Hello and welcome to the thirteenth edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For this week’s column, we’re going back to playing armchair game designer with one of FFXIV’s systems. Like every other MMO out there your character unlocks the ability to ride a mount to speed up their travel between Quest Giver A and Thing to Kill B, but FFXIV does distinguish itself by allowing you to customize your mount’s appearance as well as summon them in combat to assist you. In theory this sounds great for solo players or someone chaining FATEs – just spec your warchicken Chocobo for tanking/healing/DPS, pick out their skills to support whatever you’re doing, then ride off to battle with your AI companion. Sounds great in theory, but in reality? Not so much, so let’s see what we can do to fix that.

Hello and welcome to the twelfth edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For this week’s column, rather than looking into one of FFXIV’s gameplay systems or their design philosophy, we’re delving back into one of the aspects of FFXIV I like the most, the Armoury System. In particular, we’ll be talking about Jobs for existing Classes. With the exception of the Arcanist, the rest of the Disciples of Magic and all of the Disciples of War have but a single Job available to them. While these new Jobs do give new abilities to their base Classes and they change the gameplay to an extent, you can’t really claim that they provide the player with options to make their character unique when there’s one path available and you cut down the cross-class skill options for all Jobs. This is a modern MMO, after all – we’re used to the idea of multiple specializations for our classes and being able to fill multiple roles with most base classes. Let’s see if we can come up with some potential choices for our favorite classes, shall we?

Hello and welcome to the eleventh edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For this column we'll be talking about FFXIV's competition. For those of us playing on the PC, we're well aware of the other fantasy MMO offerings available: World of Warcraft, the EverQuest series, Lord of the Rings Online, etc. We have to remember however that FFXIV exists not only on the PC, but on consoles as well. As I talked about in one of our previous columns, the PlayStation 4 client is a perfectly viable way to enjoy FFXIV. Of course it also helps that there's no fantasy MMO alternative for console players other than FFXIV and its predecessor on the PS3, Final Fantasy XI… for now. This Friday marks the PC and Mac release of Zenimax Online's new MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online, with the PS4 and Xbox One versions not too far behind, due out this June.

PC players will have both games available to choose between right on launch day, but those wishing to play a fantasy MMO on their PS4 will have to wait even longer; the PS4 client for FFXIV won’t be out until April 14^th and TESO’s console versions won’t be released until June. That leaves those players (and potential newcomers) with some time on their hands and a decision to make. Do they stick with the Eorzea they know or do they see what Zenimax has to offer in the world of Tamriel? How does their gameplay compare to that of FFXIV? Given that I'm ZAM's FFXIV columnist as well as the person who wrote our preview for TESO, I'm probably the best equipped here to compare the two for any undecided players.

Hello and welcome to the tenth edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For this column we'll be talking about FFXIV's take on equipment and itemization. I touched on this some back in column #5 with crafted items, but those aren't the only area where some variety in equipment could stand to be added. Does the system work as is? Yes but after playing a bunch of Marvel Heroes and the new Diablo III patch these last few weeks, I can't help but look at the loot in FFXIV and be left wanting more.

Hello and welcome to the ninth edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For this column we’ll be taking a break from all of the armchair game designing and talking about actually playing the game. FFXIV has been out on PC and PlayStation 3 since last August, but there’s one more version of the game that’s not yet released: the PlayStation 4 client. The PS4 version of the game won’t be officially released until April 14^th, but in order to prepare for launch Square Enix is holding two beta test events. The first was this past week (February 22^nd through March 3^rd) and the second will be right before launch (April 4^th through 7^th). As someone who plays FFXIV (well, and just wants something else to play on his PS4 until Infamous Second Son comes out), I jumped into the beta this past weekend to see how playing on the console compares to the PC.

Hello and welcome to the eighth edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. At the end of last week's column, I teased that I'd be talking about crafting again. Before anyone runs from another mountain of text on "here's what changes need to be made", this one's actually closer to last week's column where we brainstormed new classes for FFXIV. For this week's column we're going to talk about something that I think the Disciples of the Hand should have to be considered a true path for player progression: Jobs.

Hello and welcome to the seventh edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For this week’s column, rather than looking into one of FFXIV’s gameplay systems or their design philosophy, we’re going to play with one of the aspects I like the most, the classes and jobs. The Armoury System is one of FFXIV’s more unique areas, allowing players the option of taking abilities from a variety of different classes and mixing them together to make a unique build for their preferred main class/job. The system’s not perfect and there are some right and wrong choices for each role with the current implementation, but the concept is sound and the idea of having a variety of options is quite appealing. You know what would make it even better though? More choices, which the previous Final Fantasy games provide ample inspiration.

Hello and welcome to the sixth edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For this week’s edition we’re going to talk about the way FFXIV handles its content gating. Now when I saw instance gating, most of you coming from other MMOs are probably just picturing raids since those are usually the only thing you have to earn your way into these days, be it through an attunement quest line, an item level requirement or something like that. FFXIV goes a bit further. Want to run dungeons with your friends? Hope you’ve been keeping up with your story quests.

Welcome to 2014’s first edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For this issue we’re finally going to talk about something I was going to do before Lightning Strikes and the holidays interrupted me: crafting. We’ve already talked about what makes FFXIV’s gathering classes and mechanics unique and how I would improve them, so now it’s time to take all of those materials and turn them into shiny things.

Hello and welcome to 2013’s last issue of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column about Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Normally in these columns, I’d find a specific aspect of FFXIV to discuss, be it ways to improve existing systems or looking into a world event and where they did well or poorly. As much as I’d really like to do that with FFXIV’s crafting system, we’re going to hold off on that for when everyone’s not on holiday travel. Instead for this week’s column, we’ll be looking back over 2013 for FFXIV, both the good and the bad.