Hello! I am posting this announcement on behalf of the director of FINAL FANTASY XI, Mizuki Ito.

Quote Originally Posted by Mizuki_Ito
Hello, I’m the director of FINAL FANTASY XI, Ito.

The Test Server update is drawing near and I would like to inform you of the current development status.

To start off, I would like to apologize for the fact that the features listed below, originally outlined for October on the 2011 roadmap, will be delayed until the beginning of November.

We worked diligently to implement them on schedule, but in order for you all to be able to perform the proper testing we decided we needed a bit more time. I apologize for the delay.
  • Voidwatch Chapter III
    While working on chapter III content, we are also working on adjustments to the existing Voidwatch system and will be implementing them in October. These adjustments will also be reflected in chapter III battles, so we have to make sure to get those done before the release of the next chapter. We will be working hard to ensure that we implement this without a major delay.
  • Walk of Echoes Expansion
    We have made quite a bit of progress in the creation of the new confluxes. In order for everyone to be able to properly test the Walk of Echoes content we decided we needed to prepare an environment that makes testing easy and because of this additional preparation time is needed. In addition to this, we are planning to use Walk of Echoes to test out the balance of skill increase in battle-related content.
  • Relic and Relic +1 Equipment Upgrades
    In addition to listening to all of your feedback and changing the upgrade method, we are also making the upgraded stats attractive. There are a lot of items, so we need some time to perform our final checks. Since there’s no reason not to implement everything at once, we plan on implementing everything once we spend a bit more time working on it.
While these features weren’t able to make it in time for implementation in October, rest assured that we’re working hard to get them into the test server as soon as possible.