Ellie

The bot's been banned, but I'll leave the thread just because I find it kind of funny/interesting.

So excited, but also a little bit worried. Every floor seems to be one giant room with pillars. I was really hoping to be able to section things off into rooms, but... I guess it's not a big deal, especially if you can put markers around.

As fascinating as the possible biological evolution of Miqo'te, and the fact that they're genetically similar enough to mate and produce healthy offspring with the other five races with little complication is, I'm afraid this discussion has gone off the rails and delved into some pretty unsavory territory. The rules require us to be respectful to one another, whether you started it or responded in kind. Please get back to the respectful discussion of Miqo'te sexy time, or else the thread will be locked and sexy time will be over. Thank you.

I don't know how long it'll last though, so if you know someone who's been trying to get onto Balmung or if you know someone who wanted to get on Gilgamesh who wouldn't mind switching to Balmung, you'll want to spread the word and get those characters in!

Early access is starting soon, and launch is just around the corner. Chances are, we could very well get an influx of new roleplayers, which means more people looking for mentors. If you've signed up to be a mentor, but have since either become unavailable or cannot take on new mentees, please let me know so I can hide your mentor form in a spoiler tag. PMing someone only to find out that they're not taking on new mentees is discouraging, and I'd like to minimize that as much as possible. I'll also be contacting all our current mentees to see how they're doing, and ensuring that they're getting the help they need. If you're a mentee and would like to save me the trouble of tracking you down, feel free to send me a PM to let me know how you're getting on with your mentor, and if you need any additional help. Thanks everyone! ~Ellie

I completely agree with Yoshi-P's sentiment that Free-to-Play models are for publishers who want a return investment on the product they're funding quickly. I feel like that's the reason it's become more prevalent, too. Publishers who want their money back now and don't care about the long term health of the game. I don't like free-to-play because I feel like it detracts from the game. Either I'll have to worry about not having access to the good parts of the game, or I'll have to deal with the game pestering me to buy items from the cash shop, or I'll have to wait longer for updated content to come out. I'd rather just pay a monthly fee and get everything. Free to play also lays down the welcome mat for more RMT. What better way to encourage gil sellers than to take away the cost of subscribing to the game in order to farm and powerlevel? To be honest, I like FFXIV's current spin the cash shop system. The game rewards for subscribing x number of days not only encourages you to pay ahead for subscriptions, but it advertises itself without being annoying. It also paces itself really well. Two new items every month would be a pathetic trickle for a cash shop, but you don't even notice it when it's touted as a subscriber reward. You're waiting for more, but you're not thinking "geez, why don't they release more stuff", you're thinking "wow, I can't wait to see what we'll get in another three months!" It's genius! I'd be very surprised to see this turn into a free-to-play game. Maybe if the subscription rate drops so low that they can't afford to keep the game up otherwise, but at that point I'd think that turning it free-to-play would just delay the inevitable shutting down.

T is for Terra Branford (or Tina)

M is for Maester Seymour, whose hair looks funny.

[align=center][/align] More comic! Yay...!

Doctor Galactic, what have you done?! You've broken Squeenix! How are we going to play our games now?

More than likely, they'll announce when you can upgrade your account to CE some time in the future.

I'm guessing most of you have already gotten your Pre-Orders out of the way, but if you haven't, Amazon has a promotion going for their Final Fantasy XIV PC Download where you can get $5 Amazon Store credit and $5 Amazon Digital Games credit. (Note, the promotion is only for PC Digital Standard and Collector's Editions, although there is also a $10 Amazon credit promotion going for the PS3 Standard Edition.) Amazon has great deals going on all the time, even in their digital games section, so it's hard to think of Amazon credit as anything other than a good deal, even if you don't plan on using them right away, they're good for a year so you're bound to find some use for them. There was some concern about the Pre-Order codes not going out, but I have it on authority that that issue has been fixed. The Marketing Manager for the Digital Team has made a thread on the FFXIV subreddit if you have any concerns. Also, if you've already preordered the digital SE or CE through Amazon, you'll automatically get the extra store credit from the promotion, you don't need to do anything further. ~Ellie

Awesome news by the way

I didn't either, actually, I keep thinking I'm the only one. Actually I might be the only MtF here, from the looks of it. <__<