Final Fantasy XIV:A Realm Reborn’s development (part)


A Realm Reborn’s development has had a single, overarching theme: “change.” In what’s certainly a departure for the old guard at Square-Enix, the company has kept players in the loop through its Letter from the Producer series, highlighting upcoming features and balance tweaks.
 
This theme of change extends beyond rebuilding the game’s broken version 1.0 – Square-Enix is promising frequent major additions to the world of Eorzea. So what can players expect from A Realm Reborn in the near future? Simply put: more of everything.
 
 
Beyond 2.1
 
We don’t know Square-Enix’s longterm plan for Final Fantasy XIV Gil, but suggestions continue to flow into Square-Enix from the player community – some of which have been explicitly acknowledged by the development team. The suggested items include the ability to stay active in Duty Finder when a chocobo companion is present (currently players in parties, including those with just a single player character and a computer-controlled companion, cannot be queued in Duty Finder), allowing chocobo companions to fill empty slots during dungeon runs, and a capability for resetting healer, DPS, and tank skills assigned to a chocobo companion.
 
Players have also requested the inclusion of several iconic jobs in the Final Fantasy series, including Red Mage and Dark Knight, along with additional base classes to support their inclusion into A Realm Reborn. Yoshida has mentioned a desire to include additional casting jobs like Red Mage and Blue Mage, as well as more stealth-oriented occupations like Thief and Ninja.
 
 
 
Player Housing
 
A Player Housing system is also being introduced in FF XIV’s 2.1 update. Eventually allowing players to purchase individual houses of three different sizes, at first this feature will be limited to Free Companies only.  While rumored to be incredibly expensive, owning a home offers several significant benefits, including up to 380 different decorations, chocobo raising (of which very little is known about at this time),  the ability to acquire various crafting and leveling buffs via housing structures, and more.
 
At TGS, A Realm Reborn’s Producer Naoki Yoshida mentioned that plans are in the works to implement common workspaces allowing players to work together to craft larger items (as opposed to just single-player equipment).
 
PvP
 
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s PvP implementation, known as The Wolves’ Den, will be making an appearance in the very near future.  Designed for 8v8 and 4v4 battles and accessible through Duty Finder, both existing groups and matched groups will be able to battle it out for glory and in-game rewards. Specific gear will be available to wear during PvP matches, and the team is working on implementing equipment and other rewards that can only be earned through winning PvP skirmishes. How existing PvE gameplay systems will be balanced to support PvP is still not entirely clear, though Yoshida did mention that certain player skills will not be available during PvP.

Elder Scrolls character change course

As versatile and deep as the series is, it wasn’t until Skyrim that The Elder Scrolls started generating somewhat attractive player characters. Looks like they’ve nailed attractive character creation for The Elder Scrolls Online.

 
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, released in 2006, was a huge improvement, but the characters in general looked a bit frumpy.
2011′s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim generated pretty humanoid classes, but the non-humans weren’t quite right.
And now we’ve come to The Elder Scrolls Online, perfecting Runescape Gold the look of both humanoids and non-human races.
Players can adjust height and weight, markings, hairstyles and then go in deep, micro-managing specific traits until you’ve got the perfect avatar.
The result is not just gorgeous characters, but characters in all shapes and sizes, believably rendered in a living and breathing world. How good is The Elder Scrolls Online‘s character creation? As Evan Narcisse pointed out to me…
In a massively multiplayer online game, where you’ll be mingling with thousands of other players, a focus on creating compelling characters is one of the keys to success.

A Realm Reborn server transfers free from Oct. 15 to Oct. 21 in Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV promises 'fairly substantial' first update
Square Enix today announced that the World Transfer Service will open Oct. 15–and just to make sure everybody can group up with their friends, transfers will be free through Oct. 21.
Users will be able to transfer their characters from the Final Fantasy XIV Gil  Mog Station, though certain worlds may be unavailable because of fluctuating populations. More than a million players have registered a month into the game’s launch, after all.
It’s perfect timing if you want to celebrate All Saints’ Wake with formerly distant friends: the Halloweeny event decks out the world of Eorzea with costumes and suitably spooky decor, and opportunities to be tricked and treated in a new quest which stars a roving circus troupe. It will run from Oct. 18 to Nov. 1.
We already enjoyed Square’s resurrected MMORPG quite a bit, but more is on the way. Check out the video below for a look at FFXIV’s upcoming PvP arena Wolves’ Den, which sets two teams of four heroes against each other.

New Elder Scrolls Online video shows off character creation

For some players, getting the unique look of their character just right is the first step to enjoying an MMO, a fact the Elder Scrolls Online devs understand. In this new video, Art Director Jared Carr not only explains that the team wanted to offer a robust customization system for FFXIV Gil  characters, but he demonstrates the system as well.
Players can watch as Carr walks through character creation, showing off the multitude of sliders and palettes available for both the body and the face. From defining your physique to skin color to separate body and face tattoos, players will find plenty of options to create their own look. You can see all the details for yourself in the video after the break.
Source:New Elder Scrolls Online video shows off character creation

Two new character classes: the Assassin and the Druid.

A fifth act taking place in and around Mount Arreat in the northern Barbarian Highlands, with an additional act boss, Baal.

Many new weapons and new pieces of armor:
Runes can be placed into sockets and provide different bonuses from gems.

Diablo III to shut down auction house next March

Using Horadric Cube, needed quest item for Act 2 and runes as recipes, one can empower the items.

“Crafted items” are very similar to rare items but they cannot be found in chests or dropped by monsters. They can be created with the Horadric Cube and the right ingredients. They have Runescape Gold 3-4 fixed properties that will enhance the items.

“Runewords” are very powerful bonuses that are granted to an item when specific runes are socketed in a specific order.

“Jewels” gain the same random bonuses that items can. These can be placed into sockets. They have the same effect no matter what the base item is. Unique jewels are “Rainbow Facets” which have different bonuses to a certain element.

Ethereal items that are normally more powerful than their standard counterparts, but they have lowered durability and cannot be repaired.

Charms that can be kept in the inventory and provide passive bonuses.

Class-specific items that can only be used by a certain character, e.g. Claws for an Assassin.

Additional unique and set items, including class-specific sets.
An expanded stash for storing items—two times the size of the original stash.

An alternate weapon/shield/spell setup that can be switched to via a hotkey in gameplay.

Hirelings can now follow the player through all the Acts. They can also be equipped with armor and a weapon, can gain their own experience (originally they leveled up with the player), can be healed by potions, and can be resurrected when killed.

The game can now be played at 800×600 resolution, up from 640×480.

I’m not sure the html codes to use to put all of that in a quote box so forgive me if this is annoying to read. Most of this already seems to be in Diablo 3 but I think the reason LoD seemed so massive before I actually looked at what all it included is just how much it changed the game. What they seem to be proposing now is changes to bring it in line with what the console version has and a new act/class. Not much in the way of advancing the game though, really.