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.

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.

ZAM has translated an article in a recent Dengeki Japanese Magazine covering similar material to the Famitsu article that leaked a couple days ago. The one addition was a question and answer session with Square Enix. Check out ZAM’s article for the full write-up.

Some high level points:

• The alpha test is earlier in the game’s development than FFXI to allow them to make larger gameplay changes prior to release.
• As you level, you get points that you can distribute to your various attributes.
• You will be able to redistribute points in the final game (probably will have to be done in town, may have an associated cost).
• Max party size is 15 people. Average party size is around 6-8 players. It is fine to party with 3 people as well.
• You can teleport to any Aetheryte crystal you’ve visited. There will probably be a cooldown on how often this can be used.
• Lalafell are super cute (it’s true!).
• PS3 beta testing will begin with beta phase 1 or 2, which could be months away still.

Update 4/10 10:00pm: FFXIVCore has posted their translation of some new information posted on the Famitsu. It has some more details about the quest system along with battle regimens (think skillchains).

Another issue of Dengeki Games magazine hit the bookshelves in Japan today with a short Q&A. ZAM has translated it for your reading pleasure.

Here is a summary of the Q&A:

• The chatlog has battle and chat separated into different tabs (like many modern MMOs).
• All parts of the user interface can be moved around.
• There is an on-screen indicator showing your /check of a party of monsters.  This is useful as it shows a group of monsters strength as a whole instead of a single monster.
• You should be able to switch between any of your classes in the field as long as you are carrying the weapon for the class.  From a previous article, you cannot switch classes in the combat-ready stance (Active Mode), you can only do it while in Passive Mode.
• Beta players will be able to carry over their name to the live servers.  This will only apply to the servers that transition from beta to live.  New servers will be created when the game releases so you can have a shot at getting whatever name you want.  All progress beta players make will be reset when the game goes live.
• PS3 and Windows players will be on the same servers.  As well, if you activated and play primarily on Windows, you could log in just as easily from the PS3 version of the game.
• The beta test will separate Japanese, American, and European players. They do not intend to separate these regions once the game goes live.

As well, Eorzeapedia posted their second part of a older Dengeki magazine.

The information has started to flow. 4Gamer.net has given us a few more images. The collection of the new images are below. The most interesting one shows the game’s user interface. Though, this may have changed quite a bit already, and will probably change more before the game releases. There are also some images from the opening trailer/move for the game (that was shown to people that attended VanaFest). Be sure to check out the other information that came out over the last day.

Update 3/11 8:46am: Here’s an updated song from the Japanese FFXIV Website (right-click and save-as to save to your computer). Sounds like battle music to us.

Update 3:15pm: No official website update yet. The FFXIV Beta website did launch for those with access, but it currently only has a forum available for people to talk on. No alpha client is available for download yet. On a side note ZAM, Eorzeapedia, and FFXIVCore have all done write-ups on all the new discipline information that came from the Famitsu article.

Update 3/12 3:40am: A second Japanese magazine has been released and translated. ZAM is covering a Q&A session done by Dengeki magazine. It’s a fairly lengthy Q&A talking about many different aspects of the game, though it has some overlap from the Famitsu article others have already translated. As well, only the Japanese website has been updated still (as reported yesterday morning), but it’s content seems to be equivalent to what we’ve seen from the magazine translations. We’ll keep an eye out for NA and EU updates still.

Update 1:50pm: Eorzeapedia has done a write-up covering the Famitsu Q&A session along with a breakdown of the user-interface screenshot seen below. As well, FFXIVCore has done their own write-up on the Dengeki Q&A that ZAM already covered. On the official website side of things, there still is no updates for the NA or EU sites.

Rendered and Cut scene images:

Update March 2 8:40am: ZAM has taken this article down at the request of Square-Enix. We have not been contacted yet, but we felt we should follow ZAM and remove the write-up. Sorry everyone.
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The ZAM network attended VanaFest this year and has a nice write-up on the mystery movie that was not broadcast to the rest of the world. This movie was a combination of the 2 trailers we’ve already seen at E3 and Tokyo Game Show. It tells a story of a Hyuran male as he uses the Guildleve system and the adventure it takes him on.

This movie is the opening sequence/cinematic that will be shown when the game is started up. If you don’t want to ruin the surprise, we would recommend against reading it.

If you want to read it, we would recommend reading the full article at ZAM as it has pictures accompanying it. Just in-case, the full text for the article is mirrored below.

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.

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.

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.

The good folks over at ffxiv.zam.com have published some translated reactions to the E3 announcement of FFXIV.  These reactions come from Japanese readers of the Famitsu magazine.  Most seem to be current or former FFXI players, with varried ractions.  The overall reactions are a combination of joy and fear.  Joy for those that are looking forward to the game after a great experience playing FFXI.  Fear for the future of FFXI.