Bluebrake

Snowblind:

Many people prefer a flat subscription fee to the alternative nickel-and-diming methods for MMO revenue, which bring major problems of their own.

Then there's the odd fully free MMO, but those are hardly even the same genre. The content and service you get with those will never even approach the level of a subscription game. Those games stagnate within a matter of months, whereas subscription games have a steady stream of content, decent customer service, and stable servers for years on end.

Everything I've heard says The Old Republic will use a subscription model, incidentally. They would never be able to pay for what they're planning without one.

This is incorrect. All FFXI servers are fully cross-platform and cross-regional.

>He added that, "It's not as big as a purchase intent driver as you may be hearing," saying that most consumers are purchasing the console for PS3 games and Blu-ray movies.

Well, yeah. They're probably not buying it for the backwards compatibility because, um, it doesn't have any.

No one ever said "Q1 2010," just 2010. Expect a fall/winter release.

This is an early alpha build. The one thing I can absolutely guarantee is that the animations and clipping will be drastically improved.

Exactly. No lawyer could really be that ignorant, could they? Unless he's making the guy pay upfront.

Wooooo!

Yeah, so it's on PSP. What matters is that the gameplay is the same. And maybe one or more less risky games like this on handhelds will give it the momentum it needs to develop into a real franchise. This is a great day.

This news has been digested and mostly dismissed by the FFXIV forums for weeks. Summary: the QA coordinator and testers are probably for XIV, but for the in-house alpha. The Game Master is most likely for FFXI.

The game's producers said in an interview that the beta will begin in 2010:
http://ffxiv.zam.com/story.html?story=18415

It's not console exclusive. Never has been.

People hate it because because a very large number of troglodytes played FFXI for two weeks at launch, decided it was too hard, and left to bitch about it for the next five years. FFXI thus gained a bad reputation despite being loved by many.

And never mind that the new game is going in a completely different direction from XI's unrelenting hardcore style. People like to complain.

I still haven't gotten an adequate explanation about what the hell is wrong with that guy's back.

I was all ready to give it to LittleBigPlanet, but then Valkyria Chronicles came along. Game of the year. There hasn't been anything like it since the original FF Tactics.