Play FFXI in Europe, now

I'm guessing that some sort of mass work-dodging web surfing exercise aside, most of you are reading this on your own PCs. Which means you have PCs. And you also have a pulse, which means you probably want to play Final Fantasy XI. Or you are at least a little curious about how it turns out, non?

As we mentioned recently, Square (in conjunction with new buddies NVIDIA) have released a rather demanding adaptation of FFXI for the PC. Demanding? Well yes, we're looking at a minimum of a PIII 800 with 128MB of RAM, not to mention 5GB of hard disk space, although the game will at least work with everything from Windows 98 to Windows XP.

So why is any of this relevant? The game isn't out in Europe, is it? No, no it isn't, but those of you unafraid of a massive $90 plus transatlantic shipping bill will be pleased to learn that Final Fantasy XI has been showing up at various importers (like NCS) and that (like NCS) many are showing you how to get it working on your respective side of the world's various ponds, linking everything from Square's own PC benchmark to guides to setting WinXP to Japanese character encoding in an attempt to get you buying.

Well, you're braver men (or women) than us if you dare to try it at that price, but if you do fancy it, you can pick it up here.