GB free on my laptop. Does anyone know of any ways in which to decrease lag?

I also chose to be a fisherman as my main, so I may not have had the best start in FFXIV life.

Basically not playing on a laptop with a lower end Geforce card is your only option.

[Deathtank]

Taken from Gamefaqs forums:

"Usually in these games it's either all "ughh I love this game" or "raaawr I'm a huge troll here to ruin everyones day by whining about the game"

But no, here in the ff14 boards, everyone is just....confused. Everyone here is just raising their eyebrow at the game and going "....huh. what is this I don't even..." *scratches head*

Hahaha."

Does that say anything to you?

Ive played it a little, confusing? yes, but time will tell if it's good or bad.

Edited September 4, 2010 by Deathtank

[Calum]

Basically not playing on a laptop with a lower end Geforce card is your only option.

alright, well no FFXIV for me!

[NeoForte]

So far there's been a lot of hiccups and questionable decisions on this game but I'm having a blast in the beta! The CS are amazing (though slightly glitchy), the music is awesome, the battle system is fast (compared to XI) and pretty nice. I haven't run into the surplus system yet. Then again I switch jobs constantly. Have I mentioned how awesome the music is?

[The Legendary Zoltan]

Taken from Gamefaqs forums:

"Usually in these games it's either all "ughh I love this game" or "raaawr I'm a huge troll here to ruin everyones day by whining about the game"

But no, here in the ff14 boards, everyone is just....confused. Everyone here is just raising their eyebrow at the game and going "....huh. what is this I don't even..." *scratches head*

Hahaha."

Does that say anything to you?

Ive played it a little, confusing? yes, but time will tell if it's good or bad.

I'll be the first to jump to conclusions and say that it's their own fault cause they probably didn't read the instruction manual. I can't imagine it didn't come with one detailing exactly how the gameplay works.

So I guess the version that's out now is only on PC? I'm waiting for the PS3 version. I hope that version will be able to look as nice as all the beautiful videos out there.

[Deathtank]

chipp, what manual? this is a beta, there isnt any manual, lol.

[Sixto]

There are instructions on the Beta forum, though.

[prophetik music]

I'm finding it difficult to play. Reducing the buffer size and texture filter/quality reduce to lag so that it's just about bearable but the graphics then look really quite horrible and ruin the game experience as I can barely make out the NPCs or their names.

I'm using NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS graphics card and have 25.1GB free on my laptop. Does anyone know of any ways in which to decrease lag?

I also chose to be a fisherman as my main, so I may not have had the best start in FFXIV life.

the 8400GSM is even worse than the standard 8400GS, and that's kind of the bare minimum unless you've got a monster processor and a decent amount of ram...which you likely don't have.

buy a computer from me, and then you'll be fine.

[Binjovi]

I started playing this a bit today. Pretty entertaining so far. I'm really liking a lot of the improvements over FFXI that have been made. As far as it being confusing, I haven't really had much of a problem figuring out what's going on. The little intro bits and my first few minutes playing were really the only confusing parts. Once you figure out what's what in the UI, the game's pretty easy to navigate. I don't know how it is for the other nations, but at the Aetheryte Crystal in Gridania, there's an in-game manual that you can read to get you up to speed on the mechanics of the game.

[Skummel Maske]

I'm on figaro with the SA goons.

Me too. Which town, shell and name?

[The Legendary Zoltan]

chipp, what manual? this is a beta, there isnt any manual, lol.

...Oh. ....Right.

...I knew that.

This is going to be my first Massively Multi-player Online game EVER! I can't wait.

[Sag Ee Mana]

Well first post here for a while...

So I played the beta on Figaro, I'm trying now to stop playing it... Collector's coming.

Doulifée, let's forget our little WoW guild for a while, I'll follow you this time

Kefka server people ? Nevermind, I'll lurk.

[Arcana]

Word on the street is that this beta is not doing so well and that the game definitely isn't ready for a release in about two weeks.

I've been hearing issues like mouse lag, bad menu setup, uninspired quests, translation issues, annoying leveling restrictions, bad economy setup, uninspired/uninteresting combat system, strange job selection, and so forth. One blog poster said that this game would have been amazing in about six months and that this feels like a pre-beta build, and not a game that's supposed to come out in a few weeks.

The universal good things I've heard are, good graphics, neat character customization, and it's solo-friendly.

Can anyone expand?

Edited September 14, 2010 by Arcana

[ZealPath]

The original release date was going to be in March 2011, which is now the release for just the PS3 version. This explains a lot, and I really think SE is going to pay for this. They are launching early presumably because they think it will make them more money, but I think the irony is that it will lose them more money than they'll gain because the game as it is now isn't going to supplant anyone who is currently dedicated to their MMO of choice, with the possible exception of FFXI, but in that case, we're just talking about breaking even, not gaining (unless said person keeps XI active, then ok, fine).

The reasons you listed are almost all valid, the glaring thing that is going to ruin the launch in my opinion is the UI, and the mouse. There is no hardware mouse, wasn't in alpha, wasn't in closed beta, and now it's not here in open beta. What you have is a laggy software mouse which I find tortuous to use, forcing you to fall back to using the keyboard 100% just like in FFXI. The UI may feel more natural with a controller, but this is an MMO, you're going to need to type to people, and switching from controller to keyboard to type does not appeal to me, or many others I would imagine. The UI itself also suffers from lag, sometimes you even have to press enter twice to advance npc dialog or open the menu you're trying to get to... it's just bad. Standard MMO UI conventions are no where to be found here, no clicking and dragging to set abilities or move items around, instead you'll have to open a menu and slowly navigate about 5 different menu prompts before you can swap your blizzard for fire (random example). You CAN actually move UI windows around with the mouse, but it will be slow and painful.

I have played other MMOs, like, say, the original EverQuest that had a much better UI, let alone something like EQ2 or WoW which, no matter how you might feel about the game, I don't think there can be any debate about how natural their UIs feel to operate (with a keyboard and mouse, cause, you know, they're PC games and all....). Give an EQ2 or WoW player an hour with this UI and if they don't want to throw it out the nearest window I would be very surprised. It's designed to be cross compatible with consoles of course, like FFXI, which results in it being frustrating to use for the most part on PC. Many games have gone the way of setting up different UIs for the PC versions versus the console versions, but sadly, that will not be happening here.

If it sounds like I hate this game, well, actually I don't really, as I do still plan to at least start on launch, but the thing is, I was an FFXI player. I can go back to the keyboard only UI, I won't be happy about it, but at least there's the familiarity aspect. I just don't think this game is going to be able to convert too many of the masses (WoW players), and most of it's playerbase will consist of ex-FFXI players, continuing the niche of the Final Fantasy MMO until FF19 or something which maybe, will finally have an ok UI (yeah, I really really think the UI is important, I'm done now).

So what's good? It's completely beautiful graphically, which can't be underrated, I would say that's a huge part of what's keeping me around so far (though I'm basically done with beta, bring on the release...). It does have farily good support for soloing, with grouping obviously having more incentives as it should be, but good for those times when you know you don't have much time. Personally I find the move away from traditional jobs interesting (though most of them are essentially very similar to standard FF jobs), so I'm going to include that as a plus, but time will tell.

In the end all I'm really saying is that I think FFXIV will do ok, I don't think it will straight up "fail" like some recent MMOs have, but it will not have the power to pull "the masses" away from WoW, especially with that expansion on the way (which incidentally, may have also contributed to why they decided to launch so much earlier than their original planned date). This is FFXI-2, take it or leave it.