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Doom approaches Eorzea. It’s nice to think that we as players won a temporary victory and a brief respite from that oncoming destruction, but let’s face it: We all know from trailers and outside sources that it’s just a momentary win. Cities will burn, lands will be razed, and the best we can hope for is that when we emerge once more, the world is a better place. Final Fantasy XIV is getting a lot of upgrades in version 2.0, but a whole lot of the game is going to be flushed away first.

How long do we have? The rest of the month, certainly. Most of September, probably. More than that? Dubious. So it’s time to start making a bucket list for Eorzea-that-is before it becomes Eorzea-that-was, since we all know that a lot of things are changing by then. I’m not talking about finishing out the storyline missions; if you haven’t already done that, then odds are you’re not too concerned about doing so. I’m talking about the things you need to do in order to prepare for the end, stuff that you should start knuckling down and doing. Maybe some of it won’t be necessary after all, but it’s better to assume that the clock is running for you to take a last look.

Explore Shposhae

More than likely, the current instanced regions in the game will still be there after the version change, but Shposhae is a little less certain. It’s not instanced like the others; it’s really more of an extension of La Noscea, and it’s easy to skip over as you rise in levels. So it’s very possible you’ve never been, and it’s also very possible that after the version update, it won’t be around to check out any longer.

This is a shame because while it’s not the most interesting dungeon, it’s still got some interesting scenery and neat little notorious fights. By your mid-30s, you can safely explore it without any issues, and if you’re at 50, you can definitely search through the whole area and kill anything you want while you’re there. So go ahead and prowl around, check out some of the coffers and notorious monsters, and take some pictures. It’s well worth the look.

Pick up some dated gear

Odds are good that “dated” gear will still be craftable until the changeover, but once 2.0 hits, it’s gone for good. This is especially worth noting for roleplayers because there are some things that you can do with several pieces of dated gear that you can’t do with other equipment. Only dated heavy armor can be slapped on Lancers, for instance. Most dated equipment just has optimal classes and levels rather than required ones. The list goes on, and it all boils down to the simple fact that there’s some neat stuff to be had if you get it before the cutoff.

Roleplayers should put forth the effort to find some of the unique gear that’s good for costuming and not so good for actual stats. Non-roleplayers have less to worry about, since you need to worry about stats more than looks, but there still might be a couple of neat pieces for ambling around town. Depending on the skill levels involved, some of the components needed for dated gear can be nabbed for a song right now, so it’s worth doing the research.

Raise one class of each Discipline to 50

Depending on where you are, this may be less desirable or even not doable. But it’s worth the effort because there are going to be a lot of new things worth exploring once the update hits… and nothing helps exploration like having a nice safe class for exploring. Raising one of each to the level cap gives you plenty of space to learn the new high-end of the game rather than re-learn the leveling march.

If you somehow have all of your classes to an equal point and need advice about which to raise, I’d aim for Conjurer, Botanist, and Culinarian. Food is bound to be useful after the patch, healing is always desirable, and trees seem to be slightly more plentiful than mining points. That having been said, if you’re a 39 Miner, you would be really dumb not to push along to the last few levels.

Pick some classes not to level

Look, there’s going to be a whole lot of new stuff to explore when the update hits. And while you could just go through from the top and blow through everything as a Level 50 Gladiator, that would also be really boring (and annoying to anyone competing with you for quest targets). No, you want to also experience the game from the bottom up, and that means picking out certain things you’re just not going to fool around with right now.

Sometimes, that’s not really possible. I don’t have a single class in War or Magic at less than 20, but I can avoid leveling anything that low. You might have a whole lot of classes at 50, but you can at least steer clear of the handful you don’t have maxed. And if you’ve gotten everything to the level cap already… well, odds are good you’re already in the Legacy program, so you’ll be able to make more characters to patch that hole.

Get your house in order

If you’ve got a lot of superfluous junk in your inventory, I recommend ditching it, crafting with it, or just selling it. We know that we’re losing some space with the update, so you’ll want to pare down to what’s actually important. Selling stuff also nets you some additional cash flow, and I can’t imagine that walking in with a full coin purse will be a bad idea.

Get your jobs unlocked if you’ve been waiting, grab some artifact armor if you can, and generally batten down the hatches. There’s a storm coming.

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Gamescom maketh the good things flow. Today saw Square-Enix releasing a double helping of new FFXIV screenshots and artwork as a preview of what awaits fans in the game’s 2.0 patch. The long-anticipated update, known as A Realm Reborn, is bringing some pretty significant changes to the game.

The new images show off everything from skill effects and mounts to architecture and NPC dialogue. They serve as a mightily shiny glimpse at what’s to come when the patch hits and brings a nearly universal graphical update with it. And chocobo-raising, because what good is a world without chocobo raising?

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On November 1st, it’s the end of the world as we know it. I’ll let you know then how I’m feeling.

All right, the game will still be online for another week or so, but November 1st is the last day that any progress is getting saved. You can go ahead and ignore Final Fantasy XIV after that last server photograph, unless you had an urge to spend all of your gil on airship rides but couldn’t bear the thought of being broke. Not that you’ll even need to worry about that after September 29th if you’re not currently subscribed, as that’s the last chance for people to come back even if it’s just for a short period of time.

It’s hard to avoid looking forward to the end of the game as it stands, and the fact that we have a precise timeframe only exacerbates the problem. We’ve got 45 days until the ending hits, and while I’ve already talked about what to do with the time you have left, there are questions that need to be asked as we look at the numbers.

What are we going to do for the next month?

The story of the current version of the game has come to a conclusion. It’s concluded. All that’s left is to take part in more efforts to keep Eorzea safe and healthy, something we already know is going to fail. (Spoiler alert: Dalamud doesn’t just up and leave.) This is not bad storytelling, but it does raise the question of what in the world we’re supposed to spend the next month doing.

Seriously, odds are good that if you were going to cap out the story, you have done so by now. What’s left is hunting some achievements and apparently dealing with Atomos, who looks uncomfortably similar to his Final Fantasy XI incarnation. Every update along the way has built up to the single conclusion, but now that we’ve got a lull before the end, it’s hard to fill it with activity.

Hopefully, testing will start expanding to people outside of Japan fairly early just to keep player interest up, since otherwise we’re going to have a very long October. Even if we have some sort of Halloween event, it’s going to feel mostly perfunctory, as we’ll be crunched for time to play through it. Plus, once we start hearing more about 2.0 in practice rather than in theory — something that should start happening later this month — odds are good that it’ll either be great (in which case we’ll want to play that version) or be awful (in which case interest in the game will flatline).

So, yeah. Look for more testing and invitations in October. That’s my guess, anyway.

How long will testing last?

I was only involved in the very last portion of Final Fantasy XIV’s testing, but from what I’ve heard, it was an intensely frustrating process. Testers offered feedback while being told explicitly that they weren’t testing the full game, that there was a ton of content just not being shown during the test period. (For those of you uninvolved in the testing altogether, this was a lie.) If Final Fantasy XIV wants to avoid making the same mistakes as the original version, this round of testing should really avoid that specific mistake first and foremost.

Assuming that Naoki Yoshida wants to do this round of testing right — and I’m willing to bet that he does — I think the game needs to have a longer testing period this time around. That means that even if the testing starts right now, it’s going to take longer than three months. It probably needs a minimum of six months in the cooker, pushing its release to be roughly concurrent with Seekers of Adoulin.

A lot of testing has been taking place already, but part of the problem the game had with the first round of testing was that it didn’t give any extra time for player feedback. The game was tested internally, and the beta turned into an extended stress test rather than a test of whether the game worked, had enough content, and was fun to play.

I’m a little worried about this simply because the game already has such a firm timeline for shutdown. That seems to imply that the testing is almost perfunctory, and that doesn’t inspire confidence. If testing already has an end date built-in, you can rest assured that it’s not going to be as rigorous as it ought to be.

Yoshida has gone on record saying that he’s going to be considering player feedback very carefully and using that as the basis for moving on from alpha testing to beta testing and so forth. It’s not that I doubt his intent; it’s that I’ve heard these lines before from the community management team. I’m not disbelieving, but I am taking this with a grain of salt.

How much of now is going to matter?

The other two questions here have answers. This one honestly doesn’t.

Let’s say you have 10 million gil right now. You feel pretty confident that going into version 2.0, you’ll be set. But we don’t actually know that just yet. It could be that everything is balanced around veteran players and your gil is only a pittance. Or it could be that you can basically buy anything in sight from vendors and break markets on a whim. We don’t know how much gil players will be earning regularly, what vendor prices will look like, or what vendors will even sell.

Are all of those crafting items you’ve got on retainer going to be worth anything after the version change? Will they even still be there?

This is an area that I’m hoping to get more communication on in the coming months. If I know full well that there’s no reason to save certain items, I won’t cry over it; I’ll just get rid of them. There are so many things set to change in the new version that we need more information than just a closing date. We need hard data on what won’t matter because in a little over a month, it’ll be too late to act on that information.

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If you’re looking forward to the release of Final Fantasy XIV’s large-scale revamp, you’re probably devouring every piece of information you can find about the game. So you’ll be happy to know that just beyond the cut down yonder lies the latest trailer for the impending relaunch, featuring some recycled footage from previous trailers and some new shots of the game as a whole. Also no voiceovers, if you prefer your information in text form.

What we have seen are elements from the first trailers and some of the bigger group battles, including the Meteor spell. What we haven’t seen is some of the in-game footage, including more group battles showing off combat and some of the new landscapes featured in the relaunch. There’s also a good look at some of the new starter outfits in the game rather than in concept art. If that sounds like enough reason for you, go ahead and check out the full trailer just past the break.

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DerrickSturgill

It is no secret that Square-Enix have had more than a few miss-steps in recent years. Between unrealistic targets and more than a few changes in the upper personnel, it’s clear that all is not as well as it could be in the Enix camp. But Square is a proven survivor and over the last few months has begun to identify why it isn’t quite the company it used to be.

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Few examples illustrate this better than the turbulent tale of Square’s latest online-only entry in to its long running Final Fantasy series. Initially launched in 2010, Final Fantasy XIV was met with a disappointing response from both fans and critics alike, forcing Square-Enix to even apologise to customers for the game’s lack of quality on several occasions. However, despite the damage to the brand, Square are determined to rectify past mistakes and have been hard at work on FFXIV’s re-launch, aptly titled Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. So the question is, will the damage that was done by its predecessor be forgotten or is FFXIV doomed in any form? By the looks of things it seems Square may back on the right track, but with the wrong business model.

Back in 2002, Square-Enix made a bold move in the release of the online-only Final Fantasy XI. Up until its launch, Square’s online gaming presence was at a minimum and Final Fantasy was a strictly offline experience, leading many to wonder if this was really a smart move for the Japanese gaming goliath. However, between an emerging MMO market and an incredibly unique experience, FFXI made a name for itself as one of the more hardcore MMORPG’s on the market. This allowed it to appeal on a much less beginner friendly level than the likes of World of Warcraft and actually made it stand apart from the competition, for both positive and negative reasons.

Unfortunately for Square one of these negatives is somewhat detrimental to the MMO business model. Namely a non-beginner friendly system can mean your userbase will struggle to grow and although FFXI was (and still is) an incredibly rewarding experience at later points, many were put off by the time and effort required to reach the more interesting end game content.

Despite many of these elements being dummied down with patches, FFXI suffered because of its nature of design.  It is clear however that Enix has taken heed of this when approaching FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, offering instead a much more friendly first 10-20 hours.

After choosing a race, job type and designing your character, FFXIV drops you into whichever major city pertains to the aforementioned character, much like every MMO of its type. As you may expect you are then introduced to many of the game’s elements slowly over the first 10-20 hours, as well as learning more about your job role. It’s all standard MMO fair, giving experience for almost every action and the opportunity for an incredibly large amount of side quests from the word go. Most side and story quests (at least early on) require killing a certain amount of a particular creature or finding so many of a certain item for an NPC giving the whole thing a formulaic, fetch quest feel. It’s safe to say that any MMO veteran will not be surprised by the content on show here, however it is delivered well, simultaneously leaving little to complain or write home about.

This mix of high and mediocre quality is also present when it comes to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s story. Although presenting an interesting tale right from the opening, it is quickly lost amongst the vast amounts of unnecessary dialogue and focus on questing rather than narrative.

Strangely Final Fantasy XIV on the whole gives the feel of a much older MMO in its structure. Littered with fetch quests and dialogue boxes, it feels more like a throwback to the earlier days of the genre than an attempt to push it into new, exciting territories.

However this is not necessarily a bad thing. The tried and tested MMO structure has proved successful for many years now and FFXIV goes out of its way to present it in the most user friendly and aesthetically pleasing way possible. The game looks great and the menus and interfaces work well, even on a DualShock 3, allowing for a smooth experience regardless of the format.

Where FFXIV: A Realm Reborn really shines and breaks new ground is with its combat and job system. Players are now able to change jobs at any time simply by equipping new gear. More jobs are also unlocked at later points as you progress giving a feeling of freedom to the combat that is rarely seen in an MMO. The combat also controls well across all formats, making it one of the most satisfying elements of the game, keeping you hooked, even if the quest is a little dull.

However, despite all of this there is one fundamental potential flaw in Square-Enix’s new flagship MMO and it comes in the form of their choice of business model. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is set to be a subscription-based MMO costing roughly £10 a month, a system that has not brought success for many in recent times. With MMO’s like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Trek Online being forced to change their strategy post release, it will be interesting to see if FFXIV doesn’t end up in the realms of Free-to-Play within a year or so of it launching.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is in no way a bad game. It is a massive improvement on the games original form and brings a more than competent MMO experience to the gamer. Despite this however, Square has clearly gone for a more traditional structure and business model that could hurt it. With games like Guild Wars 2 not only changing what to expect from the genre, but also doing it with no monthly subscription, Final Fantasy: A Realm Reborn may just be approaching the market with a little too much confidence.