First wave of Beta tests starts on Saturday, July 10th. While they made it sound a little like we may actually get to play for longer than a few hours at a time… the test times will still only be Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, staggered to give the North Americans, the Japanese, and the Europeans a 4 hour window on each of those days. Kind of makes your answer of “over 70 hours a week” on the beta application seem absolete, doesn’t it?

And for certain little fruit Lalafels, it means that they’ll have to be staying up until 2 a.m. to hit their windows, what with the time changes and all…

While it’s not open beta yet (assuming SE ever does that), it may still be time to start checking your e-mails for that invite! Remember, some people have reported finding it in their spam folders instead of their main inboxes.

LOOK EVERYWHERE!

I, of course, will keep you posted on whatever I can.

In FFXI, the Taru had an accent. It was all “cutaru” and “huggaru” and “see you late-aru” and crap… Hell, Tuufless even coined the word “bloggaru” if I remember correctly. All the NPCs said it, even some of us weirdo players said it.

But…

What the hell is the Lalafell accent going to be?

“Hello, I’m Strawberrie, the cutafell Lalafell from the Plains of Eorzefell. Nice to meet youfell.”

It just… doesn’t have the same ring to it. Or is it going to be… a variation on the “lala” part of the name? Which honestly sounds even worse…

Hellala! I’m Strawberrie, the cutalla Lalafell from the Plains of Eorzelala! Nice to meetala you!”

Which of course makes me pose the question so many have asked since the race names were first announced: “It’s a damn Elvaan, it’s a friggin’ stretched out Tarutaru, and it’s your garden-variety Galka. Why the hell are they called something else?!”

If anyone ever makes it out of the ship hold and has a chance to talk to some REAL Lalafell other than the ones sitting in that little room, y’all let me knowfell…

After the end of the extensive Alpha testing, it seems that Square-Enix has finally settled on a release date! Official Beta test clients go out tomorrow… That means it’s time for you guys to tell your Moogle to pack up your Mog House, hit Facebook for the mass “server move” groups that people are starting to keep y’all on the same servers again, and kiss your real life goodbye on…

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010!

You can, of course, read the full story on the super-awesome FFXIV Blog to get more details on the date, the pricing SE is looking at, and whatever else you may want to know.

All I can say is…

OH MY GODARU!!

Totally not dead.

But biting my nails and checking my spam folder every damn day to see if I’ve made the FFXIV beta. I was soooo hoping too, since we’re all in FFXIVblog.com together. Grrr, Squeenix, why must you taunt me so?!

Anyway, here’s a cute project I attempted to do with Adobe After Effects. Haven’t had much time for anything else lately. Big move coming up, don’cha know?

US to the UK.

Gonna has me some fish ‘n chips.

But for now…

LOVE&JOY!

And I got my new wings!! Well… my preorder wings that everyone and their mom has. They look kind of… organic. I don’t like them. But at +40 Flight Time, I ain’t complaining THAT loudly.

Here they are, in all their weird… leafy glory. And of course with LV30 comes the option of “remodeling” your armour. What that means is that you can take any which piece of clothing or armour and convert the look of your current item into it! So I bought a LV38 hoochie outfit that shows off my max boobie slider, and converted my normal chainmail to look like it.

And it only costs 1,990 Kinah per conversion! I feel pretty and pink!

But I will say… I still wear a big “HAIY GUYZ SHOOT ME IN MY HEAD WIT UR ARROWZ NAO KTHX” sign on my back in Aion PVP. Someone once told me in Legion chat that they heard Clerics were great in PVP because of their, and I quote… “Epic self healz.”

*looks around*

I’m sorry, I must’ve missed the NPC that sells these epic self heals. The only self heals I get are the ones usable on everyone, and the fastest one is 1.5sec cast.

*looks around some more*

One and a half seconds is a LONG FUCKING TIME to be trying to cast a heal with four people beating on you. Chainmail doesn’t do dick either, btw. I feel just like I did in Warsong Gulch on my little Priest in WoW. Haiy guise! Here I am! Nuke me to all hell!

But really I was just posting to show off the first raid on an Abyss tower that I’ve been to. That’s the Deity Guard General there in the middle, with a LV41 tank from another Legion tanking him, and with about… 80 people around. See the blue shapes? That’s my PC going “are you fucking insane, you want me to render ALL those people?”

Of course I got pulled in by the general and then swiftly one-shot at 40%, so I kind of… laid there and watched for 20min. But Elyos got him. So yeah… Uhm. That was kind of fun.

But for now… Mr. Kim is still at large.