IGN recently posted an article that covers the history of Final Fantasy. Not much about FFXIV, but it is an interesting read for those that want to know more about the Final Fantasy series. Or for those that hate to read, GameTrailers posted a Final Fantasy Retrospective two years ago that runs around 3 hours. We would highly recommend watching the FF Retrospective at GameTrailers if you are a Final Fantasy fan.

InformationWeek is reporting that China has banned the trading of virtual money for real money (via Slashdot). How much this will affect the world of RMT (real money trading) has yet to be seen, but it is promising. According to Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester, 80% to 85% of all gold farming is done in China. We can hope that by the time Final Fantasy XIV has been released, a vast majority of RMT operations in China have been shutdown and the number of farmers in the MMO world will be greatly reduced.

The folks over at ZAM have posted another translated article from a Japanese magazine, Connect!On.  This is basically a rehash of what we have already heard, so more just further confirmation of other reports, nothing all that new.  The full article is after the break.

If you have played World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, or other recent MMOs, you may be aware of the Addon functionality that comes with these games. Addons tend to be code released by fans/players of the MMO that customize the look and feel of the user interface (UI). These addons can make the game easier for you to play: such as giving you more control over how maps, menus or other aspects of the game behave. But the question is: should Square Enix provide us with an addon framework?

Pros of Addons:

• Allows for player innovation
• Can help the user interface mature faster
• Gives the user more control
• Helps expand the community involvement

Cons of Addons:

• Can lead to a cluttered UI (see screenshot)
• Community written code can slow down the game or cause problems
• Could lead to Square relying too much on community addons
• Increases support issues (possible security issues)
• Can lead to end-game LSs/guilds/clans requiring certain addons

Considerations:

• It may have to be PC only (if the addons slowdown performance, the PS3 could see problems)
• If FFXIV is gamepad (six-axis) based, UI changes may need to remain minimal

One of the key benefits of addons is community innovation. Allowing players to develop interface changes gives Square Enix some free usability development and testing. If a specific addon is used by a large portion of the community, Square knows it highlights a perceived weakness in the base UI. This lets the community tell Square Enix that aspect X of the interface “does not meet our needs”. Square Enix can use this feedback to help make the game an overall better experience for all of its players.

The main problem of addons with Final Fantasy XIV is the cross-platform nature of the game. Addons on the PS3 could cause the game to slow down and make the gaming experience not pleasurable. If they chose to make addons PC only, it could cause a split in the community (more-so than may already exist). Then beyond that, if the game must be fully accessible using a gamepad, the addon functionality may need to be limited to fit within the framework that Square has already defined.

As much as addons would help the community, they may not be feasible for FFXIV because of the cross-platform nature of the game.

The folks over at Eorzea Sky posted a link to a comic from when FFXIV was announced.  It does a great job embodying our current feelings about the game.  Check it out.

The team over at ZAM has posted an interview from Dengeki Playstation magazine, talking about the future of FFXI. The interview was with Hiromichi Tanaka (producer) and Kouichi Ogawa (development team). It sounds like the game will be running for a very long time, so if you are a FFXI player, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Check out the full article here.

We also included a copy of the aticle after the break.

FFXI controls

(Note: 2009/06/26 2:00pm: The image above is of FFXI and not our guess of the controls for FFXIV.)

We all know Square Enix as a heavy player in the console market. Their primary development force knows and understands how to develop games for these platforms. It’s not to say they cannot develop great games for the PC, but it is not their primary focus. When guessing how players will interact with the User Interface of Final Fantasy XIV, it is not unreasonable to guess that Square Enix will be focusing on consoles as the primary platform for the game (especially since the game was announced at the Sony E3 press conference). What this means to us is that the UI will be designed in such a way that it is accommodating to those that only use a gamepad to play the game, much like FFXI was designed. We will not speculate as to what the interface for the game will look like (I leave that to people with PhD’s in Human Factors and Psychology), but we will take a guess at what the default controls will look like for FFXIV.

There is a lot of debate going on right if the ability to “Jump” will be a feature of the game. With how addicting it can be to jump around while bored, we are hoping it is. So we know that will be at least one more button that needs to be added on top of the controls FFXI used. On top of that, it would be nice to have added buttons for spell hotkeys. One proposal is to have a toggle/shift type button that changes the function of all other buttons. So lets say you hold down L1, when you do this, all of your other buttons now have a different action tied to them. This would be a nice addition to give gamepad users some more options when controlling their character.

But there is also the question of how much work Square Enix will put behind the controls/UI for the PC. We can understand them not wanting to maintain 2 separate interfaces between the console(s) and PCs, as it is nearly twice as much work for the interface team to develop and maintain the game. Plus if one UI is better than the other, it could lead to finger pointing by the community, comparing which is better, PC or PS3. This makes me believe that the game will still be optimized for PCs that have gamepads attached to them. The controls will be better in FFXIV than they were in FFXI because the PC is no longer an afterthought, but it still won’t be their primary focus.

We have put together a picture comparison between Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV races. This is meant to give you a side-by-side comparison between the races that we know and love and to examine how Square Enix is evolving the races with the new game. Please click through to see the full post.

We read about this story on Eorzeapedia back on June 11, but Joystiq (then others) decided to carry the story yesterday. The current speculation is that Final Fantasy XIV will enter beta this September because of some job postings over at the Square Enix site. There are postings for new Game Masters and Game Testers. We at FF14News.com aren’t as hopeful.

Sure we would love FFXIV sooner than later but lets be realistic here. Guessing the day (or month) an MMO will make any sort of release, be it retail or beta, is a shot in the dark. MMOs have very different release schedules than other games, and have a notorious reputation for releasing late. If you take into account the delays that normally come with things like this, we are guessing a late November or December beta start. Square Enix will need time to train these new people and get things ready for the public to start playing with FFXIV.

The full job postings are after the break.

We wanted to create a list of the active FFXIV blogs/forums out there right now. One of the blogs below was kind enough to link to us so we thought we would share our list of FFXIV related bookmarks. I can almost guarantee you that the person(s) behind every site listed below was or is an active member of Final Fantasy 11. This site is no different, with the caveat that we all stopped playing FF11 in December 2004 (at least for our current staff).

• finalfantasyxiv.com – The Official FFXIV site.
• facebook.com/…/FFXIV – EDIT: this is just a Fan Page on Facebook, not official..
• ffxiv.zam.com – Blog and Forum. With the ZAM (allakhazam) network running this site, it should have some good content.
• member.square-enix.com/… – Fan run group on SquareEnix’s official forum.
• eorzeapedia.com – Blog, Forum, Wiki. Looks to have a great user base so far.
• thefinalfantasy14.com – General Information, Blog and Forums
• ffxivrealm.com – Blog and Forum
• ffxivfan.com – Blog and Forum
• finalfantasy14-online.com/forum – Forum and Blog. Some decent activity so far.
• eorzea.blogspot.com – Blog
• eorzeasky.com – Blog and Forum
• ffxivcore.com – Blog and Forum

At this point, most of us are posting the exact same content. There may be 1 or 2 things one site has that another doesn’t, but we are all pretty similar. What will make one blog or forum pull ahead of the others is the continued dedication to the content as we get closer and closer to FF14′s release. Stay tuned to FF14News and we hope to provide you the best source of FF14 related news on the web.