The fight system seems to be similar to FFXIII (but slower, to be more like an MMO). WoW is in no way a fast battle system...it's just repetitive, which makes it feel fast because of Auto-attack. I've played the majority of known and many many less known MMO's and, although WoW has a good battle system, it's not nearly as fast as some out there.
As for how much changes they can do in 2 months....I used to work for EA and Sega and you'd be surprised the difference that can be done in 2 months. To put it into perspective, they have come out and said that the current beta build is only 10% of the content that will be released with the game. That and also for anyone who played Battlefield 2, a month before release, I thought the game would never pass CQC and we'd have to push back release. Turns out it went Gold and came out on time and was on top of the charts for the majority of that year (I think it got PC FPS of the year, if not PC game of the year) so expect a lot to change, especially in the last three weeks.
Remember, they have a large team working around the clock on it that has access to all the content and direct contact with the dev's. For this big of a game, I'd say the team would have to be well over the 150 people mark (might not seem like much, but working 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week, that's a lot of man hours) That's the team that will have most influence. I'm sure they have builds that won't be seen by the public (not only ones in between the ones that are released, but also ones that won't be seen by the public until release)
The problem is, FFXIV's user interface needs a complete overhaul, Battlefield: BC2's UI didn't. Right now we've got a situation where:
-Many actions take 3-4 clicks deep into a menu, and in some cases you're experiencing 2-3 second delay between clicking and the menu popping up
-Keyboard and mouse controls are completely out of wack
-Last I checked you can't even do things like press "J" and bring up the quest journal.
-You can't compare two items at once, even while shopping. So what ends up happening is that you pull up one item, memorize the stats, then pull up another item and hope you can remember the stats so that you can tell which one is better.
There's more, but yeah. Really though, the fatal flaw of FFXIV will be that they're trying to stick a console/non-PC standard UI onto a PC standard game. Most people aren't going to like that and will end up not playing because of it. As someone who has studied human-computer interaction, and I will tell you straight up that if they release this game with a UI remotely resembling the current one, the game will not be more successful than FFXI. To explain the reasons for this, I'll post what I've said elsewhere on the topic:
In general, trying to reinvent the wheel with regards to user interfaces is a bad idea unless you have a captive audience (Microsoft and Apple). Even when you have a captive audience there is still a lot of pain associated with changing the interface from what users expect, even if said interface is "better". Witness the transition from Microsoft Office 2003 to Microsoft Office 2007 for what I mean.
Why is trying to reinvent the wheel a bad idea? It's because learning new things is hard. The reasons for this boil down to the fact that your activities can be broken down into roughly four levels of automation, each requiring a different amount of concentration and practice to get to. These levels are:
1) Problem solving - You're trying to do something that you don't do often or is new, this takes the most concentration. You can do at most 2 of these tasks at the same time.
2) Procedures - You're past the problem solving stage, so an action is somewhat automated, but you still have to recall it to do it. For example, when you lose your balance you recall the needed actions to regain your balance.
3) Rules - These are mostly subconscious, you can do many of them at once and it's automatic. For example, when a traffic light turns yellow your muscles tense up on the breaks.
4) Operational - Completely automated and take no concentration, these things like walking, breathing, how to move your arm when eating such that you put your fork into your mouth.
Do you see what the problem is with FFXIV's user interface? To play the game most users will be forced into the problem solving stage with regards to the controls. They won't be able to use their familiarity with other user interfaces to help them learn this user interface and thus most of a their concentration is going to be spent dealing with the controls and learning the user interface rather than dealing with the game itself. In general people don't like spending their time learning controls rather instead of playing the game. As such, their first impression of the game will be that of them struggling with the controls, not experiencing the game, which will cause most people to quit.
Also, no I am not a beta tester and not bound by the NDA, but I have watched people play and listened to them regarding the issues.
. I hear ya about learning the menu UI and after awhile it became 2nd nature to me. Like not having to look at the screen and just pressing on my gamepad "down -> right -> down - down -> execute button" to cast Dia or something. Also the macro system was pretty wild too I had like some crazy macros going like 1 button to swap to dark staff +1 (neptune staff or whatever) + cast gravity and then swap back to another staff. Or 1button macro for Chainspell + phalanx + warp (the original bubble hearth! lol)
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