Good news for Final Fantasy fans who are waiting for a good f2p MMORPG to play – FINAL FANTASY XIV is scheduled to relaunch its new and improved 2.0 version in late 2012 or early 2013. The new version will be called Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.
Players may remember that the MMO was first released in 2010. Unfortunately, it was not successful, which is putting it very mildly. The president and CEO of Square Enix president, Yoichi Wada, even apologized to fans about the lack of quality of the MMORPG, saying that FFXIV “greatly damaged” the Final Fantasy brand (source). Ouch! That’s why everything will be redesigned.
Update: Beta test applications are now open for the PC and PS3 versions. http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/news/article/betatest_open
Correction: Also, FFXIV will be a subscription game, according to an interview at VG247.com.
(Revisions added January 24, 2013)
Now, according to the MCV website, version 2.0 will be a complete overhaul of the entire game. As little as 10 percent of the original content will be kept while all of the rest, including the user interface, controls, character creation, job system, instanced dungeons, mobs/enemies, battle algorithm, PvP, in-game communication, and so forth will be changed – hopefully for the better.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn will also be a traditional subscription type of game but the devs have stated that they are willing to look into other business models in the future, probably because free-to-play has become the norm for more and more releases recently. For example, the high-profile switch of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) from subscription to f2p has made waves in the industry and a lot of companies are no doubt taking note of the fact that even the most polished, big-budget titles can find it hard to succeed as a pay-to-play game.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn will be available for both the PC and PS3.
Screenshots:
Video trailer:
Resources:
Official website of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
Official announcement page about the relaunch
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Interesting. I have been playing a lot and even bought SWTOR but since it went free to play I think I will not pay for games anymore. All of the recent ones mostly go f2p quite soon after they launch.
o wow, i would love to see the game redone (heard it was bad, so never tried it) and then become f2p!
i was a hardcore ffxi fan back in the day. And having ff be f2p would really be awesome. (and im sure it will be one of the most popular in the f2p genre).
@above, but if everyone did that, then they would lose out on alot of money, and possibly limit game development.
Im sure they probably do that to cover the expenses it took to make the game, then just make it f2p. Just be happy it went f2p, as they could have left it p2p.
or maybe another thing they could do (if not already), is while the game is p2p before it goes f2p, is give people who got the game early access to things others wont be able to get. (items or w/e)
maybe have lots of events and etc.
your all nub.. this game will NEVER go f2p the guy that did this need to know hid info lol. FFXIV 2.0 will be ~$8.98 30days~ or $27.98 for 90days~ -_-; this is OLD, ES told us that over summer time.
According to an study of MMOG Subscription Growth by Bruce Sterling from WoodcockMMOGAnalyst. It is highly unlikely that FFXIV will recover.
Are you sure this will be a free-to-play game? Because it doesn’t really seem like it, with such high quality graphics and all, I wouldn’t think this will be released as a F2P model.
Looks like it will be pay-to-play. There was originally some speculation about it being f2p and the announcement did say “new software for the PC version will be distributed online, and can be acquired free of charge” which would seem to indicate a f2p business model but they may have been talking about a free trial. The post has been revised to reflect more recent news.