In a press release today it was announced that Final Fantasy XIV will be released in China, with its own servers and payment plans. This is due to laws in China that prevent the game from being released in its current worldwide form. Some content may be changed as well to accommodate the Chinese laws. Shanda Games will be responsible for bringing the game to China and it is not known when this will be. This will be the first time a Final Fantasy game has been released in mainland China.

You can read more here.

A Note to Open Beta Testers

Square Enix posted a note to open beta testers about uninstalling the beta version of the game before installing the retail version next week. You can read the announcement below.

"Thank you for your participation in the FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test.

The Open Beta Test will end at 12:00(GMT) on Monday Sep. 20, 2010. Following the official launch of FINAL FANTASY XIV, please uninstall the beta client “FINAL FANTASY XIV Beta Version”.

Installing the release version of “FINAL FANTASY XIV” or other software developed by our company while “FINAL FANTASY XIV Beta Version” remains installed may cause certain issues. Should you try to uninstall “FINAL FANTASY XIV Beta Version” after installing the release version, certain settings may be reset.
* The language setting of the Operating System will be used to determine the default language setting for the release version of FINAL FANTASY XIV.

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

Gridania Screenshots

We found some new screenshots on Game Watch's website, this time from the city of Gridania. There are a few from the Garlean Empire too which can be seen in pics 20, 21 and the pic at the end.



Source: Game Watch