Someone translated the text on BG Forums regarding the characters:

"When you make your character, aside from choosing the race, you will also be able to customize their appearance. Head, skin color, hair type etc, there will be multiple factors. Just how exact we will be able to customize their appearance is still unknown, but we mean it in a good way when we say that it seems like it will become a worry to many players."

Races:
Hyuran: 2 clans - midlanders and highlanders
Elezen: the original race of Eorzea, oppose the Hyurans, developed hearing
Roegadyn: more human looking than Galkans, their base is in the north and there are a lot of fishermen
Lalafell: based in the south, agricultural, high intelligence, not many females
Miqo'te: 2 clans - the Sun Seekers who live regular daytime lives and the Moon Keepers who are nocturnal, not a lot of males, not clear if they will speak like cats
More races to come later

Stages:
Desert City - Uldaha
Forest City - Gridania
Ocean City - Rimsa Rominsa
(the spelling could be way off, just going from the 2ch stuff Munba posted)

Armory System:
- you can change jobs and lifestyles freely
- by changing your weapon, you are essneitally changing jobs, and can do so anywhere
- so if you are invited to a PT and there are a lot of fighters, you can switch to a caster, then when your adventures are over, go fishing or synth some stuff
- weapons and def gear all have their own merit. if you want to hone a particular skill, you can coordinate your equipment in that direction
- rather than character levels and skills, the main thing is the skill of the item you are holding
- you can play on your own and switch between fighter and caster to heal yourself, so soloing is easy
- changing is as simple as changing your weapon, so there's no stress
- typical jobs of the FF series, e.g. warrior and black mage, are being avoided
- you can basically enjoy this world in any way you want.

Guild Leave:
- these are passes of trust you obtain from guilds
- a Leave is not a quest. it's a card.
- you can mix your Leaves with other players' Leaves
- at the Adventurers' Guild, you can get Guild Leaves
- there are Leaves that you can't get when your skill is low
- typically a Leave will take 30 mins to complete, there are some shorter too
- you can set the number of people needed to clear the Leave by yourself (seems to be like a difficulty level)
- if one person is carrying a Leave, other players may join whether they have the same Leave or not
- the contents of the Leave change after a week passes
- you can carry multiple Leaves (they are card form, like invitations)
- Guild Leaves are designed like Tarot cards and are really beautiful

Ethelite (sp?)
- installations that can warp you to your adventuring spot instantly

Interview
- in Eorzea, the cities are not all on one connecting landmass, like they were in FFXI
- the difference between races is not as big as FFXI
- but their is a difference between male and females, which they are keeping secret
- character creation: face, hair colour, eye colour, skin, etc. etc.
- battles are realtime, but not action based
- targeting an enemy and fighting (like FFXI) is not the main system, there will be a lot that you have to think about besides the target itself.
- because of the armory system, they are going to make it possible to carry lots of stuff
- there will also be stuff included that makes it easy to change gear
- they're considering whether to let you master everything or not - there may be a see-saw like approach (like FFXI)
- the base of the character growth is the weapon. use a weapon and raise your skills.
- they are considering the option to let you arrange your windows how you want
- weapons will degrade with use
- Guild Leaves include monster hunting, expulsion, skilling up, etc etc
- when you go on a Leave run, you can use Ethelite to take you where you need to go instantly
- there are pirates in Rimsa
- Miqo'te are more catlike
- some trumpeting about how it's going to be an awesome game
- right from the start, it'll be exciting and you'll be thinking "orly!?"
- weather changes, day/night too
- 1 game day = 1 earth hour
- people who can only play an hour a day will still be able to enjoy the game
- the monetary system is Gil
- the people living in the cities all have their own backstory
- you'll start the game from your home city (I guess it's based on race, but doesn't say implicitly).

obviously we need to know more but i don't like the idea of changing jobs midfight to heal yourself. i think the idea is to be solo friendly and for those times when you are making a party and you cant find a healer or tank or refresh whore. but i think there has to be better ways to tackle those problems.

You don't need to say "ok we need a pld and a whm and a brd and then 3 other mooks to hurt things" you can just say "hey lets get 6 friends and have fun."

I don't know, it makes the game sound like PSU and I thought you loved PSU? I mean didn't you get like a billion hours offline? I would prefer if they went with a PSO type of thing myself. The game certainly sounds like it's drawing a lot from Monster Hunter what with weapons degrading and such. May not be such a bad thing since that game owns.

i only hope that in their attempt to make it more mainstream friendly they dont destroy the things that made ffxi so fun. i saw this happen once before when i used to play asherons call. in AC2 they oversimplified everything and it ended up being crap.

PS3 fans who want to beta test the newest online Final Fantasy epic may want to think about upgrading their PCs as Final Fantasy XIV director Hiromichi Tanaka told Japanese publication GameWatch that FF14 XIV beta testing will initially only be carried out on the Windows platform.

In the same article information was revealed about how the beta testing will be conducted. To begin with, the beta will not be continuous, only lasting for a couple of hours at a time so the development team can directly monitor the goings on. They'll also be conducted with a relatively small group of people from all over the world.

As the game is tightened up and nears release a full 24-hour beta will begin on the PC, finally ending with a full, free open beta.

It was also revealed that this game is being designed for PCs and ported to consoles - the opposite of PS2-developed FF11. The game is being built with Direct X 9 in mind. You can get more from the Final Fantasy experts at UFFSite.

Technology Information
FF14 is being developed for PC first and then ported to consoles - the opposite of FF11, which was made for PS2.

Fans can expect support for systems with multiple cores and 64-bit machines, unlike FF11.

FF14 is designed with today's higher end machines in mind.

The team is working on seperate graphics for the PS3 and PC versions.

The PS3 version will likely run in 720p - the PC version will depend on the settings and hardware the user has.


Beta Information
Early beta testing will only be a small group worldwide and will only take place in 3-4 hour segments.

Currently the planned beta is only for the Windows version.

Length of testing will gradually increase as the game nears completion until the beta is online 24 hours a day.

Eventually there will be a free open beta for everyone to join.

Originally the development team anticipated it would take 6 months to go from closed beta to open beta - now they believe it could be shorter.

Ultimately how long the open beta takes to arrive will depend on the feedback offered by members of the closed beta.

and be honest console owners out number the pc owners by quite a large number.

United States: 76.2%

Forty-two percent of American homes have a video game console;

PCs are used for gaming more than any console

Not only that but, of course the people won't buy something if there's no product for it. If FFXI supported D10 it'll be all the more reason to get it. It's like saying Let's focus on making games for the ps2 rather then ps3 or 360 becuase it has a higher installed base. I'm with Crush on this one, I mean I don't blame them for not making it for D11 but at the very least could have been D10

but isn't that already happening? why do you think the valkyria chronicles sequel is on psp instead of ps3 and/or 360.

So drama has broken out over FFXIV with the admin Zyuu over at FFXIVCore.com having been caught trying to sell beta keys. It's fucking hilarious and I am enjoying the drama thoroughly, but more importantly, it has basically been revealed that the beta for FFXIV is supposed to start in the early part of March. Zyuu is trying to play damage control, and Square likely is not going to give that site beta keys.

Just a heads up.

Call me when we can actually get a beta in english. No way in hell I'm trying to decipher an MMO in moonspeak.