Square Enix kicks off the open beta testing phase of Final Fantasy XIV on Tuesday, August 31, punctuating the news with a lovely new prerelease trailer for the game.

The closed beta test for Final Fantasy XIV ended two days ago, with Square Enix promising an early September launch for the open beta. Make that really early September, as in August 31 at 7PM Pacific time.

Fans patiently awaiting early entry into the world of Final Fantasy XIV will be reward on Tuesday night with their first taste of waiting in a Final Fantasy XIV login queue, as the amount of players able to log in at any given time will be restricted. From the Final Fantasy beta website:

During the initial stages of the beta test, the number of players allowed to be logged in at any given time will be limited, with capacity to gradually increase as adjustments are performed on server load. Should the maximum capacity already be reached when you attempt to log in, a message will appear indicating that the world is currently congested, and you will be asked to try again in a short while. At this time you will be placed on a waiting list in the order of attempted log-in time. To maintain your position on the waiting list, you must initiate the log-in procedure again within ten minutes of your first attempt.

Having gotten into the closed beta just in time to leave the country for Gamescom, I can't wait to wait.

As an added bonus to players participating in the open beta, player names used during the test will carry over to launch, as long as you play on the same server for both phases of play.

Final Fantasy XIV officially launches in North America on September 30, with Collector's Edition purchasers getting a week of early access starting on September 22.

What could be more exciting than a Friday night nerd orgy at PAX next weekend in Seattle? How about a Friday night nerd orgy with actual females attending?

A Seattle-area Craigslist ad is calling for "like-minded adults" to attend "a friendly adult party" in a hotel room at the Penny Arcade Expo next weekend. "A friendly adult party," is of course in a subtle way of saying orgy, which seems an unnecessary courtesy when your ad is titled "Nerd Orgy At PAX," but you've got to appreciate even attempted discretion when it comes to orgy organizers.

Okay, I thought it might be fun for a bunch of us like minded adults to get together in a hotel room and have a friendly adult party. This will be Friday night, with a possibility of a Saturday encore. Any who are interested please email me so we can get this set up. All sizes and shapes welcome!

I also appreciate the fact that the poster starts off with "I thought it might be fun," an honest statement that leaves open the possibility that it will instead be the most horrifyingly awkward night of many of the participants' lives. A small hotel room, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of a group of people who've just spent hours sweating their way around a crowded convention show floor? Sign me up!

Or don't. Seems like I'm no longer eligible to apply, as I'm not up for sharing.

Update: Getting too many responses from single males, so will not be accepting any more for now. If you are a single male and you already replied, I need to see what we have for couples and single females before you get an invite. No single males have an actual invite yet.

That's just one of the many reasons a unisex orgy at a male-dominated gaming event is a bad idea. I can list several others, but I've not eaten lunch yet.

We're compelled to mention that the ad could be a fake, though it seems rather odd that the poster would update a fake. Either way, it's definitely a joke.

Nerd Orgy At PAX - mw4mw - 31 (Downtown Seattle) [Craigslist]

The arrest earlier this week of a teen accused of plotting a massacre at his school in Tampa has put computer game Super Columbine Massacre RPG back in the spotlight.

Deputies investigating the case tell the Tampa Tribune they found a copy of a video game about the Columbine High School mass shooting in the teen's room along with a bow and arrow and rifle. While the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office won't go into specifics about the game, it's likely it is the 2006 creation of Danny Ledonne.

"It speaks volumes about the society we live in that a game like this depicts these types of tragedies, float around and influence our kids," sheriff's spokesman Larry McKinnon told the Tribune. "I can't imagine anyone getting any type of entertainment value out of it."

Reached for comment last night, Ledonne defended his game to Kotaku.

"The situation in Tampa shows us once again that school shootings aren't going away and we need to be honest with ourselves about dealing with them," he wrote."The good news is that most school shooters tell at least one person days or even months in advance (this case being over a year in advance). If we step forward, reach out, listen, and speak up, most of these tragedies can be averted. More than by banning videogames or rock music, anyway.

"I have and will continue to create media my entire life. Some of it will be controversial. Most of it won't. It will be viewed by people who do wonderful things with their lives. It will be viewed by people who basically just get by. Unfortunately, my work will also be viewed by people who do something awful. Responsible use and literacy of media is very important - because like school shootings, media is not going away."

Officials: Columbine game tied to case of former Leto student [Tampa Tribune]

Funcom has released a new trailer and screens showing players what it's like to become a Templar, one of the three factions in the upcoming real-world supernatural massively multiplayer online role-playing game The Secret World.

New York has the mysterious Illuminati, Seoul has the manipulative Dragons, and London gets the Templar, the most militaristic of the three factions in The Secret World. Even if you're planning to play as one of the other groups, London is the main city in The Secret World, so you'd do well to get acquainted with it early on.

I'm still steadfastly sticking with the Dragon faction myself. Did these new assets change anyone's mind?

Because platform networks have issues with giving things away, Rockstar rolls its planned free Free Roam pack into its Liars and Cheats Pack, releasing one massive chunk of new content for Red Dead Redemption on September 21. What's inside?

Rockstar originally planned four downloadable content packs for Red Dead Redemption: Legends and Killers, which has already been released, Liars and Cheats, Free Roam, and Undead Nightmare. Now Liars and Cheats and Free Roam have been condensed into one $9.99 or 800 Microsoft point download, due to "the platform networks' restrictions on numbers of free packs" Rockstar can give away.

That means Free Roam's seven new gang hideouts, four new hunting grounds, and posse scoring and leaderboards will come at a price.

But that price also includes Liars and Cheats multiplayer horse races, multiplayer poker and Liar's Dice, Stronghold attack and defend multiplayer mode, and Explosive Rifle all come packed inside, along with 15 new multiplayer characters from the Red Dead Redemption storyline and new achievements and trophies.

At least they tried to give away something for free, right?

With the official Kinect Beta flooding out to those select few whom Microsoft invited to test out their upcoming motion gaming add-on, the images are already starting to stream in.

Here for your perusal is a closer look at both Kinect's new dashboard and menu systems and the revamped avatars hitting the Xbox 360 when the peripheral hits stores in November.

Thanks anonymous tipsters.

To: Crecente
From: Bashcraft
RE: Spying on Dogs

Did you? I didn't! Like I just found out. Like now. Like wow!

What you missed last night
Xbox 360 Voice Chat Being Upgraded
Modern Warfare 3: The Book Of Corinthians
Super Columbine Massacre Pops Up in School Shooting Scare?
U. of Florida Adds Starcraft Studies

If you can't play video games right now, you can at least talk about them here.

We owe today's image not just to Norman Rockwell but to reader Roth. You too can have an image featured in TAY. Submit it to #TAYpics.

Finally, you can amputate and decapitate an Orc, thanks to Snowblind Studios' The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, the hack, slash and loot adventure with the Tolkien stamp of approval.

While the original Fellowship of the J.R.R. Tolkien books (and films) fight their way to Mordor to dispose of that ring, you'll enjoy your own adventure with a new group of heroes. It's all canon stuff, the developer says; the Tolkien estate approves it all.

Snowblind, which specializes in the ways of hack and slash, as proven by previous efforts Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and EverQuest: Champions of Norrath, tout this Lord of the Rings game as the first M-rated entry. It's bloody, and yes, Orc limbs fly freely during battle.

But you probably already know that if you've made it this far and read our E3 impressions of the game.

We were shown one battle at Gamescom, set in the Ettenmoors, a wide open forested area west of the Misty Mountains, against a pack of Orcs. The group consisted of one dwarf, one elf and one human. The hands-off demo looked like your standard slash first, ask questions later dust up right up until a Mountain Troll showed up and latched onto a member of the party. To free him required the assistance his coop partners, a small part of the "interdependent coop" play that Snowblind is focusing on.

Each of the game's Middle Earth races comes with its own specialization. Elves have a tracking ability that will let them seek out secret areas and items in the world. Dwarves can see weaknesses in walls and structures, uncovering hidden pathways. Humans can spot unique flora, like Marish Caps (read: mushrooms) that can be magically transmogrified into health potions.

These unique racial attributes, Snowblind says, are built into War in the North to encourage communication and "incentivize" exploration of the environments during cooperative play.

Snowblind also says they'll be "blurring the line between single player and multiplayer" for the coop-heavy action adventure, but didn't expand further on their online plans.

The developer also wouldn't specify whether it would offer an isometric camera angle option in War in the North—the game is set in the third-person, with the game camera following—only noting that it's a question they've been getting a lot.

Given the addictive nature of Snowblind's previous light-RPG, hack and slash adventures, it's hard not to be excited about The Lord of the Rings: War in the North. The PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360 game, due next year, takes a slightly different angle on the loot-hunting, skill tree-speccing formula and is worth keeping an eye on.

Yesterday, Sony Computer Entertainment Australia was granted a temporary injunction by the nation's Federal Court to block the importation and sale of the new PS3 modchips.

The injunction means that until August 31, none of the modchip's Australian distributors will be able to import, sell or otherwise offload the devices. What's more, they have to take all the stock they already have and leave them with Sony's solicitors until the August 31 deadline passes.

Sony has from now until August 31 to convince the courts that the injunction becomes a more permanent arrangement (temporary injunctions are designed to maintain the "status quo" until a matter can be settled). If they succeed, it'll mean the end of legal sales of the device in Australia, but if they fail, then once September 1 rolls around the chips will be able to go on sale.

This is an interesting development, since a 2005 Supreme Court ruling determined that the sale of modchips was legal in Australia (though Nintendo was recently successful in banning the R4). We've contacted Sony to see how they managed to get around this, and will update if we hear back.