Keen is a bit disappointed by his low score of 1307 on the official FFXIV benchmark. My computer is only slightly better, at 1890 in high resolution (1920 x 1080) mode, but gets up to a reasonable 3522 in low resolution (1280x720) mode. Too bad the demo doesn't support my main screen's native 1680x1050 resolution. With anything under 2,000 being officially declared as "low performance", it is worrying how many people report that sort benchmark score.
I wonder if Square Enix didn't enter into a bad alliance with Nvidia, from whose site you can download the benchmark. Spreading the word that "your computer is too slow to run this upcoming game" is obviously good for Nvidia, but bad for Square Enix. Unfortunately I have only Nvidia graphics cards, because I'd like to test the theory that the benchmark is optimized for Nvidia cards, and will show a lower score on an ATI card of similar power.
My computer is neither very old, nor was it cheap, so I'd wager that the number of people getting a "high performance" score (4500+) at high resolution is tiny. That is not a good base for a MMORPG, which lives of having a lot of players. World of Warcraft runs on anything, including netbooks, which automatically gives it a far larger potential player base. Keen already says about the benchmark: "this thing has done me a favor by allowing me to know early that I won’t be able to play", and who knows how many people will come to the same conclusion. That can hardly be what Square Enix had in mind when they published that benchmark.
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