Alpha Testers Guide Appears Online

A lot of information has been leaked regarding the current Alpha testing phase of Final Fantasy XIV thanks to http://ffxivjourney.blogspot.com/

It seems to be all the information that Square Enix passed out to the current testers to help them along with playing. There are also a few videos to check out which reveals a bit more information about how things are going to play out.

First things first, it looks like one of my main fears has happened, something that was a main problem for me in FFXI. I didn't see any mouse movement while using the menu systems which suggests that, like XI, you'll have to use keys rather than a cursor to navigate through them. This is something that really annoyed me and it was very close to being a game breaker in XI.

Another thing that I did notice and I wasn't really surprised was the "invisible walls" which is a big issue in all Square Enix games has reared it's head here too. Places where you expect to be able to walk or fall down is really a wall. It seems to be an accepted practice for them which is why I wasn't surprised.

I also wasn't surprised that it doesn't look like the player will be able to jump either :(

I still have high hopes for the game, this is only alpha footage which is very obvious so it's almost expected that we'll see a lot of changes.

Make sure you check out http://ffxivjourney.blogspot.com/ for all the information, if some of the videos don't work, as I suspect they won't once Square Enix gets wind of them, you can see the majority of the information here on Kotaku

Is the iPad worth it?

It seems like every tech site on the internet is covering the imminent launch of the iPad which for those of you in America is only a few hours away. I've been keeping an eye on the news in the last few days and I've read some of the reviews so I've decided to weigh in and give my opinion on the matter.

I'd be lying if I hadn't thought about ordering an iPad for myself, I've been quietly waiting for Microsofts Courier to be officially announced and released since it was leaked last year and as of right now the iPad is probably the closest thing to that, but I've been burned by Apple before which is why I've decided to wait. I got caught up in the hype of the iPhone when it originally launched back in 2008 and picked one up.

The phone was epic for it's multi-touch gestures and accelerometer but that was it really, no app store, poor iTunes connectivity and very buggy software. A year later they released the 3G and then the 3GS slowly adding new things. If they'd have released the 3G/S first, I probably wouldn't be writing this now. That is why I'm going to wait because I'm sure the same thing is going to happen with the iPad too.

Apple made a huge mistake not allowing flash support on this device. I think they got away with it on the iPhone (barely I might add) because it was a mobile phone but the iPad is supposed to be a Tablet PC. Apple have effectively blocked a good chunk of the internet thanks to this move, something which has downright stopped me from ordering one. I've seen some of the tech demos out there for HTML5 and it really is looking impressive but until it takes off and becomes widespread, the iPad is missing something too big to ignore. It's my opinion that the only reason Apple choose to block Flash is because of it's development capabilities. Why would you bother going through the process of getting your application approved by Apple when you could just post it online with Flash and let people use it that way?

I know a lot of people will tell you that Apple products are ridiculously overpriced and that you're paying for the brand name, not the actual product and they're right, $500 is a lot of money for what is, in reality a glorified iPhone/Touch XL. My main reason behind considering one is the application development, something I will definitely be playing around with in the near future and the possibilities open up even more with an iPhone XL, more space to do cool things.

In the end though I will be waiting until the iPad G or whatever the next iteration is going to be called comes out some time next year with the improvements and lower price tag before I think about getting it again, maybe by that time the Courier will be released.

So is the iPad worth it? No.