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Gamescom 2012: FFXIV servers shutting down ahead of relaunch, A Realm Reborn beta planned for this fall

Ben Gilbert — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Events (Real-World), Interviews, MMO Industry, Interviews (Massively's), Events (Massively's Coverage), Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV players, take note: Your days are numbered. Er, at least your days spent in the original FFXIV world. When the game's rebirth, called A Realm Reborn, occurs later this year, the game's servers will be taken offline. Rather than overlap the two versions of the game, Square-Enix director/producer Naoki Yoshida says the original servers will be taken offline "some day in the near future," precipitating an alpha and then a beta for the game's relaunch later this year.

"Basically what's going to happen is that the current story is still continuing now, but some day in the near future -- and we'll make sure we tell the players what day that is -- something is going to happen in the story, and at that time, the servers are going to shut down," Yoshida told us in a group interview this morning at Gamescom.

The reason for the shutdown is less thrilling than you might think. "Basically the player data will be taken over into the new game. So, to convert all this new data for the new systems, we need a certain amount of time to do this. There's so much data, so many thousands of characters that we must do this for. And so we have to shut down the servers," he said.

Yoshida was quick to point out that players will have plenty of warning ahead of the shut-down (consider this your first heads-up). He also notes that the original game's userbase will be prioritized in A Realm Reborn's beta queue and that players will "be able to use their current characters in the beta test as well." Though that may not be at the kickoff of the beta, he says, "We're working in a way to try to get it as close to the beginning of the beta test as possible."

A Realm Reborn is headed to both PlayStation 3 and PC later this year.

Every summer, the gaming industry descends on Cologne, Germany, for Gamescom, the world's largest trade fair for interactive games and entertainment. Massively's on the scene in 2012, bringing you all the best scoops, impressions, and interviews from the MMOs at the show!

Gamescom 2012: FFXIV servers shutting down ahead of relaunch, A Realm Reborn beta planned for this fall originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gamescom 2012: FFXIV's A Realm Reborn will be 'scalable' for next-gen consoles

Ben Gilbert — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 06:07:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Interviews, MMO Industry, Interviews (Massively's), Events (Massively's Coverage), Final Fantasy XIV

When Final Fantasy XIV's A Realm Reborn launches later this year on PC and PlayStation 3, each version will represent a scaled version of the game's highest settings. But with talk of next-gen consoles getting louder and louder, does it make sense to stick with the PlayStation 3? Square-Enix producer/director Naoki Yoshida thinks so, but that doesn't mean he isn't prepared for the looming next generation of game consoles.

"The biggest thing is because we promised we'd release on PlayStation 3, and there are still a lot of players out there waiting for us to release a PS3 version. Before we talked about losing the trust of the playerbase with the original release of XIV and getting that trust back. One of the things to get that trust back is to fulfill our promises. That promise being that we'd release on the PlayStation 3," Naoki said in a group interview today at Gamescom. "That doesn't mean we're not looking to the future. We realize that things will be coming, and then making the game compatible for these systems is something we're currently thinking about," he added.

Of course, "Until Sony and Microsoft actually make an announcement," he said, "we can't make an announcement." Yoshida said that his team's flexibility with FFXIV is due to the game's new engine. "With this new engine, it's very scalable. It runs on low-end PCs and high-end PCs. So when new technology comes out, we can easily scale it to that high end."

Yoshida went on to show the game running on a colleague's Sony Vaio laptop sporting a Core i5 processor. While the graphics were scaled down for the lower-end specs, the game still ran smoothly and looked quite impressive. "This is at about 70 percent optimization," he added.

FFXIV's A Realm Reborn will launch on both PC and PlayStation 3 "this year."

Every summer, the gaming industry descends on Cologne, Germany, for Gamescom, the world's largest trade fair for interactive games and entertainment. Massively's on the scene in 2012, bringing you all the best scoops, impressions, and interviews from the MMOs at the show!

Gamescom 2012: FFXIV's A Realm Reborn will be 'scalable' for next-gen consoles originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 06:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BioWare: Mac version of Star Wars: The Old Republic is something it's 'looking at next'

Ben Gilbert — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:30:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-Fi, Interviews, MMO Industry, Star Wars: The Old Republic

BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk are quite dedicated to their fans. At least that's a recurring theme for them when talking about their company's moves in new directions, to which both repeatedly referred during a recent interview in midtown Manhattan. "We know there's a big Mac audience of BioWare fans ... we know that's an important and large audience. And we want to serve that audience," Muzyka told me when asked about a potential Mac version of the his company's latest major release, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

"I'd say 'not yet,'" Zeschuk assured me when I told him that, as a BioWare fan, I'm unable to play The Old Republic on my less than two-year-old MacBook. Though Muzyka was quick to remind me that I can technically play the game on a Windows partition, he also admitted that it wasn't an ideal situation. "We've done a lot of Mac ports before of our games. We haven't announced any details yet for The Old Republic, but we know that's an important and large audience."

Neither would offer a strict timetable on the Mac version, but Zeschuk did note, "That's definitely one of the things we're looking at next. We want to get this launch under our belt and everything stabilized and happy, and then we'll look at other platforms, and that's obviously one of the first ones."

BioWare: Mac version of Star Wars: The Old Republic is something it's 'looking at next' originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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