FFXIV "When is it coming?" Thread

[justamemory]

Seems the 2010 Release date was Re-Confirmed ( http://twitter.com/shovelface88 ) on the 24th of April by none other than Yoichi Wada, the President and CEO of Square Enix.

This should put those minds at ease that were praying for no delay... at least for a while...

http://ff14wiki.info/?FF_14_NEWS#vee99208

It's in Japanese, he goes on to say that it will in fact be calendar year 2010, not fiscal year, which means we have AT MOST, around 8 months.

also at that wiki, a portion google transaltes to: "The official website and so far the "2010 plan" was a double-barreled writing and, in this statement be said to be confirmed officially by the end of the service starts in December."

December!? :D

best xmas evar iSuppose.

EDIT:

"Square Enix has been staging an alpha test for Final Fantasy XIV over the past few weeks. While the test is limited to a few participants, major Japanese sites like Famitsu.com and Impress Watch have been permitted to post impressions complete with screenshots.

The print version of Famitsu got even greater insight onto the game through a four page interview with producer Hiromichi Tanaka and director Nobuaki Komoto in this week's issue. The two FF MMORPG VIPs provided an update both on the alpha test and development in general.

Tanaka began by issuing an apology to test players for some of the problems Square Enix has been having with stabilizing the servers. They're gradually fixing things through updates, he said.

So what's with all the issues? Tanaka explained that based off experience with FFXI, they anticipated a 50% simultaneous connection rate for the game. However, the Japanese test players turned out to be extremely hardcore FFXI fans, and the access rate was higher than expected. Compared to Japan, North America and Europe did not have as much of a problem with servers going down.

One of the fixes they made came in an April 15 update, which extended the login wait time 10 minutes and added the ability to see how many people are waiting to connect.

It may be hard to believe, but the FFXIV development staff is actually being told to avoid logging into the game. Komoto explained that Square Enix is doing this in order to allow more test players to log in to the game.

Tanaka is an exception, though. He sits in front of his computer just like everyone else when testing starts. If you see a player named "Azagba Tanaka," that's the FFXIV producer.

Explained Tanaka, while the development staff can see the play logs, it's difficult to get a feel for the actual play state of the players. Tanaka acts as a representative, investigating how things are actually going by logging in for himself.

The two were asked to provide an updated schedule for the alpha and beta tests. They're currently at the first step, explained Tanaka, where they're seeing if they can run three tests a week. They're aiming to make the game stable enough so that players can get in a proper play session.

As for how long the tests will run, Komoto said that they originally had a time frame in place, but ended up encountering greater server stability problems, forcing them to extended this a bit. They'll decide what to do once players have built up their characters a certain amount.

Regarding that character growth, Tanaka said to expect character data to get wiped out mid way through the alpha test. The reason for this is that they have two different patterns for character growth speed that they want to try out. Once they've gathered enough data for the current pattern, they'll wipe out the player data and try out the second pattern.

Test players should get used to having their data wiped, as this is something that will happen repeatedly during both the alpha and beta tests.

Asked when the game will switch from alpha to beta, Tanaka wouldn't give a clear answer. The next step for the game, he said, will be to expand from the current single world to multiple worlds, and to also increase the test player count many times. They'll call this phase of the test either beta 1 or alpha 2. They'll switch to the beta naming when they feel they've readied a version of the game that more closely resembles the final product.

Plans are also in place to allow players worldwide to log in and play together, rather than the current region-separate alpha tests. Tanaka said to expect this change to happen when the game switches to 24 hour operation.

Outside of the alpha and beta testing components, the magazine quizzed the two on general development for FFXIV.

The game's graphics production is currently complete. The planning and programming sides of the game have some final tuning work left.

Even though he said the graphics are complete, there will be some presentational changes. The town of Limsa Lominsa, for instance, will see some major lighting changes.

Asked to give a percentage completion, Tanaka and Komoto went back and forth a bit but decided on 65%. They tossed out numbers as low as 10%, though, with Komoto explaining that this figure represents the amount of FFXIV that can be seen in the alpha test.

The alpha test is currently for PC players only. But the PS3 version of the game is being developed parallel to the PC version, assured Tanaka. They're aiming to have both versions begin service at the same time."

Source: http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/201.../ffxiv_update/

[Vauce]

Not that it matters, but your shovelface guy was quoting Elmer, who provided the translation of the news.

http://twitter.com/BretMayer/status/12746872135

[Agito]

I already knew it's coming out in December 2010 because my right side brain told me so. I originally thought of October or November for a realease date but once i seen the news that the Alpha was being extended i said yep, it's going to be tight at the end of the year for sure.

[Satyr]

I suspect you are actualy in cahoots with the Square-Enix CEO while leading the BG forums on and acting like you know the same amount as the rest of us. I got my eye on you Agito!

[Katlan]

it was alrdy known it was going to have a 2010 release, ppl just like to speculate that SE doesn't know what they are talking about. My Guess will be a Sept/October release, as long as the game moves into Beta1 in May

[Shuichi]

Well, at least they're all singing the same tune. I'll be stalk...er, I mean I'll be watching you SE.

[Eaglestrike]

I'm disappointed, honestly. The longer they take to release the game, the better it's going to be. I'd rather have a polished game with plenty of content ready than risk getting to max level and having nothing to do so quickly.

[Hyan]

That only depends on your attitude.

[Jinko]

You were expecting a 2011 release even though they said 2010? you only have yourself to blame for the disappointment.

Hopefully its not too close to christmas or else everyones getting an Orange as a present

[Eaglestrike]

You were expecting a 2011 release even though they said 2010? you only have yourself to blame for the disappointment.

Hopefully its not too close to christmas or else everyones getting an Orange as a present

I'd rather see that the company wants to release the best product they can and delays release to allow them to accomplish this task than stick to an early promise and force things out there.

There's a reason Blizzard never releases dates, just so they don't have to make the decision of releasing content early or deal with people QQing about a pushed back release. It's a smart decision.

And community perception of a game in the first couple weeks will make or break an MMO. No one gives a shit about Vanguard, AoC, Warhammer, etc. these days all because launch was terrible, no matter how many improvements have come to the game since, everyone still thinks they're bad.

[Franzer]

i would imagine come E3 we'll see a pretty solid release date, if worst case scenario a beta schedule.

[nomad2637]

I'm disappointed, honestly. The longer they take to release the game, the better it's going to be. I'd rather have a polished game with plenty of content ready than risk getting to max level and having nothing to do so quickly.

Well, gotta remember that the game started development right after XI was released like 7-8 years ago. I'm sure they have a ton of stuff finished that they aren't telling us just so we won't speculate and force perceptions onto a game that isn't released. They say they are aiming for player support in the development stages but I'm sure it's all a guise to create some sort of a community.

[Hyan]

Well, gotta remember that the game started development right after XI was released like 7-8 years ago. I'm sure they have a ton of stuff finished that they aren't telling us just so we won't speculate and force perceptions onto a game that isn't released. They say they are aiming for player support in the development stages but I'm sure it's all a guise to create some sort of a community.

Once CoP was almost done, iirc. Komoto switched from directing that expansion to directing XIV, so I guess it started around then.

There's a reason Blizzard never releases dates, just so they don't have to make the decision of releasing content early or deal with people QQing about a pushed back release. It's a smart decision.

To be honest, SE released the date pretty damn late in the development cycle. Most companies can't wait even few years before they announce the game, XIV has been in the making for at least 4½ years already.

I doubt they'd suddenly release the date after all that wait if they weren't fairly sure they can make the timeline. That means October release at best, and if shit needs fixing, December (and beyond). But even if it's released in December doesn't mean it's full of glitches.

[Jinko]

I'd rather see that the company wants to release the best product they can and delays release to allow them to accomplish this task than stick to an early promise and force things out there.

There's a reason Blizzard never releases dates, just so they don't have to make the decision of releasing content early or deal with people QQing about a pushed back release. It's a smart decision.

And community perception of a game in the first couple weeks will make or break an MMO. No one gives a shit about Vanguard, AoC, Warhammer, etc. these days all because launch was terrible, no matter how many improvements have come to the game since, everyone still thinks they're bad.

Just because they confirmed 2010 doesn't mean they have to stick to that date, developers fall behind and change release dates all the time.

SE will release the game when its ready I'm sure, most people who are remotely interested in the game will make their decision in Open Beta or probably long before that.

[Eaglestrike]

Just because they confirmed 2010 doesn't mean they have to stick to that date, developers fall behind and change release dates all the time.

SE will release the game when its ready I'm sure, most people who are remotely interested in the game will have made their decission in Open Beta or probably long before that.

There are going to be plenty of people who wait to hear if other people are liking the game. The "competitive" players will at least get their way into open beta and play as much as they can to test it out, but there are people without the time/drive to do that that'll base the decision to switch on what they hear from others who are actually playing the game.

You need to realize just how many other people are out there. There are plenty of gamers out there that still don't even know FFXIV exists, lol. And lots of MMO players with no interest in FFXIV. Some early positive reviews from their peers could change that.

[Hyan]

I think SE as usual won't market this game much and leaves the marketing to the fans. More and more people will find the game if it gets favorable reviews from the press and players.

They said they'll try to lure in "normal" FF players, and I don't think that's too hard. They just need to get rid of that "boohoo it costs money to play" attitude.

[Katlan]

I'm disappointed, honestly. The longer they take to release the game, the better it's going to be. I'd rather have a polished game with plenty of content ready than risk getting to max level and having nothing to do so quickly.

You honestly expect them to rush a release if its not ready? they have PLENTY of time to release it. 90% of the alpha problems are connection issues. that says a lot... so when that gets stabilized most of the other stuff is just fine tuning, balancing, ect...

[Jinko]

Duno Eagle, those who don't (or won't) know about FF14 are the kind of people who won't consider it in the first place, many of the people on WoW that I speak to have heard about FF14, some look forward to it most aren't interested and have already made their decision to stick with Cataclysm.

I don't underestimate how many people are out there, I just know that FF14 is going to start of a niche game with mostly FF11 players and FF fans.

The quality and polish isn't going to effect that its the sucessor to FF11 which lets face it was hardly the most intuitive MMO out there, so I think SE have bigger things to worry about if they want to appeal to the casual masses.

[Eaglestrike]

I don't even mean the casual masses. For the most part I hope it doesn't appeal to the casual masses in some way as part of me wants to escape the community of WoW (only to be reminded that the non-casual community is just as stupid I'm sure).

I have one friend though that's looking forward to the potential of FFXIV on the basis that it's going to be for the PS3. And not only does this mean he wouldn't have to build a new computer, but also that if he did get a new computer for the game he would play the MMO with his wife, as she's into FF games more than he is. Whether major reviewers and other players enjoy the game could very well be what sways him to try it. I doubt he'll trust me because I'm considered a FF fanboy, lol. And he's a smart, mature player, just a DnD geek, never got that into FF's.

[Tulun]

While I don't think the first 2 weeks will make or break the game at all (I have a feeling 11 was probably total shit at launch.. and it didn't break the game), the mass appeal might be affected by the initial launch.

But I think the difference will be how bloated on bodies it will get. If 11 is profitable, 14 will be profitable, unless it's total unworking nonsense.. but that seems pretty unlikely.