One of the most popular role-playing game series on video game consoles is the Final Fantasy series from Japanese developer Square Enix (formerly Squaresoft)--a series famous for complex storylines, spiky-haired heroes with impossibly huge swords, shadowy wizards who wear robes and hats that are so oversized that only their eyes are visible under the brims of their caps, and transportation by way of large, chicken-like chocobo birds. Square Enix has made the bold move of making the next game in the series an online role-playing game in the vein of EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot for both the PC and the PlayStation 2--a game in which you create a single character and explore a huge persistent world with other players. The PC version of the game is currently in a beta testing stage, and we were fortunate enough to have a chance to try it out for ourselves.