Final Fantasy XIV hype has died down on forums, IRC, twitter, and other public discussion tools. The last alpha test was a week ago and the alpha testers haven’t been given a date on when testing would resume. Due to a number of issues that were found during the previous few alpha tests, Square Enix has postponed testing until the servers are more stable for people to experience the game. This is not uncommon when a company is doing alpha testing; things should pick up quickly once some of these initial bugs are worked out.

Over the last day, two interesting pieces of information have spread around the internet:

1. FFXIV is has been re-confirmed to be on schedule to release in 2010.
2. FFXIV is at least 65% complete.

To us, these two statements somewhat contradict one another. A Japanese site published an interview (translated by Google) with Yoichi Wada (president of Square Enix) where Wada re-confirms that Final Fantasy XIV will be released this year.

The statement about FFXIV being 65% complete came from a Famitsu magazine article not published on the web. Lucky for us, ZAM has translated the article. The interview is with a few people from the development staff (Tanaka being the primary speaker). Here are some high-level points:

• JP, EU, and NA all of the same number of alpha testers.
• Japanese testers have filed 5000 reports, EU has filed 19,000 and NA has filed 25,000 reports. (the difference in numbers are being attributed to cultural differences).
• The game is 65% complete.
• They intend to have players from around the world on a single server once the servers can stay online continuously.
• The current content available in the alpha test is less than 10% of what they expect to be available to players upon release.

When you combine the data we currently have available: expected release in 2010, is 65% complete, and has been in development for 5 years, things don’t add up. A person like Wada tends to always try to oversell things (think of him like a marketer trying to keep interests high). A person like Tanaka (more on the development side of things) will take a more pessimistic view as to when a product will be ready for consumers. Combine these 2 statements and you may get a late 2010 (mid-end of December) release of FFXIV if you are extremely lucky. But it’ll really depend on how the alpha and beta testing goes. We’ll keep watching and reporting alpha testing information to give you a clearer picture as to when FFXIV will be in your hands.

A new Dengeki magazine just came out in Japan, it covers a few more aspects of the current alpha testing. No English speaking fan-site has translated this yet, but we were able to piece out some of the information. FFXIV-Fan, a Japanese based fan-site has released their overview (google translator) of the article. Here’s some of the pieces we were able to take away from it.

Gods/Guardians
“The Twelve” gods have had their names revealed. When you create your character, you choose a god to allign yourself with. It is unclear at this point how a god will affect your character.

• Nald’thal, the Traders
• Nophica, the Matron
• Azeyma, the Warden
• Thaliak, the Scholar
• Llymlaen, the Navigator
• Halone, the Fury
• Byregot, the Builder
• Althyk, the Keeper
• Nymeria, the Spinner
• Oschon, the Wanderer
• Menphina, the Lover
• Rhalgr, the Destroyer

Nameday
Along with choosing your Guardian, you get to pick something similar to a month and day when your character was born. Details on this option are sparse.

Mining
You are able to scan for nearby nodes, when you do a directional arrow appears on your minimap along with the distance to the node. You go up to the node and select “excavate” and you receive a message about how difficult it will be. You are then presented with a ring that moves inward and outward continuously, you press the “activate” button at a certain spot on the ring. You repeat this process a few times to mine the ore.

There is more information but Google Translator fails with it. We’ll update this post once some English speaking sites have picked it up and translated it.

Update 4/25, 11:15am: We just noticed that this came from Dengeki magazine, not Famitsu. The title has been updated to reflect this. As well, here is a link to the Amazon page for the magazine.

While we wait for an English fan site to translate this article, we would like to present you with a new Famitsu article talking about the Final Fantasy XIV alpha. Today’s article seems to focus on the city of Limsa Lominsa and the shops it contains (this the only city currently available in the alpha testing). It talks about 4 shops/guilds within the city: Alchemist selling potions, seamstress selling cloth fabric, engraving/metal-worker selling circlets and eye-wear, and woodworking shop selling shields, bows and staves. We’ve added the 15 images from this article into the our gallery of images from magazines.

Update 12:45pm: BeyondVanadiel has translated this article.
Update 4/25: ZAM and FFXIVCore have translated this article as well.

We have put together an all-in-one page covering all publicly released Final Fantasy XIV information. We will update this page as new information is released. It is heavily focused on the lore of the world as the details on game-play are mainly from the alpha at this point. We’ll keep you posted on any major updates we make to this page.

A blog post from Famitsu talks some more about the on-going Final Fantasy XIV alpha test. One interesting piece of information from this article is the bloom lighting effects that FFXIV seems to implement. Bloom shader effects are a way to make bright light act realistic/brighter than they actually are. This is meant to simulate being in a dark area then going outside into the sunlight, where you eyes need to adjust to the new level of light. (Click on the image on the right to see the full size version.)

FFXIVCore has translated this article to English.

The fourth day of alpha testing for Final Fantasy XIV is underway (Japanese 4-hour testing session has completed) and things seem to be going smoother. Reports from Japan seem to be saying that the servers were letting more people online and fewer people were crashing. EU testing should be starting shortly and NA testing will begin after that. Once the EU and NA testing has completed, we should have more reports about the stability of the servers/client and any new information.

Beyond the normal testing, a bunch of screenshots were released by players showing off the hats, masks, and glasses that various NPCs are wearing (screenshots provided by the folks at BlueGartr). It is assumed that players will be able to obtain some of all of these models of gear for their own character, as can be seen with this Lalafell equipping some glasses. We’ll update our Day 4 gallery as new screenshots are released throughout the day.

4Gamer has posted another article talking about the Final Fantasy XIV alpha test. BeyondVanadiel has read over the article but not done a full translation for us. The main piece of new information added with this article is that the screenshots are pretty high quality. During the cutscenes your character will turn their head and move their eyes to focus in on the person they are listening or talking to. As well, 4Gamer mentions that the alpha test has had some server and client instabilities, which has made it somewhat difficult for people to test. We’ve added 22 screenshots to our alpha gallery from 4Gamer and Famitsu articles.

Update 4/19: FFXIVCore has done a full translation of this article.

A Final Fantasy XIV alpha tester going by the name “FredTheTaru” has been sharing some wonderful information on the BlueGartr forums. One of the more interesting pieces is how the leveling system works.

NOTE: All of this information is from the Final Fantasy XIV Alpha. Much of it is subject to change before the game is released, so don’t take anything written below as final.

You have 2 levels associated with your character: Physical Level and Discipline (class) Level (also referred to as Rank). The physical level will continuously increase no matter what discipline you are playing. This means if you are play a Marauder up to level 3, and switch to a level 1 Conjurer, your physical level will remain the same. Also, each physical level you gain gives you attribute points you can assign to the various stats associated to your character, as seen in the image above. Right now you get 70+ attribute points per physical level to assign to your various stats. The cost of a stat will increase as you point more and more points into it. We have a basic simulator for stat point allocation (it’s a work in progress).

Your Discipline Level dictates what abilities you have access to. So as a level 1 Conjurer you’ll have access to some basic attack spells, at level 2 they get an ability called Trance Chant. Now lets say you switch to Marauder, your physical level will remain the same, but your discipline level is now level 1. When you hit level 2 with Maruader, the level 2 Chanter spell is available for the marauder to equip. Some abilities have restrictions (like a Marauder ability will say “Marauder only”, or it could say “Discipline of War only” or “Disciplines of War and Magic only”. As well, when equipping an non-main spec ability (a Marauder equipping a casters “cure” spell) it may have higher cast times, cooldowns or cost. For example, if you look at the image below, “Trance Chant” has a 120 second cooldown when a Marauder equips it. This same ability has no cooldown when a Conjurer equips it.

You have 20 available abilities points (slots) to equip spells/abilities into, so you need to choose which to use. You can only switch these out of combat. Right now, all abilities/spells cost 1 action point to equip, so you can equip 20 abilities. It’s thought that some abilities may cost more than 1 point later on.

In the later levels as you have multiple disciplines that are high level, you will be able to pick your main-class abilities and then equip off-class abilities that compliments your base class. This is one of the ways that you can customize your character so you are unique from others that are your same class. But since these can be changed on a whim, you do not need to make any permanent choices. The hardest choice you’ll have is which disciplines you want to level first.

Update 4/25: “Rank” seems to refer to your Discipline, not your physical level. Updated to reflect this.

Famitsu has published another article detailing the game-play mechanics of the Final Fantasy XIV beta. Our friends at BeyondVanadiel have translated it and posted it for our reading pleasure. Here’s a high-level overview of the article:

• The User Interface is flexible. All pieces of the UI that are always display can be moved anywhere on the screen.
• The Main Menu within the game has 10 functions, they explain what each does. The menu items are:
  • Status & Gear, Actions, Attribute Points, Item List, Journal, Party, Map, Teleport, Return, and Logout.
• Lists all available emotes with screenshots of some in action.
• Covers Trading with other players and running a Bazaar.
• Bazaars function almost exactly like FFXI or Aion. You choose the wares to sell, set a price, and people can inspect you and buy items. Bazaar items have a 5% tax attached to them. Lets say you list an item for 100 gil, another player buys it, it will cost them 100 gil, but you only get 95 gil from the purchase.

Update 7:50am CST: 4Gamer has posted a similar write-up to Famitsu. The most interesting addition are more screenshots.
Update April 17 11:15am: Eorzeapedia has done their own write-up and translation for these articles.

There has been a flourish of Final Fantasy XIV information leaking to all corners of the internet since the alpha testing began on April 8. The amount and number of people leaking information has been much larger than we were expecting, more than Square Enix was expecting too. The first few days after the alpha started, Square Enix was crawling the internet for any and all leaked alpha information, trying to shut it down. Even now they still attempt to plug the leaks but are slow to do so. They have banned multiple people that openly streamed gameplay video or leaked screenshots with their names visible.

At the same time, major gaming sites started to leak gameplay screenshots and impressions. Japanese based 4Gamer and Famitsu magazines were the first to start publishing information about the FFXIV alpha for the internet to read. What made the articles from these magazines interesting is that they blocked out the name of the character they were playing under. It seems as if the magazines maybe weren’t supposed to be leaking the information. On the other hand, they could just be protecting themselves from the hordes of people bothering them. Either way, these 2 gaming sites were the only ones that posted FFXIV gameplay information across the world and didn’t take it down. If Square Enix gave 4Gamer and Famitsu permission to post the articles they did, it may be a sign of the favoritism towards their Japanese player-base, as no English speaking gaming site has posted the same type of write-ups. (continued below)