FFXIV - From Concept To Birth

FFXI - The Predecessor

FFXI(11) at launch was crazy broken in so many ways that I couldn’t create enough hubs to explain them all. But Square Enix, the publishing/developing company for the Final Fantasy series listened to their players and slowly, but surely patched the game and continues to patch and add content to the game. It’s been 8 years since its release, there have been 4 expansions and 3 add-ons purchasable for Final Fantasy 11. There is still a generous flow of monthly-bimonthly events, patches and fixes being made to the game and Square Enix says they would never dream of cutting the service until people stop playing it.

FFXIV – E3 2005.

About this time FF11 was two expansions in (Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia) , and continuing to build up steam. The year after, they would release one of their larger expansions (Treasures of Aht Urhgan); however, in addition to news about the expansion Aht Urhgan, there was a strange 40 second “Tech demo video”. It was after the video that Square Enix publicly announced that they were working on a second MMORPG. Final Fantasy fans rejoiced! Some final Fantasy 11 players were uneasy at this decision. Luckily for them, only rumors would be spread around the internet for two years later when a few published articles declared/announced Square Enix to be working on a new MMORPG.

Crystal Tools and Project Rapture

Crystal Tools is a neat development tool/engine that allowed developers to organize the development process in such a way that the only way you could bottle-neck a development topic (Storyboard, Models, CG, Ect) was to not work on it. The tool was designed to break everything down into separate processes in a connected network so all of these separate processes can work in tandem with each other. Although Square Enix did purchase rights to use the Unreal 3 engine, it seems they did not use it except learn from it to develop Crystal Tools. Oh man, the rumors created around the internet because of that license purchase. Woooh…

Project Rapture was the name given to the new MMORPG they were developing. I believe it officially received that name around early 2008, forgive me if I’m incorrect. 2009 came around and Square Enix released a trailer/teaser video along with the site. Each month they would slowly add more information to it, giving the gaming communities something to chew on, speculate, and hype.

Alpha! Beta! Launch!

Alpha was pretty much launched under the radar, you had to be playing very close attention to get into it, and even if you were following the page everyday and registered, the number of people allowed in was ridiculously small. Personally, I didn’t get in. I also didn’t get into Beta phases 1 and 2, but I am in Beta 3 and Open Beta. Alpha dazzled everyone with beautiful graphics, shiny environments and a very immersive feel to the game. One major complaint of the game was the speed of battle. In a single word, It was SLOW, despite the very inventive/intuitive “Stamina” styled combat, it was irritatingly slow.

Betas 1, 2 and 3 rolled along with a greatly updated engine and combat was sped up a great deal deemed “acceptable” by the testers. What kept many players gnashing at their fingers was the UI, Battle lag, Menu lag, CRAFTING AAAAH, and the fact that only 10% of the game was actually playable. The rest was marked off for development testing so players could not access it.

Currently, the game is in its second day of Open Beta. All 3 nations have been opened up for players to create characters and play around in. Battle lag has been pretty much eliminated, it rears its ugly head from time to time but definitely not as often as it used to. Menu lag is still a pain in the ass and the UI is much more intuitive than it used to be. Fixes to gathering have been streamlined a bit to make it easier/more intuitive to use. Total overhaul of the economy, experience, fatigue, and guardian aspect systems occurred as well. The game feels complete with a few bugs that will take some time to cut out. I’m feeling confident that Square Enix will fix this game in time for the September 22(Special Edition) or the September 30(Regular) release.

There is still time to pre-order the Special Edition; you get a ton of swag. If you’re in North America you get to play 8 days earlier than everyone else and you get 30 days free. Other items include the One-Time-Password generator, the fancy in-game Onion Helm a journal and some other stuff.

UK and Japan Special Editions have different bundles so make sure you check out the one you’re getting before you buy it!

Expect me to create some in-depth Gathering, Crafting, and Guildleve Hubs in the next few days and update them at launch in-case they get updated. If I missed something or gotten something wrong, please let me know in the comments!

Thank you all and have a great day!