It took a long time, but FFXI recently introduced a public test server. FFXIV needs this ASAP! The devs really need to put this out as soon as possible and start taking our feedback more seriously before releasing patches. Overall, there are a lot of cool things in the patch, and a lot of great ideas as well, but overall the execution of several things is very flawed and I have to imagine this was mostly not intentional on SE's part.

I have level 15-20 dated items that have better stats now than they did before the patch, yet my Blackened Scale Mail, which is NOT a "dated" item had its stats removed and now only gives Defense...

The power leveling issue is crazy too. Even reading the pre-release patch notes, it sounded like the new claiming system would be a power levelers dream. Add XP chains onto this and it is even worse.

The materia system is a wonderful idea and I have no doubt it will be a really cool thing in the long run, but as it is right now it is a botters and RMTs wet dream. Multiboxing bots and farmers with elbow smashed names will be able to easily rack in the spirit-bond points several characters at a time and break down the armor and weapons to sell materia. Crafting bots will be able to do the same thing, while also leveling crafts and producing more items to sell to normal players and inflated prices due to everyone needing gear to wear and several pieces to break down into Materia for their gear.

Numerous bugs and glitches seem to have gotten through as well, from graphical, to market related, to full on exploits. Almost all of these have already been caught and beaten to death on the forums within the first day of the patch release and more will probably be found throughout the week.

A public test realm could help with this tremendously! The vast majority of us who are still playing this game absolutely want to see it balanced and successful. Let us help you SE... it will be worth the time and investment it will take you to put the test server together and it will be worth our time to log into it and help test patches before release. I'd have rather waited another month for this patch, if there is even a slight chance it would mean the player base is happier with it and continues to play FFXIV for the long term.