Open Beta for Final Fantasy XIV Postponed
The open beta for the PC version of Final Fantasy XIV was slated to begin today, however Square Enix has put it on hold.
Earlier Tuesday Square Enix announced that the open beta for its upcoming MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV would begin later in the evening at 10pm EST. The news stemmed from a Twitter post that read: "The FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test begins on Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 2:00 (GMT)! We hope to see everyone participate!"
However apparently plans have changed. According to the company, the open beta test has been postponed due to "a confirmation of critical bugs." A new schedule for the open beta will be released at a later date. Additionally, the issuing of registration codes for the open beta will also be postponed. Client downloads are suspended until a later date.
Final Fantasy XIV for the PC is slated for a worldwide release on September 30, 2010. A Collector's Edition is also planned, scheduled to hit retail shelves a week prior to the Standard release. The PlayStation 3 won't see the sci-fi/fantasy MMORPG until sometime in March 2011.
The game takes place on the content of Eorzea with additional areas available to explore in Hydaelyn. Unlike Final Fantasy XI--which used experience points and level progression--Final Fantasy XIV will utilize a skill-based progression system similar to Final Fantasy II. There will also be less emphasis on group play, and weapon use will apparently alter character development.
Current players of the closed beta will be able to transfer their characters over to the open beta. The latest patch to the Final Fantasy XIV client supposedly weighs around 1.2 GB. Stay tuned to Square Enix for more updates on the open beta status.
This is what developers need to be doing, so they don't release a sloppy product. It's the essence of a beta.
I can wait though, cause in the meantime Ill get a few more chances to finish up FFXIII.
I think squeenix fails to remember that they need people to play the game, and not many have that kind of setup :|
Are you serious? Somehow I really doubt that. Considering that the benchmark program only used two cores, that makes no sense at all...
I have seen several mention that, yet when I run the benchmark it taxes four cores, odd.
Overall I was unimpressed with it as a MMO for todays standards. While the sounds and Animations were top notch (and a huge increase in sound quality/choice vs Aion) its not enough to have me want to give it a full swing go for a good while.
Interesting game, interesting world, but has too many things that have already been done, proven not good, and used anyway with to little of what has been proven good integrated.
Just my $.02
The benchmark used 4 cores with windows reporting 20 and 30 percent use on each one running on my AMD Phenom II X4 965... Are you sure it only uses 2 cores?
If you check out different bench scores you find the graphics cards are the bottleneck for most systems. A friend of mine was able to get the closed beta running and looking half decent on his laptop with only an Nvidia 8600 with 512MB of video ram. I think he has a dual core CPU but no idea which one.
Besides, this is or should be the strategy for all PC games. Take Doom 3 for example. It raped thousand dollar rigs when it was released. Now, I can run it on a $500 (maybe less) rig on max settings. Doom 3 and other games based on its engine look good even by today's standards. If they had geared it to run on max setting for PCs back in 2004, it would have looked Ok then and look like utter poop today. (At least, this is what I hope is happening. The alternative is the game was coded by a million monkeys until something that compiled popped out).
*recommended*, not minimum required. TBH, it is a much better approach to have the option of cranking up the graphics than being stuck with muddy Walt Disney graphics that WoW has. Whoops, I said the W word. Also the people that play FF I would be in general on the average have a higher intelligence about computers overall and wouldn't have to worry about such issues.