Open beta will be open in September pre-launch, just got posted today.

awesome news. is it as grind intensive as other asian mmorpgs? im a massive final fantasy fan but i don't enjoy grinding too much. final fantasy 11 was cool, i just felt a little bit lost.

dlorc can you summarize the fatigue/surplus systems? I am reading all kinds of hate on it but it really doesn't seem too much of a big deal from how I am interpreting it so I wonder if I am missing something.

Basically the first 8 hours exp you do a week ( per class ) has a 100% bonus attached, then the exp bonus will steadily decrease to zero.

It's like rested XP but you get a finite amount/week/class, the problem isn't really the system it's the way it's been labelled and communicated to people so far.

Can anyone in beta answer my question? I am really frustrated with the benchmark score im getting. Again, here is what my system is running:

Vista SP2 64
Intel Core Duo 2.56 GHz
NVIDIA Geforce 9650M 1GB Vid Card
4Gig of memory

This exceeds the minimum sys reqs in every category, yet after updating my video driver and running the benchmark, i only score a 900 on low resolution settings.

Since I am currently living in Japan, it will take some effort and time to obtain the NA release and I really don't want to order something my PC can't run. I don't understand how I can exceed the Minimum requirements (and in some areas exceed the prefered reqs) and still score such a low number. Should I not order this game?

oh so instead of ppl looking at it as 8 bonus hours and then steadily diminishing until normal, they see it as 8 normal hours then a steadily increasing penalty?

I take it that is the fatigue factor? how does surplus work? Is there basically free levels?

i think the first thing you should do is run the benchmark on high and see if you end up with a score of 900. I have read a bunch of people posting they are scoring the same on both settings (thus the low score can not be taken very seriously).

Good plan, i will give it a shot when I get home from work tonight

Been playing Beta. Seems promising despite some glaring balance issues that should be easy fixes.

I'm a bit worried about the surplus system (apparently after 8 hours worth of exp for any job, you lose an increasing % of your exp which would suck). There's so much outcry against it, they might do away with it. It seems like a ploy to keep people paying for FF11 IMO. I'm also a bit worried that the game won't focus on endgame, which would be a shame because that's where FF11 really shined.

Anyway, my brother and a bunch of IRL friends and I have all pre-ordered the collector's edition (comes out a week early), so I'll be playing it the day it comes out (save for a couple days off for WCOOPs).

If anyone here I know is gonna play, PM me and we can coordinate being on the same server. A bunch of core members from my FF11 LS will probably be sticking together in FF14 even though we all quit FF11 1.5 years ago (although I did have to log my char back in to get to 80... and Abyssea sucked me back in to playing 1-2 events a week with our old "sister LS")

The details for the FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test are described below.

Operating Procedure
Schedule:
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 2:00 (GMT)

*The Open Beta Test will be online continuously for 24 hours a day.
*Maintenance and any other announcements will be posted accordingly.

*Information on testing dates and times will also be posted on the official FINAL FANTASY XIV Twitter feed.
http://twitter.com/FF_XIV_JP
http://twitter.com/FF_XIV_EN
http://twitter.com/FF_XIV_DE
http://twitter.com/FF_XIV_FR

Log-in Capacity
During the initial stages of the beta test, the number of players allowed to be logged in at any given time will be limited, with capacity to gradually increase as adjustments are performed on server load. Should the maximum capacity already be reached when you attempt to log in, a message will appear indicating that the world is currently congested, and you will be asked to try again in a short while. At this time you will be placed on a waiting list in the order of attempted log-in time. To maintain your position on the waiting list, you must initiate the log-in procedure again within ten minutes of your first attempt.

Feedback Submission
While playing, testers who have been asked to submit opinions on anything at all regarding topics such as game balance issues, settings that you may have found difficult to understand, and features that you felt were inconvenient, unintuitive, or required further explanation are asked to use the feedback hread, and for those testers who have been assigned the task of reporting bugs are asked to use the bug report form.

You know I never really thought of the surplus thing keeping people playing 11, thats a good point. I haven't played 11 in a while. I didn't log in to level any of my jobs to 80 because I burnt myself out on 11. After killing every HNM and essentially dominating the entire servers HNM scene, you get burnt out quickly. I do have some friends asking me to resub for the next update because supposedly brd is getting ballad 3(i have a ghorn) and they want to see how crazy that is going to be. Alot of the people from my old LS will be playing 14 but we've all decided its going to be more casual. No more 24 hour camping of the HNMs for us.

I'm so glad I did each king / camped HNM no more than a few times. That was by far the least enjoyable part of the game to me. Spending 3 hours working towards a goal is ok. Spending 3 hours waiting, waiting waiting... not ok. Spending 3 hours waiting only for a small chance at having an NM to fight... definitely not ok.

Btw, can't confirm ballad 3, but you also get SJ refresh next update (and convert from the last one).

Well we didn't really have to worry about competition. If another LS tried to camp against us, we would load up the bots and out claim them until people would grow tired of trying and give up. Also camping stuff like Tiamat and Khimaira overnight wasn't so much an issue since we had a good amount of Russian players and could cover alot of timezones.

are the last couple posts an indication of how this game is going to end up?

I doubt it. I'm not sure what the end game is going to be but if I had to guess it will be more raid style like wow.

Def not. SE has made drastic efforts to add instanced events to avoid the giant mistake they made with the 3 hour "raid camps" early on in the game.

Lol @ IF.

Back in the days that king camping got attention on Asura, Aery often had 100+ people. Nice server...

Edit: I don't have the slightest idea what it's been like the past 2 years.

Don't get me wrong, there was always a new LS popping up who showed their face at camps, but they would soon lose interest since we would lose maybe 1 claim every 2 weeks. Things like tiamat and khim we had 0 competition since we had a holding party at all camps. This wasn't a holding team of mains, these were spare characters. Most people had 2+ characters and people swapped info all the time.

I have no idea wtf u guys are talking about

but I plan on buying FFXIV and I look forward to enjoying a great game (hopefully)

anyone know if you can pre-download the beta client before tomorrow?

No idea but I hope you can just batch the closed beta client or its going to take me awhile to download it again.

I found the links to the beta login, but obviously don't have one. Do you assume that they will just be handing out beta accounts through the open beta on the 1st through their site?

Thanks in advance

i think the link below will lead to it [edit: if you are EN that is], OB got postponed though for now.

http://entry.ffxiv.com/na/index.html

Got my open beta key. Beta is shaky right now, seems like some people are in, some people can't get in. (I can't get in, that's why I'm on 2+2)

lame, i been trying to get into beta since yesterday night