Naoki Yoshida of Final Fantasy XIV has revealed the Magitek Armor upgrade for the game’s 2.0 upgrade, which will arrive sooner for PC subscribers and a bit later for the PS3. The initial design of the Magitek Armor was suited to a male thaumaturge as illustrated on Siliconera. Additionally, the Final Fantasy XIV Version 2.0 upgrade will feature additional gameplay changes, including:

1. Re-organization of class name titles – Siliconera reports that the conjurer and thaumaturge will revert back to its original class specification known as the Black Mage and White Mage, respectively. Aside from older jobs going back to their classic Final Fantasy roots, Yoshida adds that a new playable class identified as the Dragoon will soon become available in the upcoming 2.0 upheaval. The Dragoon will be allegedly accompanied by a Wyvern, though its size and fighting capabilities are yet to be divulged.

2. Mini-games – Finally, Yoshida will like to see Final Fantasy XIV prosper with interesting mini-games that are reminiscent of the activities inside Final Fantasy VII’s Gold Saucer. Will Final Fantasy XIV get another chance to play some asteroid basketball or fight their way out of a penalty-ridden Battle Arena? Our eyes and ears are on Yoshida as he tries desperately to revive Final Fantasy XIV’s fading glow.

Story and Image Source: Siliconera

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The long haul: Final Fantasy XIV is coming to the Vita, Xbox 360, and smart phones

Final Fantasy XIV is an ambitious MMORPG that met all kinds of criticism after its release in September 2010. Final Fantasy XIV crossed paths with Final Fantasy fans and reviewers whom agreed that Final Fantasy XIV damaged Square Enix and its eponymous role playing title because of poor quality of gameplay and drawbacks that could have stimulated SE to come up with another role-playing franchise in replacement for Final Fantasy.

Of course, no matter how Square Enix fails to give the Final Fantasy community what they want, Final Fantasy will always become the center piece for RPG discussion. With or without Final Fantasy XIV continuing its operations as the potential “WoW killer.” Nonetheless, Square Enix is pushing Final Fantasy XIV, despite the fact that the MMO has been negatively received by much of its customers; according to VideoGamer.com, Square Enix is planning to port Final Fantasy XIV on both the PlayStation Vita and Xbox 360.

Naoki Yoshida, Final Fantasy XIV’s director and producer, says that:

“Of course, because the game is developed on the PC, moving it to the Xbox 360 platform wouldn’t be that difficult, but as we said before, the thing we have to get done first is getting that PS3 version done. Once that’s done, we can take the next step from there.”

This response was based from his interview question regarding Final Fantasy XIV being transported to the Xbox 360. Square Enix executives such as Yoshida show great confidence with Final Fantasy XIV becoming available to other next-generation console systems, yet players struggle to embrace the game because of porting delays. Enix also had plans to port Final Fantasy XIV for the PlayStation 3, but it never got its way through, suffering another monumental stall.

Square Enix is also facilitating plans for a Vita release. Additionally, SE hopes to bring the MMO to smart phone users, which lay open to a new foundation for MMOs.

Source: Video Gamer

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Technically, Final Fantasy XIV is like Fallout: New Vegas, glitches, bugs and technical hiccups hampers the experience as opposed to what both developers tried to avoid during early stages of testing. Fallout ruins the single player fun while Final Fantasy, on the other hand, ruins the whole experience, destroying the MMO’s chance of competing with the likes of World of Warcraft.

Sqaure Enix’s current mission objective: Fix the game so that players who earlier declined to continue logging in Eorzea would come back, and regain player loyalty by ridding the game of it’s post-gameplay problems.

In a statement releases by Square Enix CEO, Yoichi Wada, SE is currently working on reforms, Final Fantasy XIV did received the hype through some video clips explaining in detail how production for the game was made, and how the likes of Nobuo Uematsu came out of his shelter to provide the game with powerful and nostalgic background music, similar to what he did in previous Final Fantasy titles.

So far, all the honeycombed introductions ended up being harvested by disgruntled players. This is coming from a guy who has yet to play the game since I’m waiting for its PS3 release this March 2011; news and updates about the sudden reformation to make FF XIV enjoyable (as it should be) has been SE’s clockwork mission.

Wada added, “If we satisfy our users, they will return. On the other hand, once the users say, ‘forget this,’ there’s no turning back. We can only recover our trust so far.”

The damage may had already been done.

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In this week’s The Making Of A Realm, musical genius and Final Fantasy battle theme composer Nobuo Uematsu shares his thoughts about Final Fantasy XIV and his comeback after 10 years of not making a single musical contribution after Final Fantasy IX.

Uematsu’s unique style of concocting melodies right in front of the sequencer without the use of a music sheet will bring a lot of meat to Final Fantasy XIV, and even though the open beta was delayed due to some bugs and glitches, anticipation will surely grow as every Final Fantasy game with Nobuo Uematsu on the credits list had moved on to become very successful on an international scale.

Just last month, the public was saddened by the sudden break-up of The BlackMages where Uematsu played an important role in building the band’s reputation as Final Fantasy‘s main and battle theme players.

Here we see Uematsu being interviewed in his very own Ping Pong Studio (you’ll eventually know why he has a studio called like that) and distill some juicy information about Final Fantasy XIV and the musical themes used in the MMORPG.

Here’s the video. Credit again goes to FFXIV Core for the English translation.

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Well, according to Final Fantasy XIV‘s game director, Nobuaki Komoto, Final Fantasy XIV will be governed by an experience reduction mechanism called the Fatigue System. According to Komoto, every 8 hours spent playing, the Fatigue System kicks in and decreases the amount of experience gained by the character, significantly downgrading the character’s effectiveness in terms of combat making each encounter less rewarding.

When the time counter clocks in 15 or above hours, there will be no experience gained. Komoto emphasizes the need to create a gaming equalizer between those with more free time and users with work and social life to attend to.

Nobuaki Komoto signifies that the system, which is also embraced by different Free-to-Play and Pay-to-Play MMOs though the penalties have contrasting repercussions, will help curb those with all the time in the world to trudge Eorzea almost endlessly and grind their levels unlike players who still consider working and going to night clubs more important than slaying quest marks.

Though the implementation of Fatigue System helps in disciplining players, it will not silence Final Fantasy fans into thinking that the newest addition to the FF compendium is hampered by rules of time limit and debilitated experience values.

The threshold, the 8 hours limit that Komoto strictly imposed, is sort of a Red Alert warning, a bleeping metaphor that cries out that the player’s time of bashing monsters for the nth is coming to a freezing halt and, it will take a week to renew the Final Fantasy XIV Fatigue System before it sets out again.

In spite of the issue, Komoto has clearly stated that the Fatigue System ain’t all that bad. According to him, whether the player wants to linger in Eorzea is up to his/her choice: the drop and spawn rate of monsters remain the same and, other in-game “bonuses” is impervious to the downgrade.

Komoto, however, will be reexamining the overall impact of the Fatigue System and will carefully gauge the fan base suggestions and reactions towards the baronial penalty.

“At the very least, we can promise that players won’t be running into the threshold penalty in the same short time span as they did in the beginning of Beta 3,” Komoto said in an interview.

Final Fantasy XIV‘s open beta for the PC will be released this Wednesday and the game is set to hit gaming shelves this September 30.

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This time, The Making Of A Realm focuses on how the graphics team conceptualized on Eorzea’s different venues and it’s looking very rustic and the parallelism of some of the artwork included in the Youtube video creatively captures some real-time places like medieval castles, old-England villages, spring’s winding roads and  bridges that seem to resemble towers.

Tomoki Chiba, Final Fantasy XIV‘s map designer, explain in detail how the game actually emulates realistic breathtaking vestiges in order to evoke realism even though the player is playing under a wide array of impressive static backdrops and virtually-groundbreaking vestiges. Past MMOs offered bland environments while Final Fantasy XIV gives players something to talk and relish during their stay at Eorzea’s majestic lands.

As part of the whole realism stage, Chiba understands the need to interchange landmarks with new and refreshing vistas – the development team (as you can see on the four-minute video below) carefully plots the advanced geometrical structure of  Eorzea’s environment giving players that impression that they’re really immersed in an grand scale never before seen from a MMO.

Added to this, every object found inside Hydaelyn’s nook and cranny have been designed to utmost perfection. Watch the video below to find exactly what you’re in for once Final Fantasy XIV hits gaming shelves this September 30,2010.

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This time, Final Fantasy XIV character modeler Keiichi Baba explains in detail how the game’s armor and other piece of equipment play an important role in your character’s overall appearance. The MMORPG boasts a myriad of armor sets and, as explained by Baba, each piece of metal or fabric clothing has gone through extensive detail tests that involves a multi-faceted approach that employs simple and effective methods.

The video greets us with a plethora of weapons like round shields and a medieval pistol but, expect none of that for some time because, this one’s dedicated on how the game’s character modelers took their time in shaping your avatar’s armor in full-blown detail and color.

One particular feature that I think outshines any MMORPG design techniques is the armor modeling pattern which base a certain kind of protective gear from another. Much like in Dragon Age Origins, exact armor models like chainmails or splintmails have existing similarities between top-tier armor which the character modelers of Final Fantasy XIV adopted within the scope of the design process.

Here is the video further explaining other techniques employed by the designers themselves. Eorzea: The Making Of A Realm is currently on its third phase and believe me, the best parts have yet to arrive.

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As far as the development of Final Fantasy XIV is concerned, Eorzea: The Making Of A Realm, has provided fans with updated news about what to really expect about the game and here, part two gives us more of an awakening call, a dire need to alert ourselves of what Eorzea has in store for our in-game avatars: the unbridled wildlife that is part of the whole adventure thing and a massive part of Final Fantasy XIV‘s immersive fauna hybrids.

Shinya Ichida, one of the game’s character animators, briefly described on how the team behind the game’s animation hype has taken a step further into maximizing creature depth which, I think would add up to the game’s overall success. Eorzea is populated by monsters, big and small, and each has their own unique design brandishing different dastardly and menacing appearances.

In a follow-up video, Ichida explained how animating one of the creatures, a giant sea serpent that greets the adventurer from the beginning in the seas of Limsa Lominsa, became quite the trying process since, details of the beast’s movements is patterned on how sea serpents actually move. Animation from the fins were detailed separately in order to give players a sense of realism of what they’re going to face throughout.

Yuji Mitsuishi, part of the game’s character animation team, added that most of the creatures of Eorzea were sculpted from a 3-D modeling tool and it’ll take a genius to explain how those guys came up with intricate models of Morbols and a hireling that looks like Diablo (watch the end of the scene and compare it).

Overall, the design looks great and much more would be expected from the MMO as it nears its official release date of September 30, 2010 for the PC.

Here’s the video. There’s a number of beasties featured here and you can try naming some of them if you have some time to spare.

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It’s almost September and you know what that means – Final Fantasy XIV is almost upon us and it’s all set to take a MMO destination never before seen from the franchise. The guys at 1UP are currently on a post mission to update their readers with a weekly observation on how things are looking up for the release of the game for the PC and much likely, the writer’s main impression about Final Fantasy XIV‘s beta phases

The website has already released its first article regarding the game’s opener and mechanics which I will explain in snippets. I’ve been eager to update the game through hands-on experience and interviews from the development team but alas, all I can do is sit, wait and update all the information from a distance because of the lack of media coverage and exposure that Final Fantasy XIV is receiving from the country.

Creating Your Character

The game offers a plethora of Create-A-Character options in which from the most simplest detail like hair color and skin color can be easily modified through panel navigation and to some of the most advanced like nose bridges and physical feature upgrades are packed with user-friendly options which I think players would appreciate as they, alongside me, don’t want to waster precious hours into modeling characters from complicated drop-down menus.

Beginning Your Character’s Journey

It is a mortal sin for MMOs to leave players bewildered upon logging in into the game for the very first time – Final Fantasy XIV begins with a slew of basic combat tutorials in which, a particular introduction begins with a cataclysmic fight against a horde of Frenzied Aurelia looking to prey upon those aboard the ship. AI-combatants are there to support your main character with healing spells as you hack away against potentially-weak blade fodders until one sea serpent interrupts the ensuing melee.

Other starts include the forest nation of Gridania and the desert nation of Ul’dah.

Guildelves

Final Fantasy XIV makes it easier for players to level-up and earn rewards such as Gil, experience points and equipment by taking advantage of Guildelves. The beta tests only gave way some run-off-the-mill slaughtering jobs which I think is the bread-and-butter of sidequesting. A blimp called a Levequest righteously guides the player to his/her target making solo kills much more strategically efficient.

Combat and Stats Allocation

You can’t have a Final Fantasy game without two fundamental game elements: fighting and leveling-up. This one’s fairly easy because you’ll be killing a LOT of innocent vermins like  bats and sheep in order to gain experience points necessary for your character to level-up. From here, you’ll have the freedom to allocate points to your stats that must agree with the class you would want to pursue

If you want to be barbaric with your approach then, pour all those stat points into your Strength and watch those fiends fall from your blade. You can also experiment on your own as, there’s always undo button here when you change classes. Customization is a huge part of Final Fantasy XIV and it’s up to you learn what’s best for your encounters and upgrade these skills when the situation goes haywire.

1UP’s “The Grind” will be writing all the things you need about the game so, you would want to check that FIRST.

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An English translated video released by the guys in FFXIV Core features the Eorzea: The Making Of A Realm and, this four-minute introductory podcast generously reveals some of the exciting character creation options for Final Fantasy XIV and other need-to-knows about the upcoming MMO.

The video contains information about the game’s character classes which is divided into five namely: Hyur, Elezen, Lalafell, Miqo’te and Roegadyn. Character features are expansive ranging from specifics like hair styles, eye color and skin tone. If you’re the kind who wants to sculpt your in-game avatar as someone who appears in your dream (or nightmare) then, the game’s wide array of tools can help you out with that.

Shinya Ichida, one of the game’s character animators, spilled that motion capture was imperative in order to give character mobility a flawless and realistic aspect of the game. Character emotions and mannerisms were sketched in full detail as in-game sprites will have emotionally-inclined actions which, I think is not a great leap for MMOs but, helps in one way or another for players who’re too lazy to type anything that suggest elation or sadness.

Here’s the video:

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