Test 'Em Up - Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward Benchmark
Results-o
Final Fantasy XIV [official site] may have launched in a sorry state, but I've heard good things from MMOers since its revamped relaunch with the A Realm Reborn subtitle. A big ole chunk of newsness is coming in June with the first expansion, Heavensward, and you can have an in-engine peek at that now running on your own computer thanks to a new benchmarking tool.
The free Heavensward benchmark will run through a few scenes showing off new things in Heavensward. It also includes the character creator so you can play with the new race in advance, and save your toons to use in the full release. Two months is about how long I need to perfect characters I create anyway.
I mean, yeah, sure, it does let you check out how well your PC will run Heavensward, including its DirectX 11 support, but it's really a cheeky tease for what's coming on June 23rd, right? The benchmark's scenes include, and I quote, Heavensward's "three new playable jobs, exciting dungeons, new areas, and flying mounts."
And that new playable race. You can create your own character to star in the benchmark, fiddling with sliders and colours and gear, then save them to import into the game once it's out. I enjoyed a quick fiddle in this character creator, but alas had to stop to write this. Thanks, readers.
Or if you don't fancy downloading 1.6GB for what's sorta a trailer running on your PC, you can watch the whole thing in video form:
