Give or take a few months, we’re one year away from Square-Enix’s next MMO project, Final Fantasy XIV. A lot of information was released, from what appears to be a magazine scan, Famitsu, most likely. There’s also a translation on Youtube of E3′s Q&As with the FFXIV team.

It’s not the first time we hear about this, no “level” and no “experience points”. Does this mean we’re going to see a grid system similar to FFX? I highly doubt so. The weapons and most likely armors in the game have been referred to be really important. So are we going to see something similar to FFIX? That sounds somewhat likely.  The more you fight with one equipment piece, the more skills you’ll unlock related to that piece. That’d make sense, since there’s no level.

The other thing I’d see working in this way, then, would be if the game was similar in some ways to Monster Hunter.  The E3 trailer was confirmed to be in-game footage, and the Galka-like character attacking a creature connects his weapon to damage it.  So it seems, more skills and less experience grinding will be required.  But at the same time, any Monster Hunter fan will tell you that there’s a lot of grinding to keep you busy in that kind of game too, as you’ll be wanting, most likely, drops from specific monsters to make some new weapons and armors.  Well, that’s all my speculations, nothing proven, really.

After the jump, I’ll cover the magazine scans, which has a lot more interesting information.

So, most of you can’t read Japanese, and that’s why aquelia on ffxiv.windurst.org went ahead and gathered some translations and put them all together.  I won’t just repeat what they said, and instead highlight the most interesting elements and comment on those.

There seems to be a lot more customization for your character, once you select one of the available races, and that’s a welcome change and would be pretty silly since every recent MMO features intense customization of your character, from Perfect World to Aion, those games let you almost infinite freedom on your character’s creation.  Also notice the name changes for the races already named in the scans, Lalafell for the Taru Taru equivalent isn’t too bad next to the Galka’s Roegadyn, who I’ll take a while to remember how to write.  Hopefully that will change with translation, as those seems to be pretty straight forward romanization of the names.  Oh and Humes are now named Hyuran, but who cares about those stinky humes. =P

Of more important notice though, you may want to look at that first picture on the second row on here, click it to see it in full, and notice how that race has horns. So we won’t only be seeing the old races with new names, but new races too it seems.  I’m kinda glad to see that, and might consider that option if I ever play the game and don’t choose the Lalafell race.

Now, last but not least, as this is probably the most interesting piece of info here, the classes.  So far, 4 base classes have been introduced, Fighter, Sorcerer, Gatherer and Crafter. I’m not too sure why combat-related classes are introduced together with side-jobs classes, but it seems to be related to the fact that weapons are what determines what job you are. Equip a melee weapon and you’re a fighter, a staff or rod and you’re a sorcerer, a fishing pole or whatever a garderner would use and you’re a gatherer, etc.  It also seems like those 4 classes are divided even more depending on which specific weapon you are wielding. So a bow makes you an archer while a sword would make you a swordsman.

In more details, if you’re too lazy to take a look at the other site. Fighter divides into Swordsman and Archer so far. Sorcerer  into Shaman and Illusionist, though I’ve seen other terms being used elsewhere.  Gatherer into Gardener and Fisherman. And finally, Crafter by Blacksmiths and Cooks.  This is obviously just a small part of what will be available.  But it seems to fit more or less with what I was saying up there, about the FFIX part.  Anyone is thinking FF Tactics (Lion War) here? It also makes me think about that.

Anyway, this information has me more curious than I was about FFXIV, and since I’ve put an halt on my FFXI career, I’m really looking forward to try this one. Especially if there’s some Monster Hunter inspiration in there along with the FFIX/Tactics skill system.

So, a big thanks to aquelia for bringing us this info together!

Edit: Those horns I was talking about were obviously not horns and were a feathered beret…

David A. Games, News, PC, ps3