Quote Originally Posted by Elexia View Post
Err..no it hasn't, first phase doesn't even start till likely November (around in SE terms means after.) Trust me, you'd have already seen an actual flood of information, videos and screenshots from JP players if it had started, heck you can find certain sites with JP who chronicles login data and projected vs actual timeframes by SE. There would be lots of Alpha stuff floating around it did start for them, even if it's a "stress test."



I also think this is what's going to be a problem since while they did rebuild XIV from the ground up, they already had XIV 1.0 to retool, so realistically, when you relaunch an MMO there's no excuse or room for excuse for something to fall short given XIV's special case vs brand new MMO.
Well, that's a shame, considering I'm hearing so much about October 4th and that being the start for JP beta. I have no reason to believe otherwise; besides, it's always possible that for once, people are obeying an NDA. Unlikely though.

And I can't stress how much that the probability of ARR launching with bare bones in terms of actual content/things to do is very high. No matter how much people say 'They aren't going to release it until everything's finished', well, you know what? - MMOs are NEVER finished. Unlike other games, they constantly evolve and change and they're patched on a regular basis with bug fixes, new content, adjustments to things, etc. ARR is going to launch in a semi-unfinished state; it's just a matter of how quickly they roll out the prior-unfinished content.

One can only hope.