There’s going to be a beta! No wait it’s postponed… BUT WAIT it’s starting tomorrow! Square Enix (henceforth now referred to as Squeenix) have been toying with the emotions of gamers all over the world within a 72 hour period. Others like me got an email on 31st August to say the open beta will begin on 1st September for registration. Later that day, Squeenix announced that it will be postponed due to unforeseen problems with the game. A very drastic move from my point of view considering there were 10 hours left till registration; a critical problem no doubt. This worries me, the game is due for release in 4 weeks and now I wonder if this date will be kept.

However, said problems were ironed out and registration commenced on 2nd September, or so I thought. You see there are 4 stages for obtaining your open beta privilege:

1) You need a Squeenix account.
2) You need to go to the Beta Test Application site to obtain a registration code.
3) Use the code to tie it to your Squeenix account to activate the open beta.
4) Download the client and all updates.

Sounds simple? Actually no, because within 20 minutes of the registration being open, the application website crashed and burned under the weight of thousands of people trying to apply at the same time. Busy messages abound, but perseverance paid off and I managed to get a code via email. Some were not so lucky and issuance of codes were temporarily suspended. The people who got the raw end of the deal were the players from the closed beta in the US. Squeenix issued this statement:

Between 19:00 and 19:50 (PDT) on Sep. 1, 2010, an incorrect notice saying “Participants of closed beta test do not need to obtain new registration code for the open beta test.” was being made on FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test Application Site.

Participants of closed beta test also need to obtain and register dedicated registration code for the open beta test.

Oh dear. But there were more hurdles ahead…

My account was hooked up but what about downloading the client and updates? Getting the client is easy as it was only 150mb in size, but the updates, oh the horror. The client update mechanism uses P2P and quite frankly it failed spectacularly, and the fact they need more bandwidth, way more. Instead, people have been uploading the files required so you can download them manually, I heartily recommend this. This website tells you what you need to do. The game also kept crashing at the logon screen or you cannot connect to the lobby server. They really need to address this before release day.

So you’ve done all that, is it any good then?

It looks very pretty so I will give them a thumbs up for that. But the game seems rough around the edges; it could be a bit more intuitive such as having the ability to put pin marks on the map and the battle system can be  more refined. I kept getting messages about not facing the monster when I am standing right in front of it, slightly frustrating. When you first enter the game, it can seem a bit bewildering. What exactly should you be doing? I created a Lalafell character with the cutest voice possible, I entered an instance and a cut scene kicked in (there are a lot of cut scenes) which triggered combat with a troll. I managed to kill it with my lance. I have to say, killing a troll the size of a house with a little Lalafell was most satisfying. By the way, the Lalafells are sickeningly cute. You will either love them or loath them. There are other characters to choose from as well which might be more palatable.

The game can be quite unforgiving. For example, you kill a few marmots no big deal. Then you run into some kind of arachnid and… boom headshot, you’re dead. And this is all in the starting area; you soon learn that you can’t kill everything but that is all part of the exploration. When you click on a monster, there are coloured icons to indicate difficulty; there are no level indicators on them and it is not immediately apparent so tread carefully. As a general rule, stay away from reds but you will die, a lot. However when you die, you can return back to the last Aetheryte you encountered, which is like a warp point found in camps or other main areas. You will get penalised on HP and skill recharge times.

Final Fantasy XIV might seem daunting for some, there’s not much hand holding and you need to explore things yourself. People who are more familiar with how Squeenix works in their games or have played XI previously will feel quite at home. Upon first impressions though, the boys at Squeenix will be hard pressed to release this now in its current state. Stability is the main issue here, once you get into the game with a few friends though it’s a lot of fun.  There are some hilarious moments; I was harvesting branches and my buddy runs past with a roadrunner chasing after him because he wandered too far and didn’t check its difficulty rating. Cries of “run for your lives!” often occurs while playing. I took the liberty of dancing on his corpse while he figured out how to warp back.

There is one plus, a very big plus. You can play with anyone anywhere in the world, as long as they reside on the same game world as you. Cross region gaming has been something of a bugbear, especially for MMOs, so I was very happy about this. Final Fantasy XIV is constantly being updated on a daily basis, a testament to how much work needs to be done but fingers crossed for release day.

I couldn’t possibly end this post without giving you some screenies and as a bonus I made a little gamplay video with my Lalafell. Enjoy!

About Motoko

First embraced the inner geek at the age of 10 with a Commodore 64 and programming in BASIC. Avid PC gamer, Gundam Gunpla builder, manga editor and anime enthusiast. Loves Mountain Dew and Ghost in the Shell. Twitter: @Motoko_K

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.