FFXIV Info - Fan Site and Database

Square Enix have made a post regarding the official Final Fantasy XIV forums that will be accessible via the Lodestone next week. They will be made available from March 8th and available to anyone with an active Final Fantasy XIV account. The full details are below.

“Launch Date

March 8, 2011

The forums will initially launch in a beta version to test certain features and server load. There will be no limitations on the forum features, but certain features, such as the linking of character data, will be unavailable. Also, posts may occasionally be rolled back to a previous version in the event of data corruption during the testing period.

Access

Anyone can freely view the forums without logging in. Please be aware, however, that to post comments and join in the discussion, or to access certain features, a Square Enix account with an active FINAL FANTASY XIV service account is required.
Development and Operations Teams

Representatives from the development and operations teams will also be present on the forums, reading player comments and making posts of their own, as well.

Forum Languages

The FINAL FANTASY XIV forums will be offered in Japanese, English, French, and German. Users will be able to access the forums in any language, regardless of the region where their Square Enix account is registered.

Please keep in mind that comments from the development and operation teams may not be made available in all languages. Some comments will initially appear in a single language, and then be translated into others at a later time, while others may appear in specific languages only. Support within the forums will always be offered in all languages.

Changes Coinciding with Forum Launch

Along with the introduction of the forums, certain changes will be made to features and announcements.

Topics

Topics posts regarding upcoming patches, future plans, and other game updates, and Letters from the Producer will be made on the forums. Such posts will be announced in both Topics and Twitter posts!

The FAQ-style articles posted on a periodic basis will also be transferred to the forums.

Information Section

Service related posts, such as general information and server maintenance notices, will initially be made on both the official website and the forums. In the future, however, these posts will eventually be made on the forums only, though they will also be announced via Topics.

We look forward to everyone participating in the various discussions and offering plenty of feedback on the forum. See you there!”

Patch 1.16, set to go live on Thursday, March 3, will introduce several new sidequests to Eorzea. To go along with this, there are also a number of changes to make the questing experience smoother, as well as adjustments to the degrees of difficulty for many local levequests.

Sidequests

Sidequests are a new category of quests that are being added to the game. These will be made available through various NPCs located in each of the three cities, given that a player first fulfills certain class/rank prerequisites. The content of these endeavors vary greatly from one another, and we will continue to add further sidequests in future patches.
NPCs offering sidequests are easily distinguishable by the presence of an exclamation point (!) icon above their heads. The same icon is also displayed at sidequest NPC locations on the map and minimap. In the future, we plan to extend this feature to other quest NPCs, such as those offering class quests.

* The term “sidequests” is the new official designation for what were previously referred to as “miniquests” in several Letter from the Producer posts.
** Only sidequest NPCs within a certain distance of the player will have the ! icon displayed over their head.

Local Levequests

The objectives of certain local levequests are currently somewhat difficult to complete due to disparities between the synthesis rank of their requested items and the approximate rank needed to reach the associated aetheryte. To address this, patch 1.16 will contain adjustments to the recommended ranks, degrees of difficulty, and item types and amounts requested of these levequests.

* Levequests undertaken prior to version 1.16 will automatically be adjusted upon server restart following the patch.