Phase 4 Confirmed: 16-19 August!!!!!!

If you played Phase 3, Phase 4 is 16th - 19th.

If you did not play Phase 3, Phase 4 Open Beta is 17th - 19th.

Level Cap during Phase 4 is level 20.

Fishing & Arcanist available for Phase 4.

Early access 24th - 26th.

There is no downtime between Early Access and release on the 27th.

Source: Live Letter 8, Yoshi P

No! Another week to wait and less playing time since school starts again and I go back to work.  *pouting*

Random highlights until the full translation(s) are posted:

• Repairs will be cheaper "near break" (in the prior iteration, the cost was the same whether your gear took 1% of damage or 99%).
• No long term plans for a shared stash.
• A FREE smartphone app with character sheet, quest log, and lodestone integration will be available soon after launch (iOS first, with Android shortly after).
• World Transfer service available a couple weeks after launch.
• There will be game-time cards with art unique to their regions (they joked about collecting them).
• Crystal Tower (24-man raid) delayed as it was deemed too difficult for Duty Finder groups (PUGs). Difficulty is being adjusted - expect it in patch 2.1.
• Moogle "Primal" fight in patch 2.1.
• Unique mounts that can be unlocked through job quests. Once the mounts are unlocked, all your classes/jobs have access to them.
• No gear rolling restrictions (in terms of consecutively rolling) at launch - so, basically they're leaving it as an honor system. Up to the community to play nice and be fair with loot.
• Free Companies accrue points as their members do things (like complete quests). Those points can be used to purchase FC buff "props" that are placed in FC housing.
• The dev team is looking for PVP Hitbox testing in Phase 4 (so if you feel like it, please consider give it a shot).
• Fishing is exactly as Yoshi-P described it some time ago - select bait for a location, cast your line, loot fish. He made it clear to state, once again, that Fishing will not affect the economy. T_T
• Marriage system is still in the works.
• Treasure Map system still in the works. This content can be played solo or in a Light Party, so far.
• Job quests can be cleared solo if you're proficient enough with your class(es). There is also a system in place where you can hire npcs to help you.
• Yoshi-P will pass along the idea of letting minions roam around your housing plot to the dev team, for consideration (it's not yet an accepted, or implemented concept).
• To expand a bit on the token system that was mentioned some time ago, the gear that you can buy with tokens will be comparable to drops of the same ilevel content (useful as stop-gap gear for progression).
• They are still shooting for 6mo.'s after launch to implement add-ons.
• You can have pre-mades in Coliseum PVP.
• There will be a Veteran Rewards program - you can earn items/minions/mounts. Also, after 30 days there will be some sort of option for a race change.
• Yoshi-P is tired, but not quitting anytime soon.
• Yoshi-P thanks you (yes, YOU)!

Eorzea Collection 2013S (I must make that song my phone alarm done, bwahaha!):

Tonberry King is coming for you:

Unicorn Mount (CNJ quest reward):

Veteran Rewards:

Tired Yoshi-P:

Awesome Yoshi-P (in case you missed this great gif that's been circulating recently):

 Big thanks to Reinheart for the live translation!

Here's the English transcript that Reinhart made during the live stream:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QhmTw_8SRpJt99Vngqhsq5xjm5vuajyFhuuEXJYxmOo/preview?sle=true

17th for me, since I played beta 3 on a borrowed beta key.   I just hope I'm still able to roll on Excaliber when I finally get in.

yay now to wait 8 days and download, I wanna download now -.-

Can't Wait :) 

"They are still shooting for 6mo.'s after launch to implement add-ons." NOooo - sooner!! Oh well, better late than never. Will certainly be my "resub" moment should I, by some off chance, burn out.

Huge downer: we can’t transfer items between characters on the same world on the same account. Their lame excuse is to combat RMT, where they will just reintroduce the old EQ method of scamming: "please hold my stuff while I switch toons." I don't see this sticking around long before the player base explodes on them. Either that or Squeenix can kiss that extra income goodbye on the multiple character account subs.

Actually disappointed they are allowing add on's at all - Vanilla or bust..maybe the lone ranger on this one, but i don't care for add-on's personally. Guess I will reserve full judgement for what comes down the pipeline and how useful it proves. Could be a plus, but I'm not holding my breath.

In the long run it's a minor nothing thing, just mostly complaining because I wanna play.

Some addons are amazing, like a map overlay with various hunting quest mob locations, marked regions for harvesting certain crafting materials, and other awesome things available on wiki's across the internet.  Others, like DPS meters, are almost built in already with the 'threat level' tables already present.  Its going to be interesting to see how everything stacks up, but I'm really looking forward to this game, addons or not!

I am with you Connor - I don't like add-ons and I haven't used any in a long, long time - to me play the game the devs played and built.  I hate being told that "You don't do enough dps... you don't do enough heals... you don't.... you don't...  you don't.   Had this discussion back in Rift and it playing becomes a job rather than a game.   I like the Gaiscioch philosophy of "Play the way you want - just play to have fun!"

None of those meters count the damage reduction you do - or the shield buffs you give - or the increased damage buffs you gave the team - or your CC that kept the pull from going very bad.

Other add-ons I just fond distracting for the most part, but to each their own.

Just hope we can start downloading soon ;)

Addons are ok, if they strictly control the API.  Blizzard went overboard with what they allow, but if you try other games like LOTRO, RIFT or WAR, the addons are very useful.  The Addon API also saves the developers money by not adding features to the default client that require hours of planning, testing and eventually bloat the client.  

(edit: I refer mostly to LOTRO, as I didn't mess with RIFT addons much and its been years since I played WAR, so who knows what they did, but when I played the API was limited and controlled.)

I'm not seeing anything disappointing to me.  I think that Yoshi chose well in not trying to compete with EQNext for the hardcore raiding crowd.  I can guarantee that game will feed those folks very well, as I am very familiar with the minds and decision makers behind EQN.

Have to agree about the shared stash. RMT more often than not have access to multiple accounts, making the trading of items for them trivial (unless the point is to use that to track mass trades). Now, it's nice for those of us who know trustworthy players that can help us trade items if need be (like our significant others, and/or close friends in Echoes, etc.), but it's not as if every ARR has that option available to them. As a result, the dev teams stance on this seems to inconvenience legitimate players more so than RMT. Reminds me of the negative fishing changes in XI all over again.

I wonder if their stance has more to do with them not wanting to promote players rolling on everything that drops in dungeons, only to pass it to their alt-classes (which will still happen). I think Yoshi-P & Rie Tanaka hinted at that notion when they briefly discussed players "handing down relic weapons" to their alts. Maybe that's their easy way of getting around having to add another level of binding to items (bind on first class/job use)?

Also, now that the new system has been previewed, RIP - old fishing system. I was really hoping the dev team would cave a little and find a happy medium between the old system that many fishers really enjoyed (more so the mini-game than the massive grind), and the new one that seems aimed at a more casual experience (as Yoshi-P has indicated). The new one doesn't seem terrible by any means (seems pretty standard fare for MMORPG fishing, plus the awesome fishing log). And the world is still gorgeous, so I'm sure I'll still find myself plunking down countless hours in some amazing looking zones, trying to snag that next, rare catch. I just wish it was a bit more engaging, as well as it remaining a profitable trade for the playerbase to enjoy (/sigh, RMT succeeds on the fishing front...yet again!). Oh well, no game is perfect.

There was still plenty of great news out of this live letter for me, amongst the few disappointments. Now if you'll excuse me, I must enter cryosleep for a week.

Just wanted to say I pre-ordered today. Some of my friends expressed interest in playing the game and I participated in beta2 and enjoyed what I played. I'm a PVP guy and the lack of PVP is a little disheartening but a PVE game with friends is still fun.

The class system still confuses me, but it looks like one character can be all classes, why is there a need to make alts?

There is no real "need" to make alts, unless you want to see the individual story lines of each of the 3 city-states without waiting for the option to change allegiance.

One character can experience everything in the game. :D

The main benefits of making an alt would be to immediately play a different race (race can be changed after 30 days of paid playtime), or for the economic advantages of having multiple characters (storage/crafting mules, etc.).

As for PVP: The game will have small scale, "Coliseum" PVP, where you can queue up for 4v4 & 8v8 skirmishes (It will be available from Open Beta Phase 4 onwards). There will also be larger scale, "Frontline" battles (think WvWvW from GW2), with objective based combat in zones that will be open 24hrs a day. That will come quite some time after launch (at least 6mo., I believe). There will be both PVP-specific item rewards, and abilities. Different PVP modes will be added as the patches/expansions roll in.

Now, whether or not the PVP will be any good remains to be seen (I hope so!).