Final Fantasy XIV news

[mikewl]

Those were the best town names they choose from each game? :mellow: Mysidia gets my vote.

Sure i'll vote that too, btw which game is that one from?

[Rep]

It's the mage town from FFIV, the one that Parom and Palom are from, has a catchy theme tune (Mystic Mysidia). The towns are listed in game order, from I-X.

Updating using uTorrent isn't working for me this time, downloaded the patch in no time, but the official client isn't reading it.

[mikewl]

My download only just finished but then MS Security Suite halted the install saying it had a virus in one of the dat files.

[talizker]

My download only just finished but then MS Security Suite halted the install saying it had a virus in one of the dat files.

I had that also with MS Security Essentials, its a false positive apparently and I said to exclude the FFXIV installation folder which sorted it.

[mikewl]

Ah thats good to know its just a false positive.

Annoyingly its downloading the last 0.2% again now, grrr.

[djtickle]

Shadowlord isnt available for Open Beta. Seraph/Bismark peeps going to Wutai so ill prob do the same if u lot comin to same place?

[shafropuff]

I'm on Trabia with a bunch of my friends.

[Rep]

You should remind them Yuffie was from Wutai! Nibelheim would have been an awesome server name. Someone should make a poll with the server names.

[Rep]

I didn't realise that closed beta accounts had been wiped completely. Open Beta applications have been suspended too :(

[Nishimori]

Yeah I tried earlier no go, is it even worth trying to play this on a macbook?

[talizker]

At the following time, we will be performing emergency maintenance. During this maintenance period, FINAL FANTASY XIV will be unavailable for play.
* The Beta Tester Site will continue to be available during maintenance.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding.

[Date & Time]
Sep. 2, 2010 at 14:00 (GMT)
* Maintenance completion time is subject to change.

[Affected Service]
- FINAL FANTASY XIV

[mikewl]

I'm probably gonna wait and see who ends up where and then make up my mind, I wanna be on the same server as most Rargh folk.

Thats if I even get the game working, the patcher is now giving me error messages.

[talizker]

I'm probably gonna wait and see who ends up where and then make up my mind, I wanna be on the same server as most Rargh folk.

Thats if I even get the game working, the patcher is now giving me error messages.

Same, I think it must be because of the Maintenance. Going to pencil in Wutai and see what happens (its not as if we can't change), like you said I just want to be with most of the Rargh folk.

[mikewl]

Most annoying thing is i'm moving house two days after the game comes out, so depending how long it takes to get my talktalk Broadband transferred i'm gonna miss most of the launch.

[Rep]

You probably won't miss a thing, expect two solid days of emergency maintenance.

[talizker]

Mine has now updated and is ready to log in. Whether this will be the case in 3 odd hours when I want to try it remains to be seen!

[Shakey_Jake33]

With regard to creating a SquareEnix Account, I see that you have to select a region when you create your account. I was intending to grab FFXIV whilst in Japan, but I assume I wouldn't be able to link it with my European FFXI account?

[Number45]

Assuming I do manage to get in, I'm happy to place my hat where the majority are. I'll only be a casual player anyway. :)

Still haven't been able to login to register the code. >_<

EDIT: And now I'm in.

[Tobal]

Patches are all done, just unable to get a code as the sever is "down" so can't even register it on the services.

[mikewl]

I'm done with this for today, it just sits there at 99.9&#37; complete doing sod all for hours on end, the only thing is does do is leech my upload.

Ok just after I said that it finally has finished, sheesh what hassle that was.

[mikewl]

With regard to creating a SquareEnix Account, I see that you have to select a region when you create your account. I was intending to grab FFXIV whilst in Japan, but I assume I wouldn't be able to link it with my European FFXI account?

Its gotta be the same region account and game or it wont work.

[Tsingtao]

Well still trying to get the beta down, getting 1.2kbps max on download.

Not the best display I've ever seen but very SE, reminds me of the good old updates where you couldn't play for a week.

[Rep]

Trying forwarding the following ports:

UDP: 55296-55551
TCP: 54992-55551
UDP/TCP: 10217-10277

[shafropuff]

I played for a good four hours now and I'm a blacksmith and my only attacking ablility is to throw a rock and that does 1HP damage... ITS A BLOODY HARD GAME AS A BLACKSMITH

I did the first story mission and it took forever, at one point I had to escort a taru half way across the world and got attacked like 6 times but they only had 2 HP each but still they did like 60-90 damage to me and I had like 400HP and the taru I was escorting didn't even heal me so I died... a lot... the first one poisoned me and I died like 2 seconds after killing it -_-

I'm not gonna play too much anymore not until I can get it activated on my proper account cos I just don't wanna repeat everything. I watched all three openings and at the moment my blacksmith is in Limsa Louminsa but I'm gonna chage to Gridania and focus on the Disciplines of War so I can actually kill things while I traverse the lands...

I did one levequest of whatever and I had to run for like 20mins to get the to the delivary location and I was the first person in that area and I think I'm the only blacksmith in the server...

[Tsingtao]

How do I forward the ports rep?

[talizker]

I got in with no further issues last night and played for 2-3 hours. My initial thoughts are that it feels very familiar (to XI which is what I hoped for) but the mechanics are VERY different and it hasn't clicked with me in any way yet. The major point so far is that performance on my PC is not good even at a modest 1280x800 resolution which is making the gameplay & interface feel sluggish.

My initial Class choice was Thaumaturge in Limsa Lominsa on Wutai. This weekend I think I need to look at optimizing performance and trying a War Class to get an idea if this is something I will buy at launch.

@Tsingtao, take a look here http://portforward.com/ for info on Port Forwarding.

[Tsingtao]

Ok worked out how to forward ports on the router however it gets upset with the ranges you've given rep as it say they overlap.

or am I reading what rep has put up wrong?

Actaully that got it thanks so much for the help, up to 30Kpbs downloads now with that change!

In fact make that 290Kbps, I'm glad someone still knows how computers work I seem to have lost my mojo...

[talizker]

I only had to forward UDP/TCP: 55296 (which on my router is the range 55296-55296) to my PC to get it to work.

[Tsingtao]

Well it's all good, right now I have 3 hours of downloads to go...

So which server are we going to live on?

I'm hearing Figaro from AaD on Facebook where are we all?

[talizker]

I went on Wutai last night as per DJ's post but going to create a new character tonight so happy to go with anything as long as were all the same.

[Tsingtao]

Ah righty I think we need a consilidated view on this one, can we migrate at the end of beta or is that it we're fixed?

[Rep]

I joined Mysidia this morning.

[talizker]

Ah righty I think we need a consilidated view on this one, can we migrate at the end of beta or is that it we're fixed?

You start from scratch in the Final on any World but you can only keep your name if you go to the same World as in the Beta.

Ok, so far DJ, Rep and Tsing have all indicated different Worlds. There has been no comment from Rare, Wedge or Tobal on a preference.

I have no preference so will follow the crowd.

[mikewl]

I got in with no further issues last night and played for 2-3 hours. My initial thoughts are that it feels very familiar (to XI which is what I hoped for) but the mechanics are VERY different and it hasn't clicked with me in any way yet. The major point so far is that performance on my PC is not good even at a modest 1280x800 resolution which is making the gameplay & interface feel sluggish.

My initial Class choice was Thaumaturge in Limsa Lominsa on Wutai. This weekend I think I need to look at optimizing performance and trying a War Class to get an idea if this is something I will buy at launch.

@Tsingtao, take a look here http://portforward.com/ for info on Port Forwarding.

In the video settings try setting the Multisampling to zero, then in the graphics tab make sure Ambient Occlusion, Depth of Field are off, then you could also try dropping the texture boxes by one each as well.

As for the gameplay we need to get some partys to see how it works, i've yet to do anything in the game with more than a few people in a party.

[mikewl]

You start from scratch in the Final on any World but you can only keep your name if you go to the same World as in the Beta.

Ok, so far DJ, Rep and Tsing have all indicated different Worlds. There has been no comment from Rare, Wedge or Tobal on a preference.

I have no preference so will follow the crowd.

I'm gonna make a test character in the interim on the same server as Rep, but i'll probably make more than one character anyway checking out the starting zones.

[talizker]

In the video settings try setting the Multisampling to zero, then in the graphics tab make sure Ambient Occlusion, Depth of Field are off, then you could also try dropping the texture boxes by one each as well.

As for the gameplay we need to get some partys to see how it works, i've yet to do anything in the game with more than a few people in a party.

Thanks man, will take a look at these later.

Can I suggest that we all(ish) choose the same World and starting City at least for the Beta to get some experience on party mechanics etc?

I started last night in Limsa Lominsa on Wutai but can re-roll tonight if needed. Limsa Lominsa feels a lot like Bastok and the first area outside like Konschtat Highlands.

[Rep]

Most of the servers are full, they've added new ones. Wutai is about 90% capacity, so is Trabia. Mysidia is 100%.

I've created a new character on Istory. Prob best not to sit on it the way the servers are filling.

[mikewl]

Thanks man, will take a look at these later.

Can I suggest that we all(ish) choose the same World and starting City at least for the Beta to get some experience on party mechanics etc?

I started last night in Limsa Lominsa on Wutai but can re-roll tonight if needed. Limsa Lominsa feels a lot like Bastok and the first area outside like Konschtat Highlands.

Sure, that sounds like a plan.

Rep what city did you choose?

[Rep]

I selected the forest one, didn't want to opt for Limsa Lomina for a third time.

[mikewl]

I selected the forest one, didn't want to opt for Limsa Lomina for a third time.

I'll do the same, I don't think I can go through the Limsa opening again for me it would be about the 8th time.

[mikewl]

I'm gonna stick with the same character name Hensley Alvarez, you still Rep Beta? Tal are going to be some varient on your alchohol related beverage?

[talizker]

I'll do the same, I don't think I can go through the Limsa opening again for me it would be about the 8th time.

Ok cool, will go for Istory and Forest town (Gridania?) if its not full later!

I am Tali Zker :)

[Rep]

Yes, it's like Windurst on crack.

[mikewl]

Ah dagnamit, another patch to go through.

[mikewl]

I played for a good four hours now and I'm a blacksmith and my only attacking ablility is to throw a rock and that does 1HP damage... ITS A BLOODY HARD GAME AS A BLACKSMITH

I did the first story mission and it took forever, at one point I had to escort a taru half way across the world and got attacked like 6 times but they only had 2 HP each but still they did like 60-90 damage to me and I had like 400HP and the taru I was escorting didn't even heal me so I died... a lot... the first one poisoned me and I died like 2 seconds after killing it -_-

I'm not gonna play too much anymore not until I can get it activated on my proper account cos I just don't wanna repeat everything. I watched all three openings and at the moment my blacksmith is in Limsa Louminsa but I'm gonna chage to Gridania and focus on the Disciplines of War so I can actually kill things while I traverse the lands...

I did one levequest of whatever and I had to run for like 20mins to get the to the delivary location and I was the first person in that area and I think I'm the only blacksmith in the server...

Sharo, you can switch to another class anytime for combat, you just need to go into the city and buy yourself the relevent weapon from one of the vendors, then just equip it.

[Rep]

The CS in Gridania are easily the most comical of the lot so far, whole place is whacked out, completely different from Limsa.

There's a playerlist here (http://ntsc-uk.domino.org/showthread.php?t=104812) for keeping upto date on who's who.

A Rargh Linkshell now exists on Istory too :)

[mikewl]

Cool, i'll be on once the updater decides to work.

[Rep]

Do you have uTorrent? Go into My Documents > My Games > FFXIV Beta Version > Downloads > ffxivbeta > d96437e6 > Metainfo and open the file with todays date. Make sure the official downloader is closed and save the patch file. Once it's finished open the official downloader again and it should scan it at 100&#37; and install. Whole process should take under 2 minutes.

[elaniel]

What server has everyone decided on? I just finally got a beta key.

[talizker]

What server has everyone decided on? I just finally got a beta key.

Istory and starting in Gridania.

[elaniel]

Thanks! Looking forward to finally getting on this and checking it out. Now the client needs to actually connect and download the patches. Grr

[Rep]

I'll be hanging about upstairs under the stained glass windows in the Adventures Guild for people needing a pearl. Will keep popping back to my pc and checking, just send me a /tell Rep Penney. Don't plan on starting any quests yet, until a few of the non closed peeps show up.

[C']

Was agianst going through another beta cycle (already played through from the start twice before and would have to do it again for retail release) but after seeing you can choose different starting nations now, I've just applied for open beta.

Fingers crossed can be updated for this evening.

[Rep]

There's a number of other changes I've spotted too. Attribute points are now 4 and not 6 for each level, friend and black list has been added. There's a new icon for the npc pearl at the top of the screen, help desk has been added too.

The biggest difference is the sheer amount of people playing, although that was to be expected. Not sure if you can ride Chocobo's this time.

[mikewl]

I'm about to head on, loved the Woodland area opening sequence.

[elaniel]

I've just logged in. trying to get my footing :D

[Rep]

I'll keep my eye open for you :)

As Wedge said, the opening cinematic compared to Limsa Lomina is fantastic :rofl:

[C']

Ugh, I forgot how slow the updater was last time I got the beta.

5 hours remaining... :(

[elaniel]

I'm currently in the Adventures Guild. Gotta get to grips, the last MMO I played was Phantasy Star Universe for 3 years, so this will take some getting used to!

[Rep]

The lag in the guild is making it impossible to spot anyone, so I'm going to relocate the the Chocobo outside at the top of the ramp.

[mikewl]

Ugh, I forgot how slow the updater was last time I got the beta.

5 hours remaining... :(

It sucks doesn't it, I spent most of yesterday just trying to get the last 0.2%

[Number45]

I'm getting nothing down yet about 20Kbps up, even though I'm not sure I've actually managed to download anything yet. :s

Forwarding the ports didn't help either.

[elaniel]

Tis very good, although was very frustrated with one of the quests. Gonna keep my special edition pre-ordered and carry on playing a bit further. I don't want to go too far in the story quests, otherwise repeating them in 3 weeks will be annoying as hell.

[Orgun]

I didnt even bother using the downloader, its dreadful. I ended up just downloading the client and all the updates via a torrent.

[Shakey_Jake33]

I don't understand how the torrent system that they're using is supposed to work - surely everyone stops seeding once they've downloaded it, making the whole thing fall flat on it's arse? Unless you seed in the background whilst playing, which doesn't sound like a good idea...

[talizker]

(As with FFXI) This game is way better when played with a pad and the 360 one so far feels good. Really great to see Rargh up and running. Can't wait to get back in later :)

[C']

(As with FFXI) This game is way better when played with a pad and the 360 one so far feels good. Really great to see Rargh up and running. Can't wait to get back in later :)

Madness!

But yes, I did find this was better with a pad but could never play NIN half as good on a pad as I could with KB back in XI.

[dataDave]

I'm really tempted to download and have a quick bash but there's no chance I can play even casually where I'm going.

[Rep]

You might be suprised Davi, it's feels like a more relaxed experience then XI. Even if you log in for an hour a day just to do the levlquests, you can make decent progress I reached Rank 11 playing for 1 hour a day.

[Hohum]

I don't understand how the torrent system that they're using is supposed to work - surely everyone stops seeding once they've downloaded it, making the whole thing fall flat on it's arse? Unless you seed in the background whilst playing, which doesn't sound like a good idea...

SE will always have their own seeds going (listed as local connections by the looks of it).

[Jusatsushi]

I'm really liking the more casual direction this has apparently taken since FFXI (which I also loved but just didn't have the time for).

Just bought a new PC for it but reading how much of a resource hog it is is making me nervous...

[dataDave]

Just bought a new PC for it but reading how much of a resource hog it is is making me nervous...

You should be fine unless you were really on a budget.

I'm tempted to download it just to see how it'll run on mine, but then I'll like it, and then I'll play it, and then I'll die.

[elaniel]

Anyone else just been knocked out?

[Number45]

I didnt even bother using the downloader, its dreadful. I ended up just downloading the client and all the updates via a torrent.
Where are you getting it from?

[Number45]

Hmm, seems to be moving in the client now. I'll leave it overnight I think.

[Rep]

Where are you getting it from?

Do you have uTorrent? Go into My Documents > My Games > FFXIV Beta Version > Downloads > ffxivbeta > d96437e6 > Metainfo and open the file with the date of the update on. Make sure the official downloader is closed and save the patch file. Once it's finished open the official downloader again and it should scan it at 100% and install. H2010.8.30 is 4.6gig i think

[Rep]

I have no idea what's causing you lot to crash. Maybe something in the code since Beta 2, around the time mine ran perfect, you were experiencing random issues. Been on for 12hours today without a hitch.

[djtickle]

Istory and starting in Gridania.

Done the same.

Name - Ark Angel

[elaniel]

Well I'm still learning. It seemed everytime I hit an enemy it reloaded my quiver for some reason, which caused me to get killed.

So that won't be happening again!

[Tobal]

Put a hour or so in to it now, not really doing any quest just looking around to many people around to even fight stuff, game does need some ffxi style chat shortcuts as it super annoying.

Other than that i think i'll need to buy a new PC, its just not quite up for the challenge with framerate drop all over in busy areas with 10+ charcters running around on the default window setting(1280/720), moves and looks great in cutscenes and on myown at least. Not looked at the world of PC technology in 3 years so i haven't a clue whats good atm, or if i can get away if just upgrading bits of my current PC. Any suggestions, probably wouldn't above 1k in my budget.

current setup is Intel core2 @2.4, 2gig of ram, Geforce GTS250.

[talizker]

Put a hour or so in to it now, not really doing any quest just looking around to many people around to even fight stuff, game does need some ffxi style chat shortcuts as it super annoying.

Other than that i think i'll need to buy a new PC, its just not quite up for the challenge with framerate drop all over in busy areas with 10+ charcters running around on the default window setting(1280/720), moves and looks great in cutscenes and on myown at least. Not looked at the world of PC technology in 3 years so i haven't a clue whats good atm, or if i can get away if just upgrading bits of my current PC. Any suggestions, probably wouldn't above 1k in my budget.

current setup is Intel core2 @2.4, 2gig of ram, Geforce GTS250.

I'm basically in the exact same situation Tob, currently running a Core2Duo @2.2, 4Gb and an ATI 4670. I can't go any better with the graphics card due to the psu and at the end of the day its a 3 year old ish machine and the whole thing needs an update. Thanks to consoles I never thought i'd be looking at upgrading my PC for a game again! Damn you FF ^_~

[elaniel]

I've noticed a few small frame rate drops during city sections, but it's easily manageable for me. Most annoying part is the time it's taking people to spawn in busy areas (which is a normal occurance in games, but still bugs me)

[mikewl]

Put a hour or so in to it now, not really doing any quest just looking around to many people around to even fight stuff, game does need some ffxi style chat shortcuts as it super annoying.

Other than that i think i'll need to buy a new PC, its just not quite up for the challenge with framerate drop all over in busy areas with 10+ charcters running around on the default window setting(1280/720), moves and looks great in cutscenes and on myown at least. Not looked at the world of PC technology in 3 years so i haven't a clue whats good atm, or if i can get away if just upgrading bits of my current PC. Any suggestions, probably wouldn't above 1k in my budget.

current setup is Intel core2 @2.4, 2gig of ram, Geforce GTS250.

You could get something like this, A barebones case with motherboard, Intel I5 (Quad Core) processor, 4gig Ram and 750W PSU.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/barebones/Novatech/BB-I5764G.html

Then move your current DVD drives and Hard drives (if they are Sata) over to it, then just grab a decent Gfx card, you might also need a new windows license unless you can get MS to let you transfer your existing one.

Nvidia 460 is the newest sweet spot for price/performance as well as the ATI 5850, both should handle the game fine.

This is basically what i'm running now with the nvidia 460, though my processor and PSU are older lower grade, the FFXIV benchmark scored just under 5000 on 720p.

[elaniel]

Need some advice as I'm researching at work. How exactly do you tell if your weapons and armors need repairing?

I guess as an archer Carpentry will be my best field. I take it I just buy a saw and can repair my bow?

[Tsingtao]

Right fianlly have the beta followed Talizker onto Istory - Tsingtao Seraphian!

Right will have a poke around later as a marauder...

[mikewl]

Need some advice as I'm researching at work. How exactly do you tell if your weapons and armors need repairing?

I guess as an archer Carpentry will be my best field. I take it I just buy a saw and can repair my bow?

There is a part somewhere when looking at your weapon through the inventory which shows how deteriorated it is, to be honest I wouldn't even look into it much right now as even if the early game equipment gets knackered they are cheap to rebuy anyway.

I have no idea yet how to actually repair stuff.

[elaniel]

I'm praying the physical game comes with a nice hefty manual so we can figure all this stuff out! I can't minimize the window as it crashes the game, so it's hard to look things up at the moment while playing.

It seems with breaking weapons and armor, you rely on other players to help if you don't level up all the classes yourself, which in a linkshell would be good to have varied fields I guess when we get up to higher levels.

[talizker]

RESULT! Now this is more like it ^_^

In Config I changed Buffer Size to "three quarters windows size" then upped Windows Size - 1920x1080, Multisampling - 2xMSAA, Texture Quality - High, Texture Filtering - Highest, and everything in game that I have seen runs great! The drop in quality from reducing the buffer is offset by running at my native monitor resolution (not to mention the hud is way better at this res) and having all the Texturing at Max and Multisampling On.

[C']

SE will always have their own seeds going (listed as local connections by the looks of it).

Well they are useless seeds then. Been stuck trying to get the last 5&#37; of today's update file for the last 5 minutes and have 7 local connections.

I'm firmly of the belief this game is not ready for launch.

[mikewl]

Sweet thats some good news Tal.

As for the update today mine is doing jack all as expected.

[talizker]

Sweet thats some good news Tal.

As for the update today mine is doing jack all as expected.

I downloaded today's update with uTorrent as Rep mentioned. Took about a minute.

[C']

Where do you put the file once you download it via uTorrent?

[talizker]

Where do you put the file once you download it via uTorrent?

The dl creates a ffxiv folder that mirrors the one in my games / final fantasy. Just copy it to the same place.

[talizker]

Can I grab another Pearl later from someone - New character is "Tal Izker" as really wanted to try out Thaumaturge some more.

[mikewl]

Sure, if you don't have one by the time im on i'll get you one.

[elaniel]

I think I'm going through what I did back when Phantasy Star Universe launched and wanting to play instead of coming to work. I can't even get on tonight probably as I have visitors around right after I finish work. Booked some time off for the week after release (can't book the week of, too busy typically)

Hope you guys ain't flying too far ahead! ^.^ I've tried to go into full research mode today as to stop asking so many questions.

[mikewl]

Utorrent doesn't work for me, it says in the tracker that its unauthorised.

[talizker]

Utorrent doesn't work for me, it says in the tracker that its unauthorised.

That's correct for the SE tracker but it should find it via DHT (make sure that's enabled)

[mikewl]

It just stays on 'Waiting for announcement'

[mikewl]

Downloaded the patch file from Megaupload in the end, ffxivcore are putting up all the patches, took about 1 minute to get it.

SE best not use the patcher as it is for retail or its gonna be a complete botch of a launch.

[NoelEdwards]

Finally managed to get the beta downloaded. Which server is everyone on?

[mikewl]

Were on Istory and starting City Granidia*

[talizker]

I have a few observations about the combat I did in the Solo Leavequests last night.

If the mobs that I had to kill were of all of the same type (eg 6 of something) then it seemed impossible to pull just one of these to a safe position. However far away the one I targeted was, at least 1 other would agro/link at the same time.

One quests where there were (3 of each) 2 types of mob to kill they were typically in pairs of 1 of each type. Again when trying to pull 1 they would both agro and as they were both different types of mob I assume it wasn't a simple link. Further to this I managed to kill both agroing mobs with my (fairly week in combat mainly because of low DEF) THM then 2 more spawned on top of me as the original 2 died who both auto agro'd without me engaging. There were way more deaths for me than I would like and ever had (being the cautious mage type!)

The THM seems to want to be played in a similar manor to RDM but so far the combat rules from XI (and even WoW) don't seem to apply. Have others had similar experiences?

[mikewl]

I know as Archer I died on a couple times due to agro linking mobs on those first leves, I'm going to do some more today and see how it goes but i'm hoping later on i'll be mostly doing them in partys anyway.

I did a bit of exploring last night and ran to every starting city so now I can teleport to each of them, which to be honest feels too easy, in fact I was only Rank 4 and only 1 mob agroed me the whole time.

[elaniel]

I take it it's not too far then between cities if you're able to run it?

[talizker]

I know as Archer I died on a couple times due to agro linking mobs on those first leves, I'm going to do some more today and see how it goes but i'm hoping later on i'll be mostly doing them in partys anyway.

I did a bit of exploring last night and ran to every starting city so now I can teleport to each of them, which to be honest feels too easy, in fact I was only Rank 4 and only 1 mob agroed me the whole time.

Wow, I'm suprised at that man. I remember my first run from Bastok to Sandurst in XI around LV10 which was tense (although not nearly as much as heading to Jeuno at Lv18ish). Is there any info regarding the size of the world and zones for the final game?

[mikewl]

I'm wondering if the retail release will have alot more mobs lurking around to hold people back a bit, I also think they need to adjust the Anima used for longer teleports, 6 Anima to go from city to city is not enough, it should be at least 12 Anima.

I looked at the overworld map and there looks like it will have a 4th city like Jueno and then quite a bit of surrounding locations, I did notice some areas are still blocked in the citys so they could lead off to more areas.

I think it will have enough content for a good few months, then we'll have to see how the updates go.

[elaniel]

Silly question if anyone knows. Where are the player stores? I know there is no auction house, but where are the players selling their stuff?

[mikewl]

Not really sure yet Elan

[Rep]

You can place it in your bazaar. They'll be some option in the item menu and you can set your own price. Then other players can see the Bazaar icon on your character and check it.

Since today's update I started experiencing this random crashing now, I can barely walk 4 steps sometimes before it happens. There's another emer. update at 4PM. So fingers crossed.

[elaniel]

You can place it in your bazaar. They'll be some option in the item menu and you can set your own price. Then other players can see the Bazaar icon on your character and check it.

That's annoying if you're looking for specific items though isn't it? If there's no auction house.

[Rep]

There's a boot-version update this time, hopefully the crashes are fixed.

[Number45]

The download seems to be finished, now I get an error when it's installing. :(

[mikewl]

New patch is here if anyone needs it: Part 1
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4V5R1AAT

Part 2 is here http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DH3V4KLE

[talizker]

What CPU's are the guys with Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 running with right now and how are things looking for you in game?

SE recommend Core i7 - the cheapest one i7 930 (2.8GHz) looks to be just over £200. An i5 750 (2.66GHz) can be had for around £150 and is also Quad Core. The Dual Core i3 530 (2.93GHz) looks like it should easily run stable at around 4GHz for £85. I wonder how much better the Quad Core i5/i7 would be than a i3 running at 4GHz?

The £70-£115 saving would go nicely towards a decent GTX 460 and at least on paper looks like a good performance/price for XIV.

[C']

I'm running a Core i7 2.66GHz (which I think I overclocked to about 3.2GHz although with my cackhandedness with these things probably not XD) although looks like that is no longer available. According to my invoice I only paid &#163;145 for it too.

I don't get great performance at the moment which I'm hoping is due to having a really shitty GPU (Nvidia GT 240) and once I get a 460 GTX next week, I should be seeing much better results.

[Rep]

Are people going to about this week in the evening? Plan on visiting the other nations and collecting camps etc along the way. Could kill mobs on the way to the various nodes too. Since there's so much to do it would probably take place other several evenings.

Still a few people missing pearls, just keep sending me a tell online (the game doesn't tell you if someone is offline via tell yet).

[Nishimori]

So overall what are peoples general thoughts compared to Final Fantasy XI?

[elaniel]

Rep, I'll be around most of the day Wednesday.

[C']

Any night should be fine for me so can do Wednesday if other people good for that.

Crashing issue seems to have been sorted for me now. I actually followed Tal's advice and reduced the buffer window size but also at the same time was the version update so I'm not sure which (if either) of them fixed it.

The fact that the update seems to have broken it for Rep whilst fixed it for me (as it was in phase 2 of the beta) suggest that it may have been the update.

Getting random R:0 instances now which the game isn't recovering from either although may be wireless issue at my end. Will try rebooting my router later and see if that helps. Got chucked off last night (in the middle of a levequest annoyingly) and despite repeated attempts to log back in, just hung on the 'Now loading' screen.

[talizker]

Any night should be fine for me so can do Wednesday if other people good for that.

Wednesday is good for me, I should be online most evenings other than Tuesday or Thursday mind.

Also thinking out loud, if I can make do with my PC until March 2011 then look at the PS3 version may be a good option...

[mikewl]

What CPU's are the guys with Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 running with right now and how are things looking for you in game?

SE recommend Core i7 - the cheapest one i7 930 (2.8GHz) looks to be just over &#163;200. An i5 750 (2.66GHz) can be had for around &#163;150 and is also Quad Core. The Dual Core i3 530 (2.93GHz) looks like it should easily run stable at around 4GHz for &#163;85. I wonder how much better the Quad Core i5/i7 would be than a i3 running at 4GHz?

The &#163;70-&#163;115 saving would go nicely towards a decent GTX 460 and at least on paper looks like a good performance/price for XIV.

I'm running it with an I5 not overclocked, the game runs fine for me apart from the usual overcrowded areas which go a bit choppy but still perfectly playable.

I'm not sure how different the I3 is to I5, worth looking into though.

[InvisibleKid]

What server are you guys on?

[Rep]

I3 processors are the bottom end of the scale I3 > I5 > I7. I use an AMD and have no issues.

We're on Istory in Grindina*.

Some of these mobs are hitting me for over 5000.

[talizker]

I'm running it with an I5 not overclocked, the game runs fine for me apart from the usual overcrowded areas which go a bit choppy but still perfectly playable.

I'm not sure how different the I3 is to I5, worth looking into though.

The i5 7xx is quad core and similar to the i7 8xx series while the i5 6xx is dual core and more similar to the i3 5xx. I would love to know how much difference the extra cores make (plus cache) over running an OC'd dual core.

Certainly I would expect a i3 running 3GHz-4Ghz would be a step up from my Core2Duo 2.2Ghz but for FFXIV it depends how much CPU useage is speed vs cores (assuming a GTX 460 or similar to partner it).

There are certainly plenty of comments online about FFXIV hardware but nothing that very definitive.

@Rep, which AMD CPU do you run, i'm a little out of the loop AMD wise...!

[C']

One thing I've noticed is that the Grindina tutorial questline (Color of Sin) is nowhere near as refined as the Limsa Lominsa one, almost as if it's not finished yet. Yes it's beta, but I assumed with the game due for release in a little over two weeks, stuff like this would be done by now (maybe I'm too used to this XBL era of "open beta" basically meaning limited access demo of final game).

I've had two cutscenes where the name of something has been what appears to be untranslated japanese text. Also the emote tutorial part in LL was incredibly straightforward and made sense whereas this Grindina one didn't make any sense and I only managed to clear it by trying every emote on the list on each NPC. The text or actions performed by NPCs didn't seem to relate to any of my emotes at all.

The servers are seriously below par, performance is variable at best, there's so little content and we have people encountering crash bugs nearly every five minutes. Yet despite all that I'm still keeping my pre-order and plan to be on retail for day one.

I think a good part of this is despite all the problems, when playing I feel exactly like I did when I first started XI when it seemed exciting and years of job imbalance haven't worn me down. Just Friday evening when we had a bunch of the old line up all hanging together had me excited about things to come (it reminded me of late 2005/early 2006 when the linkshell was arguably at it's finest).

[Rep]

Phenom II X4 940, running at 3.6.

Wedge how did you cross the zones? I've plotted about 5 different routes now, stuff can aggro you from miles away and hit between 2000-5000+ Even as a group we wouldn't stand a chance.

[talizker]

Also the emote tutorial part in LL was incredibly straightforward and made sense whereas this Grindina one didn't make any sense and I only managed to clear it by trying every emote on the list on each NPC. The text or actions performed by NPCs didn't seem to relate to any of my emotes at all.

I gave up here last night!



I think a good part of this is despite all the problems, when playing I feel exactly like I did when I first started XI when it seemed exciting and years of job imbalance haven't worn me down. Just Friday evening when we had a bunch of the old line up all hanging together had me excited about things to come (it reminded me of late 2005/early 2006 when the linkshell was arguably at it's finest).

This is EXACTLY the way i'm feeling ^_^



Phenom II X4 940, running at 3.6.

Wedge how did you cross the zones? I've plotted about 5 different routes now, stuff can aggro you from miles away and hit between 2000-5000+ Even as a group we wouldn't stand a chance.

Thanks man - will look into it. We had the same thing last night when Wedge and I went exploring although he mentioned it was much more straight forward going to the other cities. I'm sure it will all make sense in a few weeks...!

[mikewl]

Phenom II X4 940, running at 3.6.

Wedge how did you cross the zones? I've plotted about 5 different routes now, stuff can aggro you from miles away and hit between 2000-5000+ Even as a group we wouldn't stand a chance.

Can't remember the names of the places but from the Gridania forests I took a South exit, almost directly south of the city, then the next area you should be able to see the city on the map, as well as a port area further west for la noscea.

[mikewl]

The i5 7xx is quad core and similar to the i7 8xx series while the i5 6xx is dual core and more similar to the i3 5xx. I would love to know how much difference the extra cores make (plus cache) over running an OC'd dual core.

Certainly I would expect a i3 running 3GHz-4Ghz would be a step up from my Core2Duo 2.2Ghz but for FFXIV it depends how much CPU useage is speed vs cores (assuming a GTX 460 or similar to partner it).

There are certainly plenty of comments online about FFXIV hardware but nothing that very definitive.

@Rep, which AMD CPU do you run, i'm a little out of the loop AMD wise...!

I always have software running on my second monitor showing cpu and ram usage, I can tell you strait up that FFXIV uses all 4 cores, rarely do any of them max out but I often see all four hitting about 60-70% usage.

[InvisibleKid]

I'm running this on my Macbook Pro and it *just* about runs. It's good enough to play but crikey the mouse is slow.

I'm not sure about this game yet - I hope the final release has a lot more polish and handholding at the beginning because I'm finding it a bit hard to figure out what's going on.

The main thing I keep thinking is 'Why can't XI look like this?!' :'(

[talizker]

I always have software running on my second monitor showing cpu and ram usage, I can tell you strait up that FFXIV uses all 4 cores, rarely do any of them max out but I often see all four hitting about 60-70% usage.

Ah thats really interesting. What is this software you talk about - I need to take a look at that :)

[talizker]

It's good enough to play but crikey the mouse is slow.(

I can definitely recommend using a Pad (360 one or similar).

[mikewl]

Ah thats really interesting. What is this software you talk about - I need to take a look at that :)

Its built into Win 7, its just one of the gadgets 'Computer Status'

It shows Your CPU Cores, RAM usage and HD space.

[elaniel]

Seems there are two new patches. Neither one of them is moving. Had to download the first at MU, can't find the second anywhere.

Their distribution method for patches is ridiculous.

[mikewl]

Seems there are two new patches. Neither one of them is moving. Had to download the first at MU, can't find the second anywhere.

Their distribution method for patches is ridiculous.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2E6DYE39

[Orgun]

Well i've had my fill. Won't be touching XIV until two expansions have been released.

[Daragon]

I'm running this on my Macbook Pro and it *just* about runs. It's good enough to play but crikey the mouse is slow.

I'm not sure about this game yet - I hope the final release has a lot more polish and handholding at the beginning because I'm finding it a bit hard to figure out what's going on.

The main thing I keep thinking is 'Why can't XI look like this?!' :'(

Because a great deal of it's fanbase are still PS2 users, and apparently the PS3 is struggling with XIV so God only knows how the PS2 would fare.

[abigsmurf]

I'm really not liking the general impressions about the beta that I'm reading. It's possible the hype levels for this are what's causing it but I've not seen an MMO have this amount of negativity before launch.

It's usually the opposite, huge amounts of buzz with no one noticing anything too major. Then issues which seemed like unfounded fears or issues so petty they didn't matter turn out to be incredibly important to the extent where they spoil the game.

[InvisibleKid]

Because a great deal of it's fanbase are still PS2 users, and apparently the PS3 is struggling with XIV so God only knows how the PS2 would fare.

I'm in the PS2 userbase :) What I meant was why can't we get a PS3 or PC release that uses Crystal Tools. (I realise it would obviously be crazily expensive - but I can dream!!)

[Rep]

Starting to sound like a broken record now, but the player base seems to expect some all singing, all dancing game that features 8 years worth of content and doesn't feature a single bug. The beta is a testing phase, finding faults is the whole idea, yet people are complaining it breaks and there's "too much" maintenance. Full credit to the development team for the rate things are currently being fixed.

The release date is 3 weeks, you can get a lot done in that time. I invite anyone to come join us too, it's more fun than reading comments :)

[mikewl]

Having been in since Alpha stage I can say they have really brought it a long way since then, they are clearly not done balancing things out yet and there are some bad bugs in there causing crashes (which may be server related and may not be an issue once retail hits), the UI has had major improvements over each Beta stage.

For me the main issues are regarding the patcher which they would have to be insane to keep the same for retail, so hopefully that will be sorted, then its the mouse lag which is a non isue for me but is something they do need to sort out.

Even if the first few weeks are buggy I know there is enough for me in there right now to make it worthwhile getting in at the start, plus I like seeing how the game evolves over time.

Also to note, i've been in so many MMO beta's now and I think this is more polished and complete than the vast majority of them.

[Rep]

With regards to the update process, it's brilliant in theory and much better than the old one (the more people trying to update the better now). SE only seems to offer about 3 seeds though.

What you should be doing instead, is start the update, even if it's at 0&#37;, note the file name, then cancel it. If it's brown it's a client update, blue is game content. The go to My Games as shown in the picture (assuming you've downloaded uTorrent).

http://sep06.imghost.us/eefm.png

There should be two folders, bca2a8ae is for the brown client updates, d96437e6 is for the blue content ones. Just double click the torrent file and save it over the two existing folders (the torrent IS the ffxivbeta folder). The whole process will literally take 1 minute. Once the official downloader is reopened (after the files hit 100% in the torrent client) it will scan and install them, after that I believe the patch files are automatically deleted.

[Rep]

Anyone for a some exp at Humblehearth later? There's a Ather. gate there and it's not far from the city. Probably around 7:30-8.

[talizker]

Anyone for a some exp at Humblehearth later? There's a Ather. gate there and it's not far from the city. Probably around 7:30-8.

Yes indeed but will be a little later for me.

[mikewl]

Yes indeed but will be a little later for me.

Same here, going out for a meal at 7pm, if your all about from about 9pm i'll see if I can join you if theres space.

[Rep]

My biggest problem has been since the day I started the earlier Beta, there's no distinctive White Mage / Healer class. Things like resurrect (raise) belong to Thaumatage while Cures and Reraise belong to Conjurer. This wouldn't be a massive problem, apart from needing to level both classes, it's a nicer version of the sub-job system as you can pick specific abilities across classes. The issue lies in ranking up, if I just use support abilities, I'll never rank up, so I'm forced to either nuke and melee during battle. This leads on to the point system as I then need to level Piety and INT, rather than MND and VIT.

[C']

I've always assumed that Conjurer was a reaction to the late FFXI era stigma that BLM had where it's limitations in everyday party play meant they were largely ignored. But ironically in demand at a lot of endgame events.

Let's face it, ion recent years mage classes, for the most part have been limited to Cure/Haste bots. Conjurer kind of solves that as they can play the healer role as needed but switch to a nuking spec as events dictate.

I do think a lot of XI old timers are going to have to throw out any preconceptions about job classes when it comes to Disciples of War/Magic in this.

[mikewl]

It seems people have figured out how to set the hardware mouse on, apparently the option is in the game already and only required a true being changed to false in one of the config settings.

It seems the person who found it made a patcher for it, can find details on it on the Beta forums.

[talizker]

I spent some time last night with FRAPS running to try and optimise the performance. I was running at 1920x1080 with 2/3 Buffer (making the 3D rendering 1280x720) with AA Off and Texturing set to Normal and High (all the fancy stuff was off). I had been running back and forward in Gridania between the Guild and the entrance to the The Black Shroud. My frame rate was varying from 11 (right outside the guild) up to 30.

Running at 1920x1080 and dropping down to 1/2 Buffer (making it look like a PS2 game!) and setting all Texturing to Low made no difference to the frame rate.

Running at 1280x720 with all Texturing to Low made no difference to the frame rate.

Running at 1920x1080 with full Buffer, 2xAA, and Texturing to Very High and High also made no difference although did stimulate the Graphics Card cooling fan some! In fact it seemed to run better than when I initially tried these settings at the weekend (because of the patches?)

So I can assume from this the bottle neck right now is the Core2Duo but that will change to the Graphics Card if I get just a new CPU.

What I do know is that I had a lot of fun last night soloing and it looked great with an outdoor frame rate 20-30 which was very playable. Dependant on other zones graphical requirements this at least allows some time fund a new PC and also enjoy the game.

Are we still planning on doing some City runs tonight?

[Rep]

Hopefully, I've finally come up with a route that should be pretty fun, collects a number of camps on route, and provides several mobs to battle on the way. I should be around 7 onwards, so whatever's easier for everyone.

[C']

I'll try and get on between 7 and 8.

Went all around Gridania the other night looking for a vendor that sells shields (as you get a new set of abilities with one equipped) but couldn't find any for sale.

Moot tells me the only way to get one is via crafting which makes the lack of a centralised auction house frustrating.

[Rep]

I bought my last Beta shields from Limsa Lomina, we'll have a look later when we get back there :D

[talizker]

Will be on as early as I can, probably 8-8.30.

[Rep]

Eight sounds good then, since most people are mentioning that time, if everyone is gathered at the Chocobo Stables again :)

[mikewl]

I'll be up for this tonight, would like to attempt some harder mobs while were out exploring, a bit like those dogs we fought the other night, something which lets us get stuck into things.

Also would like to try Battle Regimen at some point, see if we can figure it out, is everyone still around Rank 7-8, if so I might head on a bit earlier and get a second job levelled so we can have a good balanced group of jobs.

[elaniel]

I'll be on around 7-8 tonight so see you all then.

[Jusatsushi]

If anyone sees little Bobby Raasclart running around being chased by bees give him a hand ;)

[mikewl]

Gonna have to give tonight a miss, have to go out tonight ><.

[Jusatsushi]

Does anyone chat in this? Or group up?

[Rep]

Does anyone chat in this? Or group up?

Are you playing on Istory server? We have an Ntsc Linkshell (Rargh) which is essentially a guild. Post if you want to join us, or send me a tell in game, I'm Rep Penney.

[Jusatsushi]

I would definitely appreciate that. I was at one of the quest crystal things outside Gridania trying to get a group to bash some mushrooms and didn't even get a reply :( felt like a right billy. Died loads trying to solo it - stupid poison effects.

My char name is Bobby Raasclart btw.

[Rep]

If you come to Gridania outside the Chocobo Stable, I can give you a Linkpearl.

[Jusatsushi]

Not gonna be on till tomorrow now, early start and all that. I'll give you an add though, cheers dude.

[mikewl]

Dissapointed I missed out last night, how was the the walkabout?

[C']

Didn't do a lot of fighting but we have all city teleports sorted now and it was nice to get around. Some of the zones looked amazing. Fingers crossed we can EXP soon.

[talizker]

Didn't do a lot of fighting but we have all city teleports sorted now and it was nice to get around. Some of the zones looked amazing. Fingers crossed we can EXP soon.

Exactly. Really enjoyed last night, the zones are massive and I loved all the elevation change and sense of scale. Also loved the music!

[elaniel]

Best part? The unmoving ferry!

Who woulda thought 5 characters under level 10 could run from one side of the world to the other and survive :D

Although, those crabs freaked me out, they kept following Rep around. :lol:

[Rep]

I really wanted to exp too, I assumed that Orange mobs could be taken quite easily (I can solo the orange Dodo's no problem), but it ripped the shit out of us, at that point priority changed to getting the camps.

I loved messing about with that sit action command on the Ferry, the Lalafell animation for that is outstanding :lol:

If people want to be on around the same time tonight, we can hunt some mobs. The main issue at the minute is finding out what we can take, and where that is. Most things at this point are discovery.

What's also interesting is despite leves being available in other cities, you can't exchange them, for example I couldn't change the Grindania ones with Limsa Lomina ones, so it's not possible to do a set in one city, then move on and do another set elsewhere.

[elaniel]

I think we "scale down" when we fight enemies. One of the earlier enemies that we managed to kill, I was hitting for between 25-51 damage. Yet when I solo that area I get between 130-200 damage. Or the enemies defence and attack goes up quite high.

I should be on tonight just around 8pm.

EDIT:
Scratch that, can't make it on tonight.

[elaniel]

Seems very close to launch but:


FF_XIV_EN
With the official release coming soon, the open beta test will end on Sep. 20, 2010 GMT.
about 3 hours ago via web

FF_XIV_EN
With the official release coming soon, the open beta test will end on Sep. 19, 2010 PDT.

Which one is true?

[Nishimori]

One is PDT and one is GMT, so both are true?

[Rep]

I'm happy enough to now to sit back until retail, personally I've done enough over the course of the Beta's to not warrant putting another 10days in, only to get progress wiped. I know how systems work, where things are etc.

That said if anyone still wants to do some stuff let me know and I'll join in, or if people haven't joined the shell or tried the Beta yet.

[elaniel]

One is PDT and one is GMT, so both are true?

That would be it, so it seems it ends just around midnight time. ^.^

I think I'll spend a few days in this city we ended up in (as that seems to be where the majority want to start) Want to get a feel for this area. Then I'll give the beta a break.

[Number45]

Posted in the bargains forum, but Zavvi have FFXIV for &#163;17.99. :)

http://www.zavvi.com/games/platforms/pc/final-fantasy-xiv-includes-pre-order-item-garlond-goggles/10195758.html

[elaniel]

Great price but I can't give up my Special Edition.

[mikewl]

I'm happy enough to now to sit back until retail, personally I've done enough over the course of the Beta's to not warrant putting another 10days in, only to get progress wiped. I know how systems work, where things are etc.

That said if anyone still wants to do some stuff let me know and I'll join in, or if people haven't joined the shell or tried the Beta yet.

I think its the same for me, i've seen and done enough to be happy to just stop until full release.

What i'm actually quite pleased about is that I don't think it really matters if we end up spread out over different city's, within the first few days we should all be free to move about them all easy enough and i'd imagine the missions will converge later on like in FFXI.

Saying that though i'm still going to start in Gridania, its opening sequence and early missions seemed the most entertaining, though they are all good.

[elaniel]

Looks like my copy is on its way from GAME.
Won't be able to play it mind...

[mikewl]

/sigh

Copy and pasted from ffxicore

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting the Square Enix Support Centre.


I understand your problem and can relate to the issue of the fair-usage policy being broken. However I'm afraid to say the final version of the game will be using a peer-to-peer system identical to the one in the Beta. The main game will ship on a disc so it won't be necessary to download the initial 22GB (approx.) client. That said, patches which could be large will be distributed this way so although they will be smaller and less frequent they may still take you over the fair-usage limit. I'm sorry about this and there are no plans to allow users to adjust their upload and download rates but we have made our head-office aware that this is causing problems for people and may be fixed in future.

Again I hope you aren't too put off by this and I hope the patches will be small enough and infrequent enough not to break your limit.

Warm Regards,
Square Enix Support Centre Team
Thank you again for contacting us and for your interest in Square Enix products!
More help and information are available at the Square Enix Support Centre website.
http://support.eu.square-enix.com/

This was sent me after I complained to the company for making the update system peer-to-peer and making them aware that British internet service providers, amongst many, have strong fair usage policies.

[Daragon]

Square Enix, I am disappoint once again.

[Rep]

The P2P update system is fantastic, and unless you're downloading 5 gig patches every 2 hours shouldn't really break fair use policies. Plus anyone who Isn't on BE or 02 should know better :p

[shafropuff]

I was really hoping GAME would post the game today as they charged me and what not but I guess it'll either ship 2morro or Monday getting here on Tuesday/Wednesday.

I'm not 100% sure I'm gonna start the game on the 22nd, I might pick up the standard version cos I'd really like those goggles lol shame I missed the Zavvi offer >_<

[elaniel]

The P2P update system is fantastic, and unless you're downloading 5 gig patches every 2 hours shouldn't really break fair use policies. Plus anyone who Isn't on BE or 02 should know better :p

BE and O2 actually just started traffic shaping for new customers.

[C']

Just picked up my 460 GTX. Fingers crossed installation is straightforward.

[C']

HO-LEEE SHIT!

My previous build was scoring just over 2000 (literally 2010 or something) at 720P.

Now I'm getting:

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/Rarehero1979/ffxivbm720.jpg

Clearly that piece of shit GPU I had was a massive bottleneck.

Will try 1080P next.

[C']

A little shy of 2800 at 1080P.

Think I'm actually a little disappointed by that. Was hoping for 3000+.

Still all told, I reckon this build is ready for retail later this week. :D

[Rep]

Finally :)

[djtickle]

Can people remind me of starting server and city?

[Rep]

Istory - people are moving to different cities I think.

[djtickle]

What's the most popular town?

[Rep]

Transport isn't an issue since you can teleport from town to town once you get the outposts. People are split between Gridania and Limsa Lomina.

[talizker]

A little shy of 2800 at 1080P.

Think I'm actually a little disappointed by that. Was hoping for 3000+.

Still all told, I reckon this build is ready for retail later this week. :D

Looking good there Rare - hopefully i'll be somewhere close in a few weeks.

I decided to start in Ul'dah but as Rep said unless things are a whole lot different than the Beta you can have access to the 3 cities with relative ease at any level. Tsing mentioned he's probably going to Figaro but I don't think anyone else has a preference based on XI LS's etc and we were on Istory reserving our names in the Beta.

[C']

Yeah starting city is irrelevant in this I think. In one evening you can have teleports to all three starting cities anyway and like Wedge, I expect mission lines to lead into the same thing eventually. I think this was a purposeful design choice by S-E as different guilds for each class are only evailable in one nation so you need to be able to access them rather early in your game life.

Oh and latest drivers got me up to 2950 at 1080P. Was hoping it would hit 3000. XD

Still at least I'm beating Moot's new PC which he had built this morning. :D

[talizker]

Still at least I'm beating Moot's new PC which he had built this morning. :D

Heh! What did he go with in the end (as i'm still finalising my new build...).

[C']

I think his build was very similar to mine. CPU was main difference.

He is running an AMD Phenom II X4 965 at 3.4GHz. I'm running an i7 which was 2.66GHz stock but OCed to 3.8GHz (which as you saw on my benchmark screenshot is still getting detected as 2.66GHz but according to CPU-Z it is running at 3.8).

Both have 4GB RAM and using Nvidia 460 GTX although I think mine is a slightly faster card.

Mine:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-Gainward-GTX-460-GS-GLH-4000MHz-GDDR5-GPU-800MHz-336-Cores-D-Sub-2x-DL-DVI-I-HDMI

His:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-EVGA-GTX-460-3600MHz-GDDR5-GPU-675MHz-Shader-Clock-1350MHz-336-Cores-2x-DL-DVI-I-MiniHDMI

Performance wise probably very similar builds (except going Intel pushed the price of mine up by about &#163;150 XD).

Regardless with what you go with, I think it's safe to say that the 460 GTX is a very good compromise of performance vs price. I was expecting an improvement but to get an extra 3000 on the benchmark really floored me.

[shafropuff]

I just got a 460 too... I was getting 3490 with a 260 and now only 3792 -_-

I wanted the Gainward but was having trouble finding it and just picked up an Asus one when I saw it in store.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-Asus-GTX-460-3600MHz-GDDR5-GPU-675MHz-Shader-Clock-1350MHz-336-Cores-2xDL-DVI-mHDMI

[mikewl]

Good to hear everyones getting their pc's upto scratch for this, i'll also echo Rare's sentiments with the Geforce 460, its just about as ideal a card as you could get right now for the game.

Only a few days to go now, I think i'm gonna have to go over all my router settings again and see if I can find a way of improving the patcher, otherwise i'm going to have to rely on third party sites to get the updates.

[djtickle]

Just a quick question...

In CPU world how much faster would a Intel Core2 Quad @2.4Ghz be than a Core 2 Duo @2.6Ghz

[Kerushi]

Should be twice as fast maybe a little bit more. if its an Extrere quad core then it will be faster because of no shared bus between two of the 4 cores.

RAM will also need to be factored into this cause you would want a nice big dumping point for the processing output.

[Number45]

http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/11/17/mini_flying_get/


Additional Final Fantasy XIV PS3 Details

A few more details on the PS3 version of Final Fantasy XIV via what appears to be an interview in this week's Famitsu.

The game has been 100% ported from the PC to PS3 and is in a moving state. While there are some slight differences in textures, you won't notice that much of a difference when you see the game in motion.

The PC and PS3 versions will share the same servers.
I know it's getting a lot of hate, but I'll almost certainly give this a go on the PS3.

[Rep]

For a minute I thought Square had erased every post since the game's launch :lol:

[vwilsonuk]

So... is XIV any good?

[Daragon]

I have yet to play it myself, but judging on feedback coupled with the fact that it is presumably still free to play, I would have to say no.

[mikewl]

Yup the game is a massive let down, have totally given up on it now.

This has probably been my biggest gaming dissapointment ever, I kept an eye on what updates were being made but all this time has gone by since launch and they have really not done much to improve things and the latest update looks to be more rubbish.

[InvisibleKid]

I occasionally jump on with rebuilt hope that the game will be good this time - and it never is.
FFXIV - it pains me to say - sucks. (Though can be alright for a quick pop-in every month)

[Rep]

The problem with FFXIV was it's initial reception, the game (at launch) was so awful it lost thousands of people within about 2 weeks. That's the kind of thing you just can't recover from, the new team and director have been working tirelessly to put things right, but no one simply cares anymore. The beta was around 12 months back now? Content I don't think anything has really been added? I could be wrong on that. It's still free to play too, so It'll probably lose even more people once that changes, I dread to think of the amount of money that games development is costing. It does however look amazing, and if you've invested money in a high end PC, you'll get something out of it. I wouldn't say It was bad anymore, It's just abit boring since you end up playing solo most of the time and there's nothing to really aim for, even if you did grind to 50, what then?

There's was a JP list of all FFXI updates and fixes somewhere, does anyone still have that, would be interesting to compare the first 12 months.

[abigsmurf]

I've never known a game to recover from this kind of bad launch. The remarkable thing is I've also never seen an MMO launch with so few engine based bugs. It's just elements of the game design and content which were utterly broken.

I had exactly 3 (fairly long) sessions on the game before giving up. 1st session I did the introduction, was pretty impressed, then I wandered around the city starting the meat of the game... I got a crafting quest where I was told to go to an NPC with no directions. Took me half an hour to find it (had to look it up in the end), I then was vaguely told to go to a camp to do a guildleve thingy, took me another half an hour just to find the exit to the city. Did a single quest, turned it off.

Second session I was doing leves and grinding. Was enjoying it a fair bit until I'd done all the leves I had available at which boredom set in.

Third session I tried doing proper crafting. It was long, boring, hard to understand and unrewarding. After struggling with it for an hour I decided enough was enough. Haven't played the game since.

[Daragon]

I'm sure XIV will recover with time, although it sure as hell has it's work cut out for it, look at star wars galaxies.

Probably the other largest MMO travesty I've certainly known of which was the introduction of the New Game Experience. A person (myself included) would devote pretty much all the game time since launch trying to unlock the Jedi profession, which most likely was added with a content update a year later without telling anyone. You'd then spend days on end leveling up professions you hated, simply because a holocron (that was as rare to find as ****ing Hen's teeth told you to. After you'd managed about 5 of those it would unlock the profession for you.

The NGE update basically took all that and shitted it out all over you by making Jedi a starter profession and culling about 90% of the other professions, forcing tens of thousands, possibly even more to quit. Imagine if FFXI started to suddenly take certain jobs out of the game, yeah that shit doesn't happen.

[mikewl]

Right now its content that is the issue, there has been almost zero new content since launch, aside from a few crap starter quests which are almost exactly the same as leves.

It was dissapointing to start with that the game had unfinished zones, Coerthas is pointless, no reason to go there at all, 4th city unfinished and unavailable which leaves you with three themed zones which get boring very quick, I mean there is nowhere to go, nowhere to explore of any worth past the initial three zones, also why they made them so bloody huge I don't know, in FFXI you didn't stay in one place that long, there was always a new zone a few leves down the line keeping things somewhat fresh.

I really do think they tried to make it different to ffxi, not a bad thing really but everything they did different ended up being worse and not better, which annoyed alot of players, i'm all for the game being different so long as its actually an improvement.

Only way I'd log back on would be if they did a major update including all the current zones being completed, 4th city, airships, chocobos and a decent number of new areas to go to, but for all I know this could still be another year away so no point playing until then.

[dataDave]

So yeah, I'm thinking about getting a laptop for Starcraft II primarily, however I'd like to start this perhaps in the hope that it'll one day kick off properly. I'd be playing extremely casually so I figure if I start early I can maintain my progress steadily.

Would an Alienware M11x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz, 1024MB NVIDIA GT335M, Intel Core i7 run this perfectly?

[mikewl]

That laptop should be fine, though I don't know how that graphics card compares with their mainstream ones, if its near the 460 it should be fine.