Square Enix has published a new video to their Youtube channel. Today’s video focuses on two main changes: lighting/graphical improvements and the speed of combat. While Square Enix has already published screenshots showing the difference in graphics from alpha to beta, it’s nice to see the city of Limsa Lominsa with the new and improved graphics. The speed of combat changes were one of the main topics focused on during E3, but this video helps show just how much the speed of combat has improved. You’ll notice the time between each attack dropped from about 6 seconds down to 3 seconds.

One of the less noticed changes is the improvement to the minimap:

Notice how the alpha version of the minimap shows all levels with only slight distinctions. In the beta version, the multi-leveled city of Limsa Lomonisa shows the level that you are on much more clearly on the minimap. As well, it shows stairs within the building. Overall, the changes to the minimap will help improve navigation within the city.

We are in somewhat of a dry-spell again when it comes to Final Fantasy XIV news. E3 is 11 days away, which means we can’t expect much from the Square Enix public relations team in the next 2 weeks. At the same time, the alpha testing is still going on behind closed doors. We have posted a number of alpha related screenshots in our gallery and posted some detailed information about the combat system and other mechanics of the game. The problem is that little to nothing has changed in this alpha test since it began on April 8. Square Enix has mainly been gathering feedback and improving the stability of the servers over the last 2 months. We won’t see the results of this feedback until the beta testing starts.

Starting with the testing that occurred on June 3, Square Enix has added a new world server. If you remember back to the Dengeki interview, Square Enix was saying that they are working on stabilizing one world.

• Phase 2 of the alpha will begin once they fully stabilize the current World. After that, they will add a second and third world.
• The next round of testers has already been chosen for when phase 2 of the alpha begins.
• The beta is planned to begin once a player base of around 50,000 is built and the servers are stabilized to handle them.

Now that they have launched a second world server, this could mean they feel that one server is stable enough and they are attempting to add more servers to allow adding more players into the alpha test. It seems that we have entered what Square Enix refers to as “alpha phase 2″. The one thing we do know is that they are making progress with the alpha testing and things are getting better.

Along with the addition of a new realm, another round of alpha invite emails have been sent out, starting June 9.

• Invite Email Sent: May 28. Access Granted: May 28
• Invite Email Sent: May 28. Access Granted: June 2
• Invite Email Sent: June 2. Access Granted: June 7
• Invite Email Sent: June 4. Access Granted: June 9

Things are getting exciting. At the current rate, Square Enix will probably hit their 50,000 player mark in a month or 2, depending on how fast they add new people. Which means beta will be getting here soon.

Multiple people have been reporting they received an email this morning, June 2, at 3am CST saying they were invited to the Final Fantasy XIV alpha test. This new group is saying their start date is June 7. For those that received an invitation last week Friday, the alpha test site is now allowing them to log in (eu site here).

At this point the Alpha client is still the same client that people have been testing for the past 1.5 months. It seems Square Enix is trying to increase the number of players to help stress their servers and to gather more feedback on the game-play mechanics.

According to BlueGartr forums, the second round of invites into the alpha test program for Final Fantasy XIV have been sent out (or are in the process of being sent out). According to this email, the second round of testing will begin on or after June 2. This second round of alpha testing is probably the “beta” test that was rumored to begin in June. We’ll have to keep a close eye on this as it develops as we have a lot of unanswered questions from this email. This email will be updated throughout the day as the story develops.

Update 10:00am (CST): From the beta invite email posted on BlueGartr, here are the details about this round of invites.
Update 10:50am: Some reports say that the emails were sent at 4:00am EST today (May 28).

• This is Alpha 2 testing, not beta.
• This test is focused on balance and gameplay, not reporting bugs (which may mean the client people will use this round will be similar to Alpha 1).
• It is still Windows only testing (no PS3 yet).
• The NDA (non-disclosure agreement) is still in affect, people in the alpha are not allowed to share information.
• The test website will open to these new alpha participants on Wednesday, June 2 in NA.

Andriasang has posted a translation of an upcoming Famitsu magazine. The translated summary is listed below:

Famitsu has an interview with team Final Fantasy XIV this week. Here’s a summary of the bullet points that were listed at Game Jouhou:

• The Beta version will see some system changes that will make it so that you can more easily string together your attacks.
• The alpha test had bad tempo with insufficient explanations. They’ve made some revisions to the beta, resulting in a completely different system.
• It will be easier to save up Gil.
• You remember that amazing comparison shot showing how much better the beta looks compared to the alpha? It seems that the beta uses a different technique for its shadows. The alpha version used something called “Project Shadows” while the beta version uses “Depth Buffer Shadows.”
• The city of Limsa Lominsa will have two levels.
• There will be a robust log filter in place. This is something that wasn’t finished in time for the alpha.
• They’re readying something large scale for your home, which functions like FFXI’s Mog House.
• They’ll soon be adding alpha testers as part of the new “alpha 2″ phase. They’ve already selected the participants via drawing!
• As you play the game, you’ll be able to freely change the god that you select during character making.
• Vehicles for FFXIV include Chocobo, horse driven carriage, boat, and air ship.
• You’ll be able to select different colors for your equipment.

Now we just have to be patient and wait for the beta to start. There are rumors that Beta 1 will be starting sometime in June. Lets hope that it does make its way to us that soon.

Update 5/28: ZAM has translated a Dengeki article covering similar topics as the Famitsu one up above. This article has more details than the Famitsu article, we recommend giving it a read.

Over the past month, we’ve seen a flurry of Final Fantasy XIV information make its way to the internet. April 8th marked the first day of the first phase of testing for Final Fantasy XIV: the alpha test. Since then there have been 5 other days of public testing.

• Day 1 – April 8
• Day 2 – April 12
• Day 3 – April 14 (was schedule alongside Day 2)
• Day 4 – April 20
• Day 5 – April 29
• Day 6 – May 6

In the last 31 days Square Enix has brought the alpha servers online, for people to play, on a total of 6 days, with only a 4-hour window per region. That means testers have had a maximum of 24 hours to experience Final Fantasy XIV, assuming they were able to log in.

Alpha testers have been constantly hitting log-in issues and in-game crashes during these 24 hours of testing. Some alpha testers who have not been as tight lipped as Square Enix wishes have talked about the constant crashes and frustration they experience while trying to play the game. This is a problem that Square has opened themselves up to as they wanted to get players in as early as possible to allow for feedback on various core systems. A number of reports and complaints from alpha testers have been around the instability of the game, and not as much concerning the game play mechanics themselves. Lets hope Square Enix has enough staff to parse through the 40,000+ bug/issues that have been reported to them by players.

At this point, players have been told to focus on the very basics of the game: Quest System, Guildleve System, Battle System, Basic Controls, and User Interface. Any feedback that Square Enix decides to incorporate with the game will not make an appearance until Beta phase 2. The start date for Beta phase 2 or any other alpha/beta phases is unknown at this time.

The testing as a whole has been slow moving due to the numerous roadblocks players have hit. Square Enix decided not to shift the focus of the test as players have had insufficient time to test the functionality they were tasked to provide feedback on. This means the testing content and focus have been the same since the start of the alpha. Alpha testers have been let loose into a small fraction of the world and are focusing only on the basics of the game at this point. This also means there hasn’t been much new information coming from alpha testers for us to share with you.

It’s hard to guess how far along development of FFXIV may be as Square Enix could be deciding not to deploy a number of new systems until the current testing is complete. We’ll have to keep a watchful eye for any new information that comes from alpha testers or Square Enix.

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.

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.