Lots of interesting stuff in those tidbits.  Lore Library would be nice as I didn't play the original FF14.  Level sync is always nice and I know they had that at some point in FF11.   Are they really saying it's going to be released in the summer?  I always heard late this year was the release date.

No physical bonuses for those of us who bought the original CE? That sucks, maybe I will buy it on the PS3 for cross-play. I'm surprised there was nothing about servers and 1.0 characters. I really don't want to be stuck on a server with a bunch of 50-everythings. If you can do any digging and find out if 1.0 characters will be able to play on the new servers, do let us know.

Phase 3 of the beta test should begin in early June. Yoshida apologized for the delay and said that open beta will come as soon as possible afterwards
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Preorders of the game should be available for late May, around the 20th.

Yoshida will talk about the release date of the game next month. It will be during the “hot” period of summer.

Those that purchased the collector’s edition of Final Fantasy XIV will still get the digital items included in the Collector’s Edition of A Realm Reborn, but not the physical ones.

Extremely popular voice actress Rie Tanaka (that you can see in the picture above, with a lovely “cat ears” hairstyle) will lend her vocal cords to Gridania’s grand company leader Kan-E-Senna (if you don’t know who she is, you may want to check my FFXIV story recap column here) and primal Garuda.

A Realm Reborn will support both Nvidia SLI and AMD Crossfire.

A “Level sync” feature will be added in phase 3. When a player will enter the area of a lower level FATE he’ll be prompted with a confirmation message for level sync. It will be opt-in, and it won’t be automatic, as that could be an annoyance. There will be no need to change equipment, as the stats of the equipment worn at the time will be automatically adjusted to the appropriate level as well.

Muskets may become usable by players in the future.

Very large shields (almost as big as a player models) may become available after launch.

Since Minfilia (again, check my story recap if you don’t know who she is) has become an important character, she’ll have a completely new and sexy costume.

Composer Naoshi Mizuta said he’d like to participate in scoring A Realm Reborn. Two or three tunes by him may be in at launch. More tracks by various Final Fantasy composers may come after.

The new President of Square Enix Yosuke Matsuda will possibly appear during an upcoming Letter from the Producer Live broadcast. Probably the one after the next. Yoshida recently had dinner with him. He’s a friendly fellow and a good drinker.

Yoshida thinks that the global cooldown was a little too long in phase 2 of the beta.

There will be no Player Killing in the game, just PvP.

Warriors will change a lot in A Realm Reborn. They won’t be as half-hearted between tanking and damage dealing as in the first incarnation of the game.

The Fat Chocobo will be introduced with a patch after launch.

The game is going to launch in the hot summer, so swimsuits will probably be available.

The plan was to name the servers like classic Final Fantasy monsters like in beta, but people are also fond of the names from the old Final Fantasy XIV, so that option is also being considered.

Everyone will be able to select the region of the server they wants to play in freely, regardless of where they live.
Darklight equipment will return in A Realm Reborn.

Yoshida would really like to make the “Meteor Survivor” polo shirt available for sale to players.

Battle Regimen will not return in the new game, and will be completely replaced by Limit Breaks.

Limit breaks up to level 2 will be available in phase 3 of the beta.

While the new Lodestone will appear with phase 3, Yoshida would like to start testing the smartphone companion app from phase 4, but since the timing also depends on Apple, it may come later with the launch of the game.

Players will be able to change the interior (wallpaper, flooring, ceiling) of their house, but probably not the exterior, even if there will be different models, to avoid incurring in memory allocation problems.

There will be no benchmark for the PS3. It’s a console, so it would basically just be like watching a trailer.

Yoshida would like to introduce a “lore library” in the game.

There will be ways to share items and currency within a Free Company.

Phase 3 of the beta will include almost all the character creation options. It’s possible that it will include all of them, but probably a few more will be added for release.

No starting city-state will give any functional advantage over the other two.

Jobs will be available from phase 3 of the beta.

Starting from beta 3 the new chat window will be implemented allowing, between other things, to invite players to a group by clicking on their name.

Optimization of the PS3 client is pretty good now, and it can display 30 or 40 characters at the same time without straining the engine.

Ramuh and Leviathan will come after launch, followed by Shiva. Plans are proceeding smoothly for their implementation.

After release new content will be released at a very aggressive pace via patches.

That’s pretty much all the relevant information I managed to catch (a lot of questions were about Yoshida’s personal tastes, whether about food, games and so forth).

Is there anything that goes over the changes?

looks like i got crapped on again and its mainly only legacy/1.0 players getting in

Long story....well less long.

I joined an LS maybe a month ago that another friend of mine recommended. He's a good dude, so I expected good results with this group. Obvious starter period went underway, so I went out of my way to prove I was a good and helpful member. I spent money in game, used items I was saving, and spent personal free time assisting members of this group in order to make a good name for myself. A few member had been making some relics, and were far along their final stages, so I loaned out my own saved currency for them to finish, in hopes that when I requested assistance in my own fields of advancement (my Ragnarok), it wouldn't be like pulling teeth. In total, I used 500k gil, all of my abysse KI pop items (which I refarmed and used again), voidwalker pops, and loaned out in total 3154 ( I kept track, contrary to popular belief) units of ancient currency, which totalled...22mil gil.

The day I quit, I was kicked from the linkshell for telling everyone to fuck off for a stupid argument that evolved into bickering and insults that weren't necessary by any standard. I was told I could come back if I apologized to the shell for my behavior....it then dawned on me that once again, I was letting this piece of shit game run my life, and for all the time I spent on this game, I have gone fucking nowhere in terms of my own accomplishments. In a nutshell, I'm tired of getting used and abused and paying 13 buckd a month for it.

That actual details go on much longer, I didn't wanna bore anyone with the details.