Final Fantasy XIII hasn’t even been finished yet, but already we can start looking forward to its follow-up. However, the unexpected Final Fantasy XIV Online is, as the title suggests, a different kind of Final Fantasy game. Like Final Fantasy XI before it, XIV is an MMO game that takes everything you love about the popular Japanese role-playing game series and pours it into a persistent world that you can enjoy with loads of other people.

Fans of FFXI will be pleased to see that all of the same races will feature in XIV. But the game world isn’t the familiar land of Vana’diel, it’s a brand new location called Eorzea; it’ll ensure that both newcomers and fans can explore an entirely fresh environment. Square Enix has learned a lot in the seven years since FFXI was first released, and players of XIV can expect to benefit from that valuable experience. Combat, for example, will no longer be real-time and will feature a number of tactical elements that need to be learned and mastered in a huge number of game hours. The way in which characters level up has also been changed. Grinding, for experience, should become a thing of the past as players progress more naturally through their everyday actions as well as the way they use weapons and items. And though it took four years of fan demand before Square Enix introduced Chocobo breeding to FFXI, the lovable mainstays of the ever-changing franchise will appear in FFXIV right from day one and the designers are even promising a unique breed that will be exclusive to this game.

There’s still a lot to learn about this unexpected new RPG, but we may get the opportunity sooner than expected. A beta test is planned for some time next year, enabling many of us to get an early taste of the exciting new game.