FF XIV Heavensward Expansion Launches on June 23, Coming to Mac

Heavensward, the first major expansion for MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, will launch on June 23, director and producer Naoki Yoshida announced today during a panel at PAX East.

Additionally, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and Heavensward will be released for Mac the same day it launches on PC, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4.

Benchmark software for the expansion will be available next month.

Pre-orders for the expansion will open on March 16 and grant buyers five days early access to the new content. Square Enix is offering three different editions of Heavensward. Players can buy a standard edition with only the expansion, or a collector’s edition featuring a handful of goodies: a mini dragon figurine, an artbook, a DVD showcasing trailers, and a handful of in-game goodies including the exclusive griffin mount, a dragoon minion and a helmet designed to look like Cecil’s from Final Fantasy IV.

Heavensward will take players to Ishgard, an area in the world of Eorzea that has been much discussed but never before visited. The Dragonsong War has been brewing for a thousand years between the dragons of neighboring Trevania and Ishgard’s own Dragoon--a spear-wielding class of high-jumping warriors familiar to Final Fantasy fans. Players will be thrust into the middle of this conflict and will spend more of the time exploring these new massive areas.

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Gears of War Creator Defends His Next Game's Free-To-Play Model

Today at PAX East, Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski defended his next game's use of free-to-play as its business model. Speaking during a panel presentation, Bleszinski assured fans that Project Bluestreakwon't be anything like Game of War or Candy Crush.

"Free-to-play doesn't have to be Game of War, it doesn't need to be Candy Crush," Bleszinski said.

He went on to point out that, although some games have given free-to-play a bad name, there are examples of free-to-play done right such as League of Legends and DOTA 2.

Bleszinski pointed out that every item available for purchase in Project Bluestreak can also be earned through regular gameplay. "I don't want to be pay-to-win," he said.

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Playing Final Fantasy 15 for the First Time

It was more than eight years ago, at E3 2006, that Square Enix announced Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Since then, it's undergone a lot of change, and was even rebranded in 2014. Final Fantasy XV, as it's now known, was originally intended to be released on PlayStation 3, but with that console generation behind us, fans are now looking forward to playing it on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Most recently, it was announced that it's being directed by Hajime Tabata--his previous work in the series includes Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII andFinal Fantasy Type-0--, with Tetsuya Nomura leaving the project to focus on Kingdom Hearts 3.

We still don't know exactly when Final Fantasy XV is supposed to come out, but when Final Fantasy Type-0 HD comes out in a mere ten days on March 17, everyone who buys it will get a chance to play a slice of Final Fantasy XV, Episode Duscae. I was lucky enough to play an hour of of the demo at PAX East, and while it was hardly enough time to experience everything it has to offer (the demo, not the full game), I did a lot, I saw a lot, and most importantly, I experienced something I've been looking forward to for nearly a decade.

*I

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