In his newest Letter from the Producer, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn‘s Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida gives us a status report on the ongoing closed beta testing. Currently over 100,000 players have been invited and are playing beta during Phase 1, which has caused some congestion in certain zones and it’s been a bit hard for servers to keep up. Luckily, they’ve used it as an opportunity to further buff their servers’ capabilities where that alpha testing did not predict.

Yoshi-P let loose that Phase 2 will kick off early next month, and in this phase the team will be testing gamepad functionality amongst many other things. In the video above, he and Foxclon show off how the gamepad controls work in A Realm Reborn (with the PlayStation 3 version working similarly with a DualShock 3 controller).

The veil has been lifted a bit on a feature called Guildhests, a tweaked version of the Behest system in Version 1.0. These challenges will pit a party of players against objectives in the field with a certain time limit to complete them. If you’re planning to practice on how to play with a group of people as a tank or healer, Guildhests are a great way to prepare for Eorzea’s myriad dungeons like the Tam-Tara Deepcroft or The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak. The images below give us our first look at this system.

If you’re wondering when the next Letter From the Producer Live will happen, Yoshi-P has April in his sights, particularly around the start of the next phase of beta testing. If you have yet to be chosen, don’t despair! More testers will be invited to the next phase. If you haven’t signed up for beta and are interested, follow this link to apply.

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