A few days ago I got myself the Final Fantasy XIV open beta client and brewed up a little Lalafell Gladiator to give it a whirl. I’ve found it to be rather sluggish on my old-timey Radeon 3400 graphics card, and a lot of folks have complained about frequent server downtime, but I’m seeing a lot here that reminds me pleasantly of Final Fantasy XI.

• Job Switching: You aren’t tied down to what you started your character as. If you originally made a Thaumaturge and would like to try your hand as a Gladiator, just get a sword and equip it. Voila, you’re a Gladiator. This is an improvement over FFXI where switching jobs was a bit of a chore, and a damn sight better than most other multiplayer games, which force you to create a whole new character.
• Crafting: FFXIV treats harvesting raw materials and crafting them into usable items as a series of minigames, providing a bit of interactivity to the process. Instead of telling the interface to turn a Willow Log into Willow Chips and waiting to see if it succeeds or fails, you have multiple opportunities to affect the quality and durability of your end-product. Success and failure at resource harvesting is partly reliant on skill and timing.

  Supposedly user-crafted items will be an integral part of the in-game economy, by which I mean that most of your good gear will be stuff you or another player created, as opposed to quest rewards or loot taken from fallen monsters. I seem to recall hearing this about most online games. Right now it looks like they’re living up to this pledge, but this may be a symptom of Square-Enix not having put out all the content yet. I’m taking this with a gain of salt, but the fact that harvesting and crafting skills are presented as full character classes is promising.

• Group Dynamics: This is part of the game that I really need to dig into further. I haven’t had a chance to explore the Battle Regimen system, but I understand it is at least superficially similar to the skillchain system in FFXI.
• Macros: I used macros a lot in Anarchy Online and Final Fantasy XI, and I expect to get some use out of them in Final Fantasy XIV as well. I currently use macros in the beta to switch between jobs. I currently have one macro for Gladiator, one for Miner, one for Botanist, and one for Carpenter. I’ll be brewing up another for Blacksmith next time I play. The following is what I use to switch from whatever I currently have equipped over to my mining gear:
  

  /equip main "Weathered Pickaxe"
  /equip sub "Bronze Sledgehammer"
  /equipaction 2 "Lay of the Land"
  /equipaction 3 Prospect
  /equipaction 4 "Wrist Flick"

  Some things I’ve found are that capitalization seems to count when writing macros, and any time you are selecting an item or action with a multiple-word name you’ll need to enclose the name in double-quotes (note that Prospect did not need the quotes in my example). Also, you cannot switch your gear when you are in “active” mode. If you have a weapon in your hand, you cannot switch jobs.

Obviously a lot of how a game like this will work depends on the release of full content, opening up all the playable areas, and the player community developing. This means I cannot make a strong prediction one way or the other, but my nostalgia for FFXI and the overall strength of the Final Fantasy brand has me quite optimistic.