The Making of a Realm #7
Square Enix published another “Making Of” video on their FFXIV Youtube channel. This video focuses on the art direction for the game. This is probably the least interesting of the “Making Of” videos they’ve put out so far.

Latest Server Status
While we’ve talked about our server status page before, we wanted to point you do a useful page Square Enix maintains that lists all current planned service outages and other useful information. From what we’ve seen, they do a good job of keeping this page up-to-date, so it’s worth bookmarking to know when the servers go up or down. Once the game releases, we’re guessing this information will be listed on the front of the FFXIV website.

With release of Final Fantasy XIV being two weeks away, a couple of fan-sites have published FFXIV databases for everyone to use. The two that we’re aware of are:

• YellowGremlin (example search)
• FFXIV @ ZAM (example search)

Both sites provide tooltip support for objects listed in their databases. This will allow you to add tooltips to your site to link to objects from the databases. Both sites also have multi-language support. We’d recommend you give both sites a try and let us know which one you enjoy more.

Release is Two Weeks Away
The collectors edition of Final Fantasy XIV is set to launch in 14 days (launching on a Wednesday). If you want to pickup the game as soon as possible, make sure you get in touch with your local game store to see if they will be doing a midnight launch of FFXIV.

Patch Notes (2010.09.07.2001)
Notes for the patch deployed today have been posted and there are a few nice changes in it. The big one is that NPCs will repair your equipment up to 75% durability now (was previously 50%).

• An issue which prevented players from completing the levequest “Yarz on me” has been addressed.
• An issue that may prevent animations from displaying properly upon increases in class rank / physical level has been addressed.
• An issue which prevented players from changing their equipment after being attacked while synthesizing or gathering has been addressed.
• An issue which caused the text in the chat logs to move up and down has been addressed.
• The cost of certain items sold by NPCs have been adjusted.
• The stats for the bone ring have been adjusted.
• Adjusted the value in which a player would receive the status “second-hand” due to equipment deterioration.
• The amount of durability restored by the NPCs have been increased.
• The display range for the following type of messages have been adjusted.
• Obtaining experience points and skill points: Only visible to yourself.
• Obtaining loot: Only visible to you and your party members.

A different view of FFXIV
One of our forum members pointed us to a blog post on Game by Night discussing how Final Fantasy XIV should be seen as another Final Fantasy console game that you play with your friends rather than another MMO.

Update 2: Beta Registration Keys (11:45pm CDT)
SE just posted a notice saying that they have fixed an issue that was preventing people from requesting an open beta key. If you don’t already have an open beta key, go pick one up.

During the following period, we were experiencing technical difficulties where users may be unable to acquire registration code for FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test.
However, we are happy to announce that the issue has been addressed and users can acquire registration code properly.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

[Date & Time]
Sep. 6, 2010 from 9:30 to 19:10 (PDT)

[Details]
Unable to acquire registration code for FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test

[Cause]
Server Setting Issue

[Affected Services]
FINAL FANTASY XIV

Community Fixes the Mouse
One of the large complaints about Final Fantasy XIV from “western” gamers is that the mouse is drawn in software. This means the game detects where the mouse is and draws the mouse as it renders the entire scene. When a game uses a software mouse, the worse a players frame rate is (slow computer) the more noticeable that the mouse is drawn in software because its rendered position and where it really is differ. If a game uses a hardware accelerated mouse, the rendering of the mouse happens outside of the games frame-buffer, meaning its position and rendering happens separately from drawing the environment. A hardware mouse is just overlaid onto the current view. This allows for more accurate rendering of its current position.

Square Enix hasn’t spent the time to implement hardware mouse support, so a member of the FFXIV community has gone ahead and created a patch to add hardware mouse support. Keep in mind that this modifies the games executable, so it will break on each new patch. Full directions are over on the FFXIAH forums on how to install and deal with new patches. As a general warning, this program is a third-party application and not from Square Enix, so be safe.

New Patch (2010.09.06.2000)
Square Enix deployed a new patch this morning while the servers were down. Here are the patch notes from that patch:

• An issue where the game will forcefully shutdown in case multiple effects are being displayed by a mass number of characters has been addressed.
• An issue where the ripple effect is displayed improperly in case the character walks near the water has been addressed.

New Server Added
Late this morning another server was added to the available pool of FFXIV servers. This brings the total server count up to 17.

• Fabul – a castle from FF4.

PAX Interview
A member of the Eorzeapedia community was able to attend the Penny Arcade eXpo this year and scored an interview with 2 members of the FFXIV development team. Here’s some of the basics from the interview:

• Seasonal events should be making a return in FFXIV, but none are currently implemented.
• A subset of the players site will be publicly viewable when the game launches. Other sections will require players to be logged in to view.
• SE is taking an active role against spammers and hackers, such as having the security token included in the collectors edition and being available at launch.
• The ability to transfer your character to another server will most likely be added in the future. Probably not for at least 1 to 2 years.
• SE will most likely have GMs available for player run events. For now you can email SE to schedule an event in FFXIV.
• No further details on companies.
• PvP may be added in the future, but it won’t be open PvP. It will be part of some larger system or mini-game.

Reading over the full interview really gives you a feel for how SE wants to make Final Fantasy XIV a game about the community. It will be interesting to see how they deliver on this over the next few months.

Update 1: FFXIVCore’s PAX Interview
FFXIVCore just posted an interview with the FFXIV dev team from PAX. Some of the same questions were asked (we think it’s because of the focus of the people that were interviewed), but here’s some of the details:

• The player’s site won’t like a persons gear like the World of Warcraft armory does. It is more about community building.
• You can install the FFXIV client in any of the supported languages, regardless of your region.
• SE understands that western players use a keyboard and mouse and they are trying to improve that interface.

Update 1: Patch Notes
Here are the patch notes from the update deployed earlier today (2010.09.05.2000):

• An issue wherein a player may get pushed outside of the map from an enemy’s attack has been addressed.
• An issue wherein the server would go down under a certain condition has been addressed.
• An issue wherein a player, using a gamepad, would not be able to select an option during the character creation has been addressed.
• Adjustments were made to the amount of enmity caused by certain spells and actions.

Collectors Edition Images
One of our forum members shared a couple of images from what’s inside the collectors edition box for FFXIV. While this isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, it’s still nice to see. The below image was taken as PAX (Penny Arcade Expo).

New Server
A new server has been added and is available for players to choose from, bringing the total server count to 16:

• Saronia – a castle from FF3.

We are also seeing 7 additional servers that are setup as game/world servers, so they are already setup to expand FFXIV to 23 total servers. You can track the status of all the live servers from our server status page.

Small Patches
A lot of small patches keep being deployed to for us to download, and the FFXIV downloader keeps getting stuck at that last percent. If you want to speed things up, follow this guide on downloading patches with a third-party torrent client.

Model Viewers
While SE seems to be against sites data mining the Final Fantasy XIV client for information, they may not care as much when it comes to people viewing models in the dat files. FFXIVCore amazingly posted some screenshots of characters from the game using the model viewer. We’ve gone ahead and posted some screenshots from model viewers that have been popping up around forums over the past month. All of these images came from various forums.

At this point, there isn’t a model viewer available for download.

City Screenshots
A few brave adventurers have made their way out to Ishgard and shared some screenshots with us. Ishgard is guessed to be much like Jeuno was in FFXI, a central city where players gather when they are higher level. It is currently not accessible in beta.

Ishgard:

Ul’dah:

5 New World Servers
As the initial 10 servers fill up, Square Enix has added 5 more servers to the Final Fantasy XIV open beta.

• Bodhum – home town of Lightning from FF13.
• Melmond – a town from the original FF.
• Palamecia – a castle/empire from FF2.
• Rabanastre – Vaan’s hometown from FF12.
• Selbina – a town from FF11.

RPG Community Server
The folks at FFXIV-Roleplayers have decided to choose Besaid as their server of choice for when the game launches. If you are a big fan of role playing in an MMO, it may be good to hook up with this community and play with them.

First Impressions
The open beta has been online for only a couple days, but that won’t stop people from providing their input/feedback about it. The number one complaint that we’ve been seeing is the clunky controls / menus. The visuals and music seem to be pleasing to most people. Here’s some random blogs of people talking about their first impressions (just from doing a google blog search):

• keenandgraev
• hokage.org
• sam.animeblogger.net
• animeroot.com

The user interface lag that people have been experiencing is partially due to server lag. But at the same time, the load time for the menus has been slow since the alpha started 6 months ago. This is something Square Enix said they planned to fix, but it hasn’t improved much since the start of the alpha.

Having Problems Patching?
Sick of being stuck at 99% complete using the FFXIV downloader/patcher? You can use a third-party Torrent client to get the patches faster. The guide linked here will step you through speeding up the download. We’ve used it to grab the latest patches and its worked great.

Open Beta Registration
From the Entry page for Final Fantasy XIV you can obtain a beta key, regardless if you were in the previous beta or not. To short-cut it, you can visit the registration site directly. Once you receive an email from Square Enix with your key, you need to log into your account management and register the key. The servers are being slammed pretty hard right now, so best of luck getting in.

FFXIV Server Names
All the server names are towns from various Final Fantasy games.

• Besaid – initial town in FFX
• Cornelia – initial town in the original FF
• Figaro – Edgar’s castle from FF6
• Gysahl – a town from FF3
• Istory – a town from FF5
• Kashuan – an enemy castle from FF2
• Lindblum – castle from FF9
• Mysidia – A town in FF4
• Trabia – a region in FF8
• Wutai – a small village in FF7

Image Gallery
We’ve posted an image gallery with screenshots from the open beta as we take them or collect them.

Keyboard Configuration
Square Enix has added keyboard configuration to the open beta.

Starting Stats for the Races

                     STR VIT DEX INT MND PIE
 = Hyur =
Midlander             16  15  14  16  13  16
Highlander            18  17  15  13  15  12

 = Elezen =
Wildwood              14  13  18  17  12  16
Dustwight             15  14  15  18  15  13

 = Lalafell =
Plainsfolk            13  13  17  16  15  16
Dunesfolk             12  12  15  16  17  18

 = Miqo’te =
Seekers of the Sun    16  15  17  13  14  15
Keepers of the Moon   13  12  16  14  18  17

 = Roegadyn =
Sea Wolf              17  18  13  12  16  14
Hellsguard            15  16  12  15  17  15

Square Enix has posted on the Final Fantasy XIV beta registration site that the beta should start tonight at 7:00pm PDT. It is still unclear if those that were in the close beta and alpha will automatically get into the open beta. Either way, everyone should check out the beta registration site tonight at 7:00pm PDT to grab your beta code.

FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test Will Start on Sep. 1!

We would like to take this opportunity to provide an update regarding FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test, which was announced to be postponed on Aug. 31, 2010.

Along with the completion on investigation and correction of the critical issue, we have decided to begin FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test on Sep. 1, 2010 at 7:00pm (PDT).

Starting on Sep. 1, 2010 at 7:00pm (PDT), acquisition of registration code required for FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test will be available.

We are looking forward to your participation in FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test!

Start Times for FFXIV Open Beta:

• PDT: September 1 at 7:00pm.
• MDT: September 1 at 8:00pm.
• CDT: September 1 at 9:00pm.
• EDT: September 1 at 10:00pm.
• GMT: September 2 at 02:00.

UPDATE 1: Two small patches were deployed today for the FFXIV open beta client. They total in size at 10MB. When you get a chance, make sure to start up your FFXIV client and install the 2 updates. As always, you can see the current game version along with when the patch was deployed on our status page.

UPDATE 2: Please be aware that you are unable to obtain an open beta registration key until 7:00pm PDT tonight at the beta registration site. You will then need to take that key and register it under your account management. Also, a lot of people are going to be attempting to do this all at once. We’re expecting that Square Enix’s server will fall (or be very slow) under the load of people interested in this.

UPDATE 3: We’re seeing that it looks like the address of the game servers have changed. This probably means the names of all the servers have changed as well.

ZAM has translated part of an article published by Famitsu covering a game developers conference going on in Japan right now. The Final Fantasy XIV article focuses on the creation of the game, such as the basis for the characters and the work they put into the armor. You can read the translation over at ZAM. You can find all the images from the presentation in our gallery.

New Making Of a Realm video
Square Enix published a new video on their youtube channel that is an interview with their music composer, “Nobuo Uematsu”.

New Patch to FFXIV Client
For those that already have the Final Fantasy XIV beta client installed, a 9MB patch has been deployed. Make sure to startup your client to get it installed.

Open Beta Postponed

FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test, which is scheduled to begin at 7:00pm (PDT) on Aug. 31, 2010, will be postponed due to a confirmation of critical bugs. New schedule will be released at a later date.

Along with the postponement of FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test, the issuing of registration code for FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test will be postponed as well. With the download of client software’s installer, it will be suspended at 19:00 (PDT) on Aug. 31, 2010.

No time has been given for when the beta will start or when keys will be handed out. We just have to wait.

Account Management System Update
SE has updated the account management page where you can now enter your region and country.

Along with this, SE has added Crysta support to accounts outside of Japan. This feature can be enabled from the Account Management page for your Square Enix account. Crysta is a Square Enix form of currency that you may be able to buy with a credit card or other ways. This should open up payment of FFXIV game accounts to things like game cards. More details to come later.

Gaining Access to the Open Beta
SE has sent out an email that seems to indicate that anyone will be able to participate in the FFXIV open beta. Along with this note, they have posted the FFXIV beta client installer for anyone to download (download it here download was removed from SE servers).

1. Access the following URL.
http://entry.ffxiv.com/
* The page will become accessible starting at 19:00 on Aug. 31, 2010. (NOTE: this date has been postponed)

2. Log in with your Square Enix account and have a registration code issued.
* Depending on the access status, we may temporarily suspend the issuance of registration code. If you cannot have registration code issued, we ask that you please wait a little while before trying again.

3. Register the registration code you received by e-mail on the Square Enix Account Management System.
Click “Select Service” from “Services and Options” on the left menu. Select “FINAL FANTASY XIV” from the services available and then “Add a service account.” Enter the registration code you’ve been issued and proceed to the end of registration.

It isn’t clear if those that were in alpha / beta will have to go through the same process to get a key. For those that weren’t in previous beta tests, it seems like they have given everyone a way to take part in the beta.

Maps from Open Beta
A Russian FFXIV blog has ripped the maps from the new open beta client and posted them for your viewing pleasure.