Talking to Final Fantasy XIV producer and director Naoki Yoshida is really refreshing. He’s so obviously eager to please fans, willing to admit past mistakes and to clearly lay out how his team at Square Enix is going to right the wrongs of its big budget MMO and successfully transition to Version 2.0, which is essentially meant to be a full relaunch of the game, currently scheduled for this coming winter, which could mean late 2012 or early 2013.

In addition to updating the current version of the game with content, the team has been busy building a new graphics engine that’s said to be better optimized, ensuring all sorts of new content is ready for launch, and completely reworking the user interface. “We believe that having a polished, easy-to-use, stress-free interface is one of the most important things,” said Yoshida. “So we’re going to spend up to the last minute polishing this, making sure it’s something that the players want.”The PC and PlayStation 3 versions of the game will feature different interfaces, both tailored to the platforms and the different control inputs. One of the first things Yoshida and team decided to do with the interface was look to the global standard. “We looked to World of Warcraft. What they have there is pretty much what most players are used to. We’re using that as a base.”When Version 2.0 launches, Yoshida and team want those familiar with World of Warcraft to be able to transition into Final Fantasy XIV without a lot of hassle. “A lot of the Japanese development team members aren’t used to playing MMOs. They always focused on consoles. It’s easy for them to make a game that feels good on a console but not a mouse and keyboard.” In order for the team to learn, Yoshida directed them to play a number of Western MMOs to get a sense of how they should refocus their efforts.“You can go around E3 and see all these different first-person shooters. But when you pick up the controller, whether it be a Call of Duty or a Halo, you pretty much know how it’s going to feel,” said Yoshida. “You know this is going to be your strafe, this is going to be your fire, this is going to be your aiming. We want it to be the same for MMO players.”Throughout all this research for creating an updated interface for Final Fantasy XIV on PC, Square Enix has been busy refining its PS3 interface as well. “We have put a lot of effort into also designing a specific UI for the PlayStation 3 users. We have a special team set up that’s making the UI and control interface for PlayStation 3, using that know-how that Japanese developers have creating games for consoles and transferring that into an MMO where people from PS3 and PC can play together.” Though you’ll see the same content, it won’t look quite at good on PS3. “The draw distance and the textures will be, because of memory issues [on PlayStation 3] lowered a bit,” said Yoshida.With Version 2.0 and the in-development console version, the gameplay mechanics of Final Fantasy XIV will also be changed a bit. The existing battle regimen system, which allows for players to essentially combo attacks, will be made more responsive, making it easier for players to group up and chain offensive skills to take down targets.Chocobos will also play a much larger role. They’ll no longer just be for travel, but can be raised and actually brought into battle to fight alongside you and make soloing a little bit easier. While raising the Chocobos, you’ll be able to customize their battle role, so they can become casters or up-close fighters. It'll also be possible to store them in stables attached to player-owned housing, where you can keep multiple types of raised Chocobos.Perhaps most interesting is what Square Enix is doing with summons. Instead of giving every player the ability to summon primals like Ifrit or Shiva, there will only be one Ifrit per server. “The players will get together in their Free Companies [guilds] and they will fight Ifrit. If they defeat him, they will get the opportunity to summon him once. That Free Company will get to decide where and when to use him. Then Ifrit goes out to another place in the world for other people to go get him, so it’s like this competition between people in the world. This won’t be instanced, this will be public content, so anyone in the world can do it.” Until Ifrit is summoned, no other player group will be able to summon him. When Ifrit is actually brought into a fight it seems like nearly everyone in the server will know, because the skies will turn red. Then once the skies clear, you’ll know Ifrit is again available to defeat and acquire. “The whole world is involved in the summoning of these monsters.”So what’s the timeline on all this? First, in August, Square Enix will ramp up more detailed reveals about what’s to come in Final Fantasy XIV. Then in September, there’ll be an alpha test, and after feedback is collected and incorporated into the game, a beta test version will roll out first for PC, then for PlayStation 3. “We want to make sure this time we take a lot of time to listen to feedback from users during this beta test and implement as much of it as possible before the release,” said Yoshida. “We want to make sure we have a massive amount of content at launch. We don’t want to go into launch without enough to do. So it’s going to be building up that content base and getting this feedback in. That might end up pushing the release back a little. It’s all going to depend on that.”Expect many more details about Square Enix’s plans for rebooting Final Fantasy XIV on IGN in the near future.