there's no point allowing us to use our character in beta. the point of beta is to test.

it may be useful for balancing high level content. but this is already established. it has not been stated they are changin any formulas (damage, enmity, etc.) so this is a bit moot.

re-rolling a character forces testers to use the new UI for this. this is important to test.

progress made in beta phase will not be 'saved.'

1) gives an unfair advantage to those who get in beta vs. those who don't
2)it's been stated in a couple interviews that players will not be allowed to play and make progress during beta (implies you must roll a new character if you are in beta because progress in beta is not saved)
3)force testers to see new UI for low level content. (which will be important for hooking new players, IE: important for success of game)

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I'm assuming you've never been in a beta before.

it is 100% normal to wipe characters played in the beta phase. very very very rarely does a company allow you to keep a character you played during beta. If anything, you will get a cool little achievement or vanity something or other. SE is not likely to do this though. IE: what happens in beta stays in beta. any progress made during beta will be wiped. all progress made before beta will be saved and be again available at the launch of 2.0. the point of beta is to test the new UI and smooth things over and find any ground breaking bugs. (IE: i pull up a widget and try to teleport to a node. doing so causes the game to crash and display error:123123XAsdfa;lsomethingsomething.)

once the servers go down, subs will stop. it makes no sense to continue to pay. if you are in beta, you will not have to pay to test the game. that's just silly. it makes no sense to make your customers pay when you know servers will be down for months. again, that's just silly.

it's been stated there will be a 'trial' period once 2.0 goes live. this will draw in old players looking to check out the new interface. those of us who have already decided to play will likely get a free month. (we're going to be paying eventually anyway, so SE doesn't really lose anything by doing this)

http://gdl.square-enix.com/ffxiv/dow...Roadmap_EN.pdf

If you look at the roadmap, porting of data began back in march. the servers will go down in november(ish). it's been said that 2.0 will officially launch early next year. so that's 2-3 months of 'reboot' it will likely take at least a week or two to reboot the servers and do initial testing before they go 'live.' in debug mode to allow beta to truly begin. so we're looking at 1.5-2.5 months of actual beta testing. there may or may not be an open beta to stress test servers. (hasn't been stated.)