Final Fantasy XIV players have been able to share part of their character data and their blog posts on the old Lodestone website, but with Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn speeding towards its release on August the 27th, a new Lodestone has been implemented.

The beta version of the site can be already publicly accessed here, and even those that aren't currently in the beta can browse some of its features without needing to log in. Logging in (only those that are in the beta can do so at the moment) gives access to a full fledged "armory" feature (that you can see in the screencap at the bottom of this post) that shows one's characters with their full equipment and statistics, a blogging feature, achievements and social lists and more. It's basically a big Final Fantasy XIV social network.

As an additional interesting and funny tidbit of Trivia, looks like Square Enix is using the names of veteran veteran players for NPCs in the game, as you can see in the screenshots from the beta portrayed below.

"Thal Icebound" is the name of a character belonging to one of the players that have been with the game from the very beginning, so you can imagine his surprise when he found his name included in the beta, and used in the dialogue to boot.

At the moment we don't know how many of those names have been included in the game, or with what criteria (if any) they're being selected, but it's definitely a cool little thing that will make someone happy.