Beta Update
In preparation for the Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta, 2 new patches have been deployed. There is one patch for “ffxivboot” which handles version checking and login, this is a small 5MB patch. The second patch is a patch to the FFXIV game itself, it is 1.23GB. If you are in the beta, you should start up your client right away and get the download started so you are ready for the open beta that begins tomorrow.

Patch Notes Update
The beta manual on the FFXIV beta site has received a few updates. Two of the major ones is the ability to examine (/check) other players along with the friend list and blacklist.

Examine
Targeting another player character will cause Examine to appear in the Interactions menu. Select Examine, and that player character’s equipment will be displayed.

Friend List
The friend list allows players to see the login status of characters registered to that list and to send tells to them.

• Select Friend List under Social Lists on the main menu to display the friend list window.
• Select a character name from the list to send that character a tell or to delete the character from your list. Select Add to add a new character to your list.

Blacklist
The blacklist prevents messages from characters registered to the list from displaying in the log widget.

• Select Blacklist under Social Lists on the main menu to display the blacklist window.
• Select a character name from the list to delete that character from your list. Select Add to add a new character to your list.

*You cannot register a character on your friend list to your blacklist. Likewise, you cannot register a character on your blacklist to your friend list.

Beta Client Download
If you plan on playing the FFXIV beta at some point in the next 3 weeks, you can start the download of the beta client ahead of time. FilePlanet has posted the installer for you to download. This 118MB installer will let you start downloading the open beta client, which is around 4.5GB in total. Installing this does not mean you’ll be able to play, you will still need to have an open beta key attached to your Square Enix account to be able to log in.

Prerelease Trailer
Square Enix has posted a Final Fantasy XIV prerelease trailer on their youtube channel, as can be seen above. Shows cut-scenes from all 3 cities along with some in-game video. It pretty as always so check it out.

Open Beta Start Time
As posted on the beta site and twitter, the start date/time for the open beta of FFXIV has been announced:

• PDT: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 7:00pm (PDT)
• GMT: Wednesday, September, 2010 at 3:00am (GMT)

Transferring Character Name From Beta to Release
For those that participate in Open Beta, you are able to transfer your open beta character name to release. First you need to create your character on the server you want to play on at release and name it appropriately. Once the game releases, select the same server and you’ll be able to use the same name. This assumes that the Square Enix account you used for beta and release is the same. Your characters look, levels and gear will not transfer.

You cannot pick a different server at release from open beta and have your name transfer over. Though, if you pick a different server, you could still use the name assuming no one else has picked it yet.

/ (slash) commands
Square Enix has published a bunch of commands on their beta site that will be usable in-game. Check them out after the break.

FFXIV Server Status
We are happy to introduce our Server Status page for people to use. This page lists the status (online or offline) of the Final Fantasy XIV servers. It updates with the latest information every 5 minutes to keep you up to date if the game is available to play. If you leave your browser open to the page, it will automatically update with the latest status every 5 minutes.

You can find a link to the server status page on the right-hand side of our site, labeled “FFXIV Server Status”.

Surplus / Fatigue System Information
ZAM has translated the posting on the Japanese beta forums for your reading pleasure. Here’s a breakdown of how the surplus (fatigue) system currently works.

• Square Enix has calculated (guessed/tested) how many skill points a player can approximately earn in 8 hours. If you gain this amount of skill points in an 8 hour period you start to become fatigued (gaining fewer skill points per monster).
• Over the next 7 hours worth of skill points (after the first 8), you will slowly gain fewer skill per monster killed. The amount of skill points you gain slowly decreases over these 7 hours.
• Once the 7 hours worth of skill-points is gained, you will no longer be able to gain skill points for that class.
• You are able to switch classes and start gaining skill points for the new class as each class has their own fatigue systems/timers.
• Fatigued classes will become 100% not-fatigued over the course of a week. This means you fatigued classes will become less fatigued for each hour you are not gaining skill points for it.
• Experience points you gain for your physical level follows the same system described above for skill points.
• Since you gain physical level EXP regardless of what class you are playing, you can only get physical level EXP for 15 hours worth of leveling per week. (Note, they are looking at tweaking the numbers for physical level to not be as harsh as the skill point fatigue system.)

Keep in mind that we are still in beta and have about a month until release. With the amount of press this system is getting, it could change. At the same time, it may be in place to prevent people from hitting max level too quickly, so the system could stay where it is.

Lots of news has appeared in the last 8 hours. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s happened.

Fatigue / Surplus System
ZAM is reporting that Tanaka (FFXIV director) is annoyed with foreign game sites for spreading rumors about how the fatigue system works. Sadly, he doesn’t tell us how it works, he just complains about people spreading rumors. Talk around forums seems to indicate that FFXIV developers have posted on the Japanese beta site as to how the fatigue system works, sadly it hasn’t been posted on the NA or EU beta sites yet.

UPDATE (9:30am CST): Updated the below with some more information.

If we go by what people are saying, you can gain about 8 hours worth of EXP before the fatigue system kicks in (this is the amount of EXP Square Enix thinks you can get in 8 hours). Then for the next block of EXP gain (again, matching to what they think you can get in 8 hours), the amount of EXP you get from killing monsters will slowly decrease. This penalty is on a per class basis, so each class has their own fatigue timers. It is rather unclear on exactly how this will work. Lets hope Square Enix clears it up for us.

Beta Codes Expiring
If you won a beta code from a fan site (like ZAM, Eorzeapedia, BlueGartr, or FFXIVCore) be sure to register that code as soon as possible. The codes will become invalid if not used once the open beta test starts. Once open beta starts, Square Enix will email those who registered a fan-site key to their accounts with new keys to use.

Addition Gamescom Interview
FFXIVCore posted another interview from Gamescom. Nothing amazingly exciting in it, but there are a few pieces of new info:

• DoH and DoL (crafting/gathering) classes aren’t meant to help in combat (do damage), but they are there to repair gear mid-battle. This may be improved upon after release.
• Companies are much like linkshells, but they can share items with one another.

Sites all over the place are starting to post guides and databases of information for players to use. A few sites (ZAM being one we believe) have been able to pull information from the game itself (data mining) to populate their databases. Sadly, Square Enix seems to be asking sites that pull their data from the game directly to take the information down. Luckily there is an alternative, players can figure out information themselves and post about it online.

Crafting Databases:
If you are getting started with one of the crafting (Disciplines of the Hand) professions, it’s good to know what recipes are available to you. A few sites are working to collect this information for you.

• FFXIVOrigin Crafting Database
• Eorzeapedia Wiki of Crafting Recipies
• FFXIVCore Wiki of Crafting Recipies
• SOCS Clan Recipe Lists

Each of the above sites organize their information in a unique way, but no site is a clear winner when it comes to crafting databases yet. Also keep in mind that many of the recipes listed on these sites could be wrong or broken as this is still beta.

Guides:
If you are looking for some beginning guides as to how to play Final Fantasy XIV, the below 2 sites contain a few guides that could be useful to you.

• Rawrcat – new player guide, lancer primer, detailed Limsa Lominsa map, and a look at the stamina gauge.
• FFXIV Archives – guides for pugilist and botanist, along with details on macros, attribute points, and battle regimens.

Beyond these guides, Eorzeapedia and FFXIVCore have been working on filling out their wikis with as much information as possible. Poking around the wiki can be a great way to learn more about FFXIV. But as with the crafting system, keep in mind that all this information is still preliminary and from beta, so there is a good chance it will change.

UPDATE 1: As a side note, phase 3 of beta ends this Wednesday at 5:00pm PDT (midnight GMT):

The current Beta Test Phase 3 (Beta 3) will end on August 25 at 5:00pm (PDT), and we plan to start the Open Beta Test in early September. We look forward to your continued help and support.

• After Beta 3 ends, all character data will be deleted.
• For the period during which a beta test is not being conducted, players will not be able to access the Players’ Site.
• Once the test’s character data have been deleted, all blogs and images on the Players’ Site will also be deleted.

UPDATE 1: As a few of our forum members have found out, they won beta keys that are outside of their region (IE: having a Square Enix account in North America, but winning a German beta key). To work around this, you may need to create a Square Enix account to match the region of the key you won.

UPDATE 2: We’ve udpated the interviews translated by FFXIVCore.

UPDATE 3: 4Gamer has a similar article to the Famitsu one. (google translate)

Famitsu Interview
Famitsu has published another FFXIV interview from Gamescom (translated by FFXIVCore). Here’s some high-level points from the interview.

• Open beta is planned to start the beginning of September.
• Complaints from beta testers about the mouse control mainly came from players outside of Japan. Japanese gamers don’t really use a mouse, which is why it hasn’t received a lot of SE’s attention.
• They are working to improve party play and give players more of a reason to group with others.
• Open beta will grant players access to the other 2 starting cities. Ul’dah, Gridania, and Limsa Lominsa should be playable in the open beta.
• They plan to add more classes in future version updates and expansion. We may see another magic class in an early major version update.

Additional details (from update 2):

• There are mechanisms built into FFXIV to slow players down when playing a single class. If you play one class too much in a short period you start hitting “surplus experience”, which means you’ll be getting less EXP per kill. This is meant to make it so hardcore players won’t get too far ahead with 1 class.
• If you switch classes (weapons), surplus does not carry over, so you can start leveling a second class once you hit surplus EXP.
• SE is debating how much gear will be sold by vendors. They seem to prefer that crafters provide a majority of gear.
• You will be able to choose the server you start on when the game releases. But you may be unable to create character on overcrowded servers.

North American Beta Key Giveaways
FFXIVCore has announced that they will be giving out the beta keys from their competition here in the next few hours. If you put your name in the hat for a key from FFXIVCore, be sure to check your Private Messages on their forums to see if you won.

Eorzeapedia has also received their beta keys and are emailing the winners of their contest.

Random News

• Destructoid had a video interview with the FFXIV development staff, all very basic information, not really worth your time unless you want to stare at the development team.
• Some Japanese cyber cafes will be installing the Final Fantasy XIV open beta client in their stores. The cafes will be giving away beta keys to those who visit their stores (at select locations).

Making of Eorzea #4
Square Enix has published a fourth “The Making of a Realm” video on youtube that you can see above. In this video, Square Enix talks about the details that went into making the game world. Nothing of real interest in the dialog, but there is some pretty aspects of the game shown off.

Information from Gamescom

A Germain game site published a short video on youtube that shows off a small amount of gameplay and the opening video for Gridania. Sadly, whoever is recording it couldn’t focus on any one thing for more than 30 seconds, so we were unable to see the entire opening sequence.

Open Beta Details
ZAM has translated an article from 4Gamer covering some details about the open beta for Final Fantasy XIV.

• Players are saying that combat is still too slow, SE is working to improve this.
• Open beta will last 2 to 3 weeks.
• They expect to be able to handle hundreds of thousands of players.
• All character process made in the beta will be deleted for when the game goes live.
• A new version of the benchmark software is being worked on.

We’ll keep you to date if any new information is released.

To match the recently released Final Fantasy XIV screenshots to the North American media, Japanese gaming sites received a similar preview but were given more screenshots to share with the world.

• GameWatch
• 4Gamer
• Famitsu

We’ve put all of these new images into a new gallery, check them out. There are some amazingly beautiful images with this new batch of screenshots.

A few gaming sites were invited to Square Enix’s offices in California and were given a an opportunity to play Final Fantasy XIV in an area other than Limsa Lominsa. It is expected that the content these websites were presented with is the same content that will be shown at Gamescom this Wednesday.

• Gamespot
• FFXIVCore
• IGN
• Destructoid
• 1Up
• Gamesradar

They were given a chance to play in the starting city of Gridania as level 40 characters. Check out the links above to see the impressions of a few different reviewers. Screenshots can be found in our gallery (taken from IGN).

Gamescom 2010
Gamescom 2010 is set to kick off this coming Wednesday, August 18, running until August 22. Gamescom is the largest gaming trade fair in the world, with 245,000 people attending in 2009. Square Enix demoed the first gameplay of Final Fantasy XIV at Gamescom 2009. Square Enix has posted on their German twitter account that they will be giving FFXIV themed mousepads, FFXIV branded USB thumb drives and beta keys at this years Gamescom. The USB drive can be used to save characters created at the conference (saving the character will let you import the look of the character once the game goes live). We will keeping an eye out for any new information that comes out of this year’s conference.

Item Tooltips
ZAM has already put together tooltips to show items in FFXIV. You can move your mouse over the links in their article to see them in action. This is a nice tool for those setting up a Linkshell website or other FFXIV related website.

FFXIV Beta Screenshots
With the NDA lifted on screenshots, a flood of new images have made their way to forums and blogs around the internet. We’ve collected a large number of these and placed them in a new gallery. While they are not in context, they show off various aspects of the game. NOTE: the images in the gallery are a mix of Beta phase 2 and phase 3 images.

Our two main sources for these screenshots are BlueGartr and a Russian blog (google translate). The Russian blog popped up when the NDA was lifted and has been posted a lot of great screenshots and information (thanks to forum member Seki for the link).

Additions to the FFXIV Beta
We wanted to point out a few nice additions/tweaks that were implemented in phase 3 of the Final Fantasy XIV beta.

• (screenshot) Text/dialog from NPCs is now shown in a separate window from the general chat log. While the text still appears in the general chat log, having it pulled out into a separate pop-up window makes it easier to read and doesn’t get pushed off the screen now due to people in your area talking.
• (screenshot) The Attribute & Gear menu saw some tweaks from the phase 2 version. One nice addition is that they show the rank of all your classes in this screen. They also re-arranged how gear is laid out. Overall it seems like an improvement.
• (screenshot) All pieces of gear that you equip seem to be visible. In this screenshot you can see a necklace that the Miqo’te has equipped.