During a livestream on Nico Nico Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida announced that the much awaited new benchmark of the game that includes the character creator feature will be released on August the 1st.

With the new benchmark players will be able to create their characters and save their looks, that will be loaded into the final game ready to be used at release on August the 27th (or during the open beta the beginning of which still hasn’t been announced).

In addition to that, Yoshida-san also announced that the next Letter from the Producer Live broadcast will be aired on August the 8th. This could also be a hint on the beginning of the open beta, as beta phases pretty much always begin around the date of a Letter from the Producer Live, but of course this is just my speculation, so take it with a grain of salt.