Where in the world is Naoki Yoshida? The Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn director/producer Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida is now in London to present the game on a Global Media Tour, jetting out from his previous jaunt in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Once he’s wrapped up in the United Kingdom, it’s a grueling haul back to the Shinjuku office in Japan to record the fifth Live Letter from the Producer, which will be live this Friday morning at 6:00am EST. Yoshi-P will be revealing all sorts of juicy details about the upcoming beta and the path to release.

Of course, that leads us into the actual start date for Beta Phase 1 — Monday, February 25th. In the next several days, Legacy players will receive invitation emails in their inboxes. The official “Exploration” benchmark will likely make its debut between now and Monday, so we’ll keep an eye out for that!

Beta Phase 1 is the first of four phases prior to A Realm Reborn’s launch. Legacy subscribers will have priority access to the first two phases, while the subsequent two will invite people from beyond the Legacy pool and eventually shift into an open beta. Gridania and The Black Shroud will again be the focal point of Phase 1, but Yoshi-P has a new dungeon ready for players and will debut the FATE (Full Active Time Event) system.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn will release for PC and PlayStation 3 in 2013.

Photo: Paul Malixi

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