Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

[inferiare]

So because I can't help myself and I love special editions of games, I sprung for the pretty edition of FFXIV that will be released in August. Because of that, I got myself into the beta, and I'm currently playing now. I'll be dropping some screenshots of what I'm allowed to, though I think with phase 4 I don't have to follow the non-disclosure stuff (so I can talk about the music and not just say that it's really cool/beautiful/wonderful.)


The phase I'm in is only open on weekends, so I'll try to get screens as much as I can.


Aaaaanyway, I've currently played around with creating two characters. One is an Elezan, the FFXIV equivalent to XI's Elvaan.



She's not quite relevant, only that she's a powerhouse Gladiator.


My second character? My persona here on the forums, created sort of in her likeness.




YOU KNEW IT WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN.

So anyway, yes, that is TerraEarth-style Raini Takai in FFXIV's beta. She's an archer (mainly because I wanted to start in Gridania, which is probably the closest I'd get to Kineti in FFXIV in a sense) and White Mage doesn't really suit me. I'll try to get more action-y shots as I progress. o/

I don't know if I'm allowed to screen shot the character creation (or if I even can screenshot it) but if I can and I can do it under Square-Enix's stipulations (as you can see, there's a sizable "Copyright" watermark on both screens) then I will - it's pretty crazy. Sliders for height, a decent enough colour wheel for hair/skin/eyes, voice selection, two-tone hair (or highlights)... yeah.


Apologies for the large image sizes though, hard to keep both copyright watermarks in place while scaling down what beauty and detail the game holds.

[Jason Tandro]

The quality of the graphics is insanely good, although tbh I've never liked the idea of Final Fantasy doing an MMO.

At the very least they shouldn't have numbered it, it messes with my OCD. Yiu see now by reckoning it goes X-2, 12, 13, 13-2, Lighning Returns, and 15.

Remember the good old days???

[inferiare]

XI is still active though, and the storylines were amazing. Each expansion brought in new areas and more areas to sit and relax in... while running from monsters, that is. Vana'diel is still my favourite MMO world.

The Sanctuary of Zi'tah is gorgeous, The Hall of the Gods beyond is peaceful if not a pain in the ass to get to, Gustaberg has the best music... yeah. The MMOs have their own good stories, and the lead up to v2.0 for XIV was pretty damn awesome; players saw this once the servers went down on the last day of 1.0. You could probably find Let's Plays for the FFXI main stories and same with the XIV main story.

And apparently in XIV we get some goddamn Magitek Armour. Yep.


I'll be doing more later, and then I'll amass my screenshots of everything. Some will be linked, mainly because they'll be pretty big.

[inferiare]

Fight me, this is a double post and idgaf because I can.

--------------------------

Anyway, I decided to do a little errand running around Gridania, and found a nice area.

It even had a stage! Apparently sylphs were happy that the amphitheater was saved and repaired after the great calamity from 5 years ago.

I got to dance on it.

After that, I left the area to find more people to help. ...and give me money. But as I started leaving that area, something happened! I think some smallfolk got drunk and were rolling their equally drunk friend around... and down a hill.

What you don't see: a Lalafell rolling down the hill that I had to jump over.


But as I was leaving, guess what I found?! A POKEMON! A shiny one at that! I'm so proud. I'll be able to become a master! I'll have to memorize the PokeRap though.

After being excited for the pokemon-finding though, I turned in. I'd continue tomorrow. So once the sun started to rise, I got up. It was a nice sunrise.


But the clouds came and it started to rain. You might say it was... Raini outside. (dohohohoh)


After a couple of quests though, I started on my way to becoming a Pokemon master-- I mean, to becoming the best damn adventurer TerraEarth had to offer to Eorzea!



I'm off to a good start, I think.

[inferiare]

And now, even a triple post oh snap!!!

So, a friend of mine got into the beta as well. He's got more friends on one server than the others, so I made one on his server. Since I've got a Hyur, an Elezan, and a Lalafell (original character from 1.0), logic dictated to me that I make a Miqo'te - a cat girl - for this server.



Yo. (fullsize)




And yes, she has a tail. (fullsize)


And just because I like my TerraEarth references... Behold her name on the upper left corner in the character screen. Yep.

[EverPhoenix]

I'm breaking your post streak. SO THERE.

This game looks really pretty. Makes me want to get it just to walk around and throw fireballs at things. Because I can't do that in real life, it wouldn't be socially acceptable. But in that world - YAYYYY

[inferiare]

It is VERY pretty. I sadly can't get pictures of the character creation screen, but there's a ton of options.

They introduced the Duty Finder system this beta update - it works a lot like WoW does. It draws players from all worlds to go fight dungeon bosses, it also level syncs so if you're 10 levels higher and want to do things with friends in a lower level dungeon? You can. It's pretty neat, actually. Our current beta test is the Duty Finder stress test, so it'll be ongoing until they can stabilize it.

I have more screenshots from Raini's side that I'll be linking soon, with some action shots as I go and new armour looks.

[inferiare]

I'm pretty sure I'm addicted to making characters. However, this one will probably stay as a main when the game comes out.

(fullsize)



For that reason alone. She's pretty much a carbon copy of my original FFXI character, so there's so nostalgia here.

[SoulBlazerFan]

I recognize the name... wasn't that one of your old RP characters from way back when?

[inferiare]

Sure is! Yalei as well, which I'm sure you know well as it is. Caelia was pretty much perfect in FFXI, save for not having longer hair, but XIV gave me a near-perfect match for Yalei and Caelia.

Hell, I'm playing Yalei in a D&D encounter this month, lawful good and worshiping Bahamut and all.

[geekgirl101]

I don't think SE would ban me for saying this, but FFXIV is one of the most nicest and friendliest MMORPG I've played since FFXI. SE have put a lot of thought into this expansion and have taken hints from other games too including their own.

In the end though things are bound to change before it goes live. From what I've seen from the different phases most of the changes have been for the better, some for the worse which hopefully will get changed back for phase 4. SE have really listened to the feedback and taken into account every praise and complaint to making this a game that the community likes, not just the company.

So yeah, I'd strongly advise giving it a go and signing up for the open beta when you can. You won't regret it.

[inferiare]

The only grating problem I've had since I got into the closed beta (for one whole phase, whoop de doo) was an issue with being logged off every 10-30 minutes. I wasn't the only one though, since a LOT of people were on the beta feedback forums saying the same thing. I'm not sure where the problem lies, but it's irritating as hell. They made it one of their top priorities to fix before going live of course, but I'm just hoping it's done for open beta - their upcoming beta! - so I can actually PLAY and not be kicked every 15 minutes. :/

More pictures later, I have to sleep eventually.

[psychokind]

the only time i tried an asian mmo was when i played Aion. if you minimized yoir charactermodel you also decreased your hitbox - which meant a big advantage in pvp.

so basically everyone was a midget and found out there was no pvp.

[geekgirl101]

Yeah, I'm hoping next phase they'll fix the maps so that when you view where a quest objective is it shows you the region map and not the world map. Trying to mess around with different buttons to find out which one zoomed into the region map was a real pain in the neck.

[inferiare]

Pretty sure that was fixed in Phase 3? I didn't have an issue with finding quests; if I were to check the map in Old Gridania and I had a quest to turn in somewhere in New Gridania, it would show me where once I opened the tab for New Gridania (the map, though I never got a good screen I don't think, had tabs in the upper left hand corner where if you clicked one, it would show you the map for the places in your vicinity - outside of town included) so it was probably fixed.