Kindred - Kindred - Free Company & Linkshell - Balmung

As you may have read in the Developer's Blog, FINAL FANTASY XIV had a booth at this weekend's Niconico Chokaigi 2 event at the Makuhari Messe convention center just outside Tokyo.

In case you missed it, you can read up on it and check out the crazy photos here:

• Smile Smile Joy Joy
  
• More than Meets the Odd Eye
  
• Rear Window
  
• Center Stage
  
• All's Well?
  

Naoki Yoshida revealed some new information and important dates regarding the beta test schedule and the game's retail release!  DualShockers has provided the following summary:

From DualShockers:

Day 1:  Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Release Window Confirmed for the Summer, PS4 Version Hinted, New Info Revealed

The Nico Nico Chokaigi 2 event is in full swing at the Makuhari Messe Tokyo and Square Enix is holding a large Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn stage event in collaboration with Windows 8.

During yesterday’s part of the event livestreamed on Nico Nico quite a few interesting information were revealed as director and producer Naoki Yoshida (disguised as a white-haired miqo’te for the occasion) answered questions from the fans.

Here is a summary of the information that was shared (I may have missed something, but I think I got most of it. You can find further info from day two of the event here):

• The game’s release window has been confirmed for this summer simultaneously for PC and PS3.
• A release for the PS4 is very possible, as the team would like to reach an audience as wide as they can. A final decision will be taken when the time is right.
• There will be new music created by Nobuo Uematsu (Yoshida already confirmed this when I recently interviewed him).
• There are plans to release the soundtrack. It may be part of the collector’s edition.
• New TV commercials are in production for all the different markets: Japan, North America and Europe. They will debut in late May or early June.
• The current phase of the beta includes approximately 580,000 people, and many more will be added with phase 3.
• Yoshida can’t say when beta phase 3 will start exactly, as it depends on Sony’s certification of the PS3 client (Edit: This was rectified during day 2 of the event, as you can read here).
• The new Benchmark software that will include character creation is in development and will be released between phase 3 and phase 4.
• Square Enix is planning to release collectibles related to the game after launch.
• A new organization called “Clan of Dawn” (Akatsuki no Ketsumei) will play an important role in the story of the new game. A new primary NPC named Alphinaud is a member of the clan and will be voiced by Shinnosuke Tachibana (you can see the character’s portrait below).

• Minifilia (a relevant character in the Ul’dah original storyline of Final Fantasy XIV, you can check my story recap column if you want to know who she is) will play a very relevant role in the storyline of A Realm Reborn.
• Thancred (again, you can check my story recap column to learn about him) will be voiced by Yuichi Nakamura a very popular voice actor in Japan that lent his vocals cords to many relevant characters like Alto Saotome in Macross Frontier and Cid Raines in Final Fantsy XIII.
• The final location of the Gold Saucer is still undecided.
• A smartphone companion app will be released allowing players to access character status, a database, their friend list and features related to the Free Company.
• The PvP Coliseum will be added during phase 4 of the beta, but all PvP points earned will be reset at release to be fair to those not participating to the beta test.
• Even those that didn’t play the original Final Fantasy XIV will able to enjoy the story, that will be more similar to a classic Final Fantasy game.
• At the beginning there won’t be Japanese-style costumes like Kimono, but when the visual style of the game will be solidified, adding different styles will be considered.

From DualShockers:

Day 2:  Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Beta 3 Slated for Early June, Preorders for Late May, More Info from Nico Nico Chokaigi 2

Today, during the second day of Nico Nico Chokaigi 2 at the Makuhari Messe in Tokyo (you can find my recap of the first day here) Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida gave more information on his plans for the game during a series of Q&A sessions held as part of a stage event in partnership with Microsoft and Windows 8.

Without further ado, here’s a recap of some of the information that was shared:

• Phase 3 of the beta test should begin in early June. Yoshida apologized for the delay and said that open beta will come as soon as possible afterwards.
• Preorders of the game should be available for late May, around the 20th.
• Yoshida will talk about the release date of the game next month. It will be during the “hot” period of summer.
• Those that purchased the collector’s edition of Final Fantasy XIV will still get the digital items included in the Collector’s Edition of A Realm Reborn, but not the physical ones.
• Extremely popular voice actress Rie Tanaka (that you can see in the picture above, with a lovely “cat ears” hairstyle) will lend her vocal cords to Gridania’s grand company leader Kan-E-Senna (if you don’t know who she is, you may want to check my FFXIV story recap column here) and primal Garuda.
• A Realm Reborn will support both Nvidia SLI and AMD Crossfire.
• A “Level sync” feature will be added in phase 3. When a player will enter the area of a lower level FATE he’ll be prompted with a confirmation message for level sync. It will be opt-in, and it won’t be automatic, as that could be an annoyance. There will be no need to change equipment, as the stats of the equipment worn at the time will be automatically adjusted to the appropriate level as well.
• Muskets may become usable by players in the future.
• Very large shields (almost as big as a player models) may become available after launch.
• Since Minifilia (again, check my story recap if you don’t know who she is) has become an important character, she’ll have a completely new and sexy costume.
• Composer Naoshi Mizuta said he’d like to participate in scoring A Realm Reborn. Two or three tunes by him may be in at launch. More tracks by various Final Fantasy composers may come after.
• The new President of Square Enix Yosuke Matsuda will possibly appear during an upcoming Letter from the Producer Live broadcast. Probably the one after the next. Yoshida recently had dinner with him. He’s a friendly fellow and a good drinker.
• Yoshida thinks that the global cooldown was a little too long in phase 2 of the beta.
• There will be no Player Killing in the game, just PvP.
• Warriors will change a lot in A Realm Reborn. They won’t be as half-hearted between tanking and damage dealing as in the first incarnation of the game.
• The Fat Chocobo will be introduced with a patch after launch.
• The game is going to launch in the hot summer, so swimsuits will probably be available.
• The plan was to name the servers like classic Final Fantasy monsters like in beta, but people are also fond of the names from the old Final Fantasy XIV, so that option is also being considered.
• Everyone will be able to select the region of the server they wants to play in freely, regardless of where they live.
• Darklight equipment will return in A Realm Reborn.
• Yoshida would really like to make the “Meteor Survivor” polo shirt available for sale to players.
• Battle Regimen will not return in the new game, and will be completely replaced by Limit Breaks.
• Limit breaks up to level 2 will be available in phase 3 of the beta.
• While the new Lodestone will appear with phase 3, Yoshida would like to start testing the smartphone companion app from phase 4, but since the timing also depends on Apple, it may come later with the launch of the game.
• Players will be able to change the interior (wallpaper, flooring, ceiling) of their house, but probably not the exterior, even if there will be different models, to avoid incurring in memory allocation problems.
• There will be no benchmark for the PS3. It’s a console, so it would basically just be like watching a trailer.
• Yoshida would like to introduce a “lore library” in the game.
• There will be ways to share items and currency within a Free Company.
• Phase 3 of the beta will include almost all the character creation options. It’s possible that it will include all of them, but probably a few more will be added for release.
• No starting city-state will give any functional advantage over the other two.
• Jobs will be available from phase 3 of the beta.
• Optimization of the PS3 client is pretty good now, and it can display 30 or 40 characters at the same time without straining the engine.
• Ramuh and Leviathan will come after launch, followed by Shiva. Plans are proceeding smoothly for their implementation.
• After release new content will be released at a very aggressive pace via patches.

That’s pretty much all the relevant information I managed to catch (a lot of questions were about Yoshida’s personal tastes, whether about food, games and so forth).

I’m quite sure many will be disappointed by the delay of the third phase of the beta, but with MMORPGs the golden rule is always the same: later is better than rushed, so I can’t say I’m not glad to see that Square Enix is giving the development team enough time to polish the game as much as possible.

But in order that our customers can be catch a cheating spouse and did not ask like questions in new areas we will all tell openly. The answer how to catch a cheating husband and tell that nothing terrible is that it was not.