by 8800 Sun Jun 23, 2013 1:25 pm
Hi guys I'm back hehehe.
Anyway I tried FFXIV:ARR Alpha a few weeks ago, B1,B2 and now Beta phase 3 with Botak and my assessment of the game is that it has been pretty much totally revamped. Some prime changes that I noticed in B3:
1) Physical distance between cities reduced. (remember the 30 mins walk from Uldah to Gridania?? Now it takes 12 by foot with Sprint skill)
2) Retainer wards are gone. Retainers can now display their items on the marketplace from the bell you ring them from without even being in marketplace i think.
3) ALL if not most of your old items will be useless (renamed to DATED item, without attribute bonus or materia slots and unable to be created ever again) EG... Silver Ring renamed to Dated Silver Ring, and they removed the bonus associated with the ring. Becomes just a vanity item. Why? Because sometime after 5th Sept 2011, they did a major revamp of the item system and deemed many old items not in line with their new system.
4) Your character does indeed retain its class level and skills but without proper items thanks to the item revamp, you're pretty much nothing lol. Even your lv 10 carpentry saw will be listed as dated.
5) Characters look the same but skills and effect as well as animations are ALL NEW. remember how they reused skill animation for most spells skills? Now all skills/spells have unique activation animations. To top it up, animation speed is now faster, inducing a feeling of faster more action packed combat.
6) Quest progress is lost. They have mentioned that Beta 3 will not capture story or class quest progress but I have played through both in B3 and it is totally different from the old FFXIV quests so don't expect any quest or class progress to be retained.
7) Addition of Aetherals around major towns to facilitate transport inside the town. Helps alot in porting around town to turn in quests.
To finalize, I saw a couple of old JP players who I partied with 2 years back and most if not all of them had all classes (combat, magic, crafting and gathering classes) at level 50, with all jobs (paladin, dragoon, whitemage, black mage etc) at level 50. They were also equipped with full unique items for ALL jobs lol. So just to let you guys have an idea of who you will be playing with if a Legacy server is chosen as the starting point for ARR.
To sum it up, and if you guys arent aware:
Players Who Own FFXIV Version 1.0
Players who own FFXIV version 1.0 will not need to purchase the PC version of FFXIV: ARR and will be able to download the FFXIV: ARR software for free.
* Details on downloading the FFXIV: ARR software will be provided at a later date.
Furthermore, users who have version 1.0 registration codes that have not yet been registered will be able to register them and play FFXIV: ARR on PC at the start of the service.
Players Who Own the FFXIV version 1.0 Collector’s Edition
Players who own the FFXIV version 1.0 Collector’s Edition will receive the FFXIV: ARR Collector’s Edition in-game bonus items (Helm of Light, Baby Behemoth Minion, Behemoth Barding, and Coeurl Mount) for free. The in-game bonus items will be delivered via Moogle Letter when FFXIV: ARR launches.