First the character creation.

To start off, it is not as robust as some of the other major MMOs out there. No customizing down to the tuft of hair like in APB. Nor the billions of varieties offered in Champions Online. But it does have a decent selection to keep everyone a bit different. It could have been that what we got to play with was the Beta build 1.0 as well. So hopefully a bit more to come.

In any instance, you start off by building your character's looks from race on down to the adjustment of eyes and eyebrows. Kind of a nice and basic set up to do all of this. My only main gripe is that they are all done via drop downs that the user is required to mouse over to see a change and then select if they like. Not my preferred way to do this as it leads to A LOT of searching and re-clicking due to accidental selections. In the end, I was finally able to finish the look of my Lalafell Dunesfolk and moved on to selecting my starting class and subclass.

I say starting class not because you get the option later on to change after a certain level, but because you can change between any of the four Classes and their multitude of subclasses at any time. It is all just based on the weapon you are using at the time or tool if the case may be. The example given while selecting my starting class was thus - While carrying the sword you are now a Gladiator. If you changed to holding your bow, you are now gaining as an Archer. A wand, now a specific magic user class, and so forth. No more need to go to a town and alter everything, now it can be done on the fly.

Hearing that, I carefully made my decision to be a Disciples of Magic (Class) and start as a Summoner (Subclass). Something which I found out gives you one more subclass based on your summon. At which I chose to be a summoner of the Destroyer God. Hard choice.

This all left one last thing to do before moving on to go out and bring the Destroyer into the world - choosing a name. Simple enough for me, but what about you out there that have specific names you like using? What if someone has already snagged Cloud or Sephiroth? Well now you can add a surname to the mix in the Online Final Fantasy mix. The best part, the surname doesn't need to be displayed. So you can now keep that name you have already used before and were worried you wouldn't get unless you snagged it at one minute after launch.

Now that I had created a character, it was time to go in and take him for a test run. Or more, take one of the E3 demo level 30 characters for a test drive - a level 30 Gladiator at that. All so they could show the most basic of combat in Final Fantasy XIV in a quick amount of time. No real worry about being slain unless I went out after some of the epic creatures.

Straying back to the topic at hand, I began slaying the creatures of the world with the quickness. While doing so, I found that they had revamped the original (FFXI) battle system quite a bit for Final Fantasy XIV. Primarily getting rid of a click and wait for cool down to occur. Something they replaced with a TP, read ATB for you non-online FF fans, system where you can queue actions and wait for your gauge to fill up to activate. Yea, they made the combat a bit more like all the other Final Fantasys out there. This made combat a much smoother process and aids people like me who like to take time to plan my moves. No longer is there a need to spam keys in hopes for the attack to cool off at the right time.

My only wish is that I would have been able to play with the magic system and summon system. It is how I will be playing the game at home, so I would have loved to see that. But hey, how can you complain when receiving a very exclusive preview of a game right?

Speaking of playing like I would at home, there was a version of Final Fantasy XIV set up in a three monitor matrix with active 3D displaying the action as well. I declined to play in that set up, but it is worth mentioning that Square Enix is looking into offering 3D into the game. That future decision will be all based off of fan and player feedback, though. So it isn't official, but it is possible. I know I won't have a set up to play it in that mode, so I could care less. I'll be playing in 2D.

If the images here are not enough for your eyes to go along with my long-windedness, here is the trailer they had looping for everyone not special enough to have a private viewing of Final Fantasy XIV. That should tide you over until the launch of the beta by the end of next month.