Today was the eighth live letter from the producer and there was a ton of new FFXIV: A Realm Reborn info. Most importantly we discovered that beta phase 4 will run from August 17th to August 19th with those who participated in phase 3 gaining access from August 16th. Early Access was announced for August 24th until August 26th with no downtime between Early Access and launch. Both of these stages are shorter than most people were expecting.
Even more surprising is that phase 4 will be limited to level 20 and below, both in level and in content. Legacy players with characters above 20 will keep their levels but be unable to progress past 20 as with phase 3 . On the plus, everything in phase 4 will carry over to Early Access and release. The exception will of course be PvP stats as it was mentioned a while back that they would be reset.
Phase 4 will feature the Arcanist and Fishing classes as well as a stress test on the Limsa Lominsa housing area. There will also be a PvP system called Wolves’ Den. This was previously called Coliseum. Due to the level cap in place for phase 4 only legacy characters can play it since it is designed for level 30s.
Anyone who played FFXIV 1.0 can play ARR free until September 9th 2013. Additionally there will be bonuses based on loyalty of subscription in 30 day increments called Veteran Rewards. The best perk is the Ahriman mount for subscribing for 90 days. Additional rewards for 120, 180 etc. days of subscription are also planned.
Some other points we learned from the live letter were:
- Arcanist attribute points will be shared between Summoner and Scholar.
Edited August 10th: Yoshi-p mentioned in question 7 that they would not be shared but corrected himself later in the letter. This correction did not make it into the official translation of the Q&A and led to us listing that they are not shared. This has now been corrected. - Additional Summoner Egis will only be added when the level cap is raised above 50.
- Game time cards will exist in stores for use as a payment method.
- A world transfer service (paid) will be offered 2-3 weeks after launch.
- A smart phone app will be released for iOS a week after launched named Libra Eorzea. It will display character info, item stats, quests, dungeons etc.
- The Lodestone will feature an item database. (I wonder if this will make ours redundant…)
- Transferring items and gil between characters on the same account will not be allowed due to RMT prevention.
- The barber shop in 2.1 will allow you to change your character’s hair style, colour, eye colour, face paint, face paint colour and beard.
- A seasonal event where you can obtain swimsuits will be added a week after launch.
- Minor changes have been made to the primal battles from 1.0. All primals will receive an extreme mode. Good King Moggle Mog XII will return in 2.1 but not as a primal.
- The Crystal Tower (24 man dungeon) will be accessible via the Duty Finder however it is not available until 2.1.
- The Great Labyrinth of Bahamut will be the hardest content at the start of ARR for a while. It will contain a lot of story and bosses with different phases.
- Sending /tells within an instance is possible but is disabled to prevent player harassment (come on SE poor reason!)
- There will be a unicorn mount for White Mage, other mounts will exist for other jobs.
- Job quests can be completed solo.
- Restrictions on the looting system such as how many times you can roll “Need” are no longer planned.
- Starting race stat variations will be marginal at level 50.
- Job specific gear for companions will be available at launch.
- There will be Darklight gear for White Mages.
- There will be snowman gear available.
- Instant dungeons will have a hard mode.
- There will be a high level morbol FATE.
- There will be no restrictions on which area you can build your house.
- There will exist a treasure map system related to beastmen tribes.
- Housing will be implemented into other regions such as Coerthas if there is demand.
- It will not be possible to trade in Grand Company gear for seals should you switch company.
- Randomly choosing content via the Duty Finder will increase the percentage of tokens you can obtain.
- You can reallocate your attribute points but not too frequently.
- The dev environment for addons will be available around 8 months after launch.
After the live letter Square Enix posted an article going into more detail on the Veteran Rewards program the the World Transfer service. You can read this here.
Unfortunately we’ve got no images from the letter but they have since released this monster video that was shown:
