
Originally Posted by
Angeleus09
FF XIV is a completely different story. It's called 2.0 because they did a full retail release already last year for the PC version. People went to the store and actually purchased the full game and set up their subscriptions. However the game was so incomplete that to save face they refunded the monthly fees that had already been paid and allowed anyone who purchased the game to play for free in what they dubbed an "extended beta" while they worked on making it a more fully featured and playable experience.
When they shut servers down on 1.0 they locked existing characters for transfer into 2.0 because those players had already purchased the game at retail and since Square Enix messed up that wouldn't be fair to players to delete their characters. FF XIV also isn't available on PS3 yet and to my knowledge they haven't started the 2.0 beta on consoles yet.
FF XIV is a special circumstance, standard procedure on MMO betas is to wipe existing characters at launch.