Final Fantasy XIV launched back in late 2010 to great excitement. As the heir apparent to the highly popular (in Asia anyway) Final Fantasy XI, there was quite a bit of hope that this title would bring North American gamers into the fold. Those hopes were dashed. It was not a quality product (despite critics agreeing unanimously that is showed great potential,) and in fact was so bad that investors were rumored to run away screaming.
In the wake of that release Square Enix promised to fix the title. When that mostly failed they promised to rebuild it from scratch. Today, we're getting our first glimpse at Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, the fruits of Square Enix's quest to make things right with their fans.
Dare we say we're interested? The gaming world was kind of burned by the last iteration of FFXIV, but we've got a hunch that Square Enix isn't silly enough to release a poor product again. If this version goes south then you can wave goodbye to any and all credibility Final Fantasy XI might have bought them, and their future in the North American MMO market probably goes out the window as well.
But this trailer has us fairly intrigued. It definitely sounds like Square Enix went back to the drawing board and rebuilt a great deal of the game. We're just hoping that they managed to pinpoint that potential that was identified by critics, and rebuilt everything else around that core.
