Beta this and beta that

Most of you know I participate in a competition known as Dwelling of Duels from time to time. A little while ago, the server this competition was hosted on went down, and the listeners were pretty much scattered. An emergency solution was set up, and a crack team of dedicated people took upon themselves the task of building a new, better site, giving the whole competition a kind of revival.
The result of this, my droogies, is a brand new site (that is still in beta, mind you), found at www.dwellingofduels.net! There are lots of functions that are still being developed, and UI bugs are being ironed out.

Apparently there's also an awesome Dwelling of Duels t-shirt on its way, with Dan "Danimal Cannon" from Metroid Metal showing off the very first one during their concert at the Penny-Arcade Expo (more clips), which was last night or something.


Speaking of beta-testing, I've tested the open beta of Final Fantasy XIV for a little while. It's a really beautiful game, the character models, animations, atmosphere and cinematics are all fantastic. However, it's a very demanding game, and I can apparently barely run it at minimum settings, getting 12-15 frames per second in the more crowded areas.
The learning curve is rather high, and the pacing in the game is relatively slow. The battle system is really fun, as there is no auto-attack feature. You have to stay focused, unlike in its predecessor. Battles are also over faster than before.
However, the interface in the game is clunky and slow, and might be enough to drive some potential players away. It seems the interface elements are driven by the game server, or something, because it takes several seconds to load menus and maps. The game also feels more designed for consoles, also like its predecessor, which means playing it with keyboard&mouse actually feels unintuitive, slow and difficult.

I will keep testing this. Hopefully, most issues I have with the game will be smoothened out after a couple of months. It looks very promising, although it caters to a completely different market segment than World of Warcraft does (which will come as a big surprise to many, I'm sure).

I'm playing with some people from the Something Awful forums on the Figaro server, for those who are interested.
Now, have some screenshots.