Square Enix are going through a lot of detailed changes with the transition over to ‘A Realm Reborn’ – the 2.0 update to the horribly rushed MMO that was FFXIV. And with that, prices of the game are beginning to shoot back up as if it were a completely new title (which it pretty much is). Before then, it seems only logical for excited Eorzean adventures new or old to either locate a copy for themselves, or maybe use the opportunity for some straight up merchanting.

When Square Enix took to the stage of E3 2009 to announce the Xbox 360 version of then PS3 exclusive game, Final Fantasy XIII, the audience broke our into cheers. The dominate console had been given an extra leg to stand on. But when they returned right after to announce Final Fantasy XIV, the crowd broke out into almost ear shattered applause. It’s just too bad that applause didn’t fix the impending train wreck the game was about to become.

Following the release of Final Fantasy XIV, the next MMO after Final Fantasy XI, its horribly buggy state was being sold as a game for £35; something which any early adopter would tell you it certainly was not. The game was criticised as an unfinished mess with Square Enix president – Yoichi Wada – admitting it’s poor state and even going as far as to say it “greatly damaged” the Final Fantasy namesake.

The game was essentially dead weight for the company and was forced to drop its hefty subscription for almost a year to keep players from abandoning the world of Eorzea while the old development team was thrown out to make way for a new team to fix the mess.

Toward the end of 2012 that mess is almost all cleaned up. Many tired hands have scrubbed away at the tainted creation and “A Realm Reborn” is almost upon us. Though even if it is practically a new game, FFXIV 2.0 is being offered as a free update to players already in possession of an account. But that isn’t stopping retailers from catching on.

Since the first release and subsequent downfall, much like any MMO, the price of a retail copy declines rapidly. And that was certainly no different for FFXIV. But with the relaunch quickly approaching stores have begun to order in new copies to replace the ones they eventually threw away. And their price has returned with a vengeance.

The point of this is to say if you can still find a retail copy sat on a dusty store shelf. Grab it. Now is a cheap way to get yourself a new account ready to go with the relaunch if you’re planning to give it another shot, or venture into Eorzea for the first time. If I had noticed this before September 29th you could have used the included free month trial to build up a character to carry into the update just before the November 11 deadline, but sadly I didn’t know that until after the account creation deadline had passed. Either way you’ll be ready to play at a fraction of the cost if you decided to join further down the line. And if you’re not interested, maybe you’ll be able to shift any extra copies you can find for a nice little profit online – Hooray for inflation!

Lucky for me I had a chance to play the original beta which quickly stopped me from buying the game when it originally launched. As it did for many. But even since then I’ve been keeping close watch on the price of the game and where to find it in my local area, and it paid off. My local HMV store had kept a single copy of the game tucked away in the shelves of its dwindling PC section since the original launch day, and I kept my eyes on it for over 2 year. As I write this I’m on my way home from that very store with that very copy clutched sitting on my lap for a fraction of its original price. And soon I’ll be jogging around Eorzea once more with it in a very different state than it once was.

There’s no real need to worry about the game itself. While the recommended requirements were rather high at the time of release, more and more people have adopted Sandy Bridge processors more than capable of meeting the demand of the game. It’s even more pretty graphically now than it was back in the day yet the producers assure it’ll run just the same, if not better, on the same hardware as old. Better yet, those worrying about the game’s playerbase needn’t worry. With the release of A Realm Reborn, the long promised PS3 version will launch alongside giving more people access to the game and most likely resulting in a highly boosted community in the long run.

Countless GAME and Gamestation stores have lacked to stock the game for months now; and, after their troubles and closures recently, it’s even harder to find one still carrying an original copy of the game. Online stores have already jacked up the price in anticipation and your favorite online key sellers haven’t stocked the game in months; but your local HMV may still be your savior, your swan song, or your Paladin in shining Roegadyn-made armour. Go hunt down a copy before its too late. Chances are you’ll still get the original in-game bonus items too!