Final Fantasy XIV – Page 7

Naoki Yoshida Not Against Free To Play

One of the memes floating around the internet in regards to Final Fantasy XIV is that the company would rather shut the game down before ever considering a switch to free to play. As Naoki Yoshida confirmed in a recent interview with Dengeki Online, this isn’t so much the case:

As far as the monthly billing goes, people are becoming more pragmatic and they’re only willing to pay for the things that they want to use. What that means to monthly billing is that there are players who would rather pay based on the amount of time they play in a particular month, after they’ve played. There used to be no debate about this, since monthly billing was the only standard for MMORPGs, but now F2P is a consideration. We see this desire for players who would rather buy items especially in North America.

Yoshida goes on to say that free to play isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and can be a beneficial move when done so based on the needs of the users rather than trying to turn around an unprofitable game. Check out the entire interview below, it dives into free to play, upcoming updates, expansion into new regions, and more. Is Final Fantasy XIV going free to play? Not with six figures of active players it isn’t.

(Source: Translated Interview)

Final Fantasy XIV Launches 2.2 Teaser Site

Final Fantasy XIV’s 2.2 patch launches in just under two weeks, and it includes a ton of new content. Titled Through the Maelstrom, update 2.2 introduces new quests, new scenarios, dungeons, glamours, gardening, heavy fishing, and the second coil of Bahamut, and more. Update 2.2 launches on March 27th, but you can check out the full list of content at the promotional website, or by watching the trailer below.

Square Enix will also be hosting a live Letter from the Producer on March 21st at 2:30am Pacific, which might be early for many of our American viewers.

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Final Fantasy XIV Now Selling Physical Time Cards

I’m not horsing around. Those of you who prefer to keep your precious credit card data out of the hands of those prone-to-theft businesses are likely the same group as those who refuse to buy a subscription MMO without the option to buy time cards. After all, why not? Turbine has had multiple billing issues, as has Mortal Online and Warhammer, among others. Sony was hacked, stores have had their databases compromised, it seems like cash is the only safe method of payment for anything these days.

The good news is that players will be able to buy 60 day access cards for Final Fantasy XIV. They cost $30 and are available in stores in North America as well as on Square Enix’s website, the latter of which makes the whole “don’t have to use your credit card” part moot. Check out Final Fantasy XIV at a store near you.

(Source: Square Enix press release)

MMOrning Shots: The Importance Of Free Time

Today’s MMOrning Shot comes from Final Fantasy XIV, in particular the game’s rather odd New Year’s event where players take on the role of donning horse masks of varying colors to run around and convince the citizens of Eorzea to embrace the import of horses as an alternative mount to Chocobo. Could horses be added at some point? Possibly, if the conclusion to this quest is anything to go by. Now if you don’t mind, I have to spend some time avoiding that one guy who said he’d rather ride me than either of the two creatures. He says that, play the quest line.

PSA: FFXIV, Account Theft, And Ban Investigations

Today’s PSA is brought to you by the letter B and the number 7.

Here at MMO Fallout, I regularly receive emails from people asking me to unban their accounts, in complete ignorance to the fact that I am neither officially associated with nor work for any of the games that I report on. But that’s beside the point. The other email that I get rather often is in response to my articles about keeping your account safe, particularly from people who have the attitude of “who cares if my account is stolen? I just email support and they restore it within a day or so.” Hopefully none of these people are playing Final Fantasy XIV, because they are in for a surprise.

With the success of Square Enix’s latest title, the natural progression of events has lead to accounts being stolen in large quantities and used for botting materials or spamming chat. As I’ve said in previous articles, why would you waste your own money when there are so many unprotected accounts ripe for the picking? It’s like robbing a bank and leaving your neighbor’s wallet at the scene of the crime, and then testifying against him in court about how you never really trusted his attitude. Sure, a simple alibi will get him a not guilty verdict, but that is the end of a long and stressful path and may eventually fail.

In the case of Final Fantasy XIV, reversing a ban because your account was stolen and used to bot/spam isn’t as simple as calling up customer support and asking them to flip a switch. No, according to players who have been victims of account theft, Square Enix is performing full investigations on the affected accounts to make sure that the claims are legitimate, and boy is there quite a long line just to get in the door. What does this mean for you, the player? Imagine that everyone in your neighborhood’s driver’s license expired on the exact same day, and everyone had to go down to the DMV to get their paperwork in. The DMV opens at 9am and you get there a little past four when everyone is out of work and meeting the group who has been there all morning. Imagine that line, and double it, and you have a good idea as to how long you’ll be waiting for your account to be restored. One player in particular was apparently told that the line and subsequent investigation could take at least three weeks as the matter had to be dealt with by Square Enix’s Japan offices.

If that isn’t enough motivation to keep your account as secure as possible from your end, I’m not sure what is.

FFXIV Players To Receive TGS 2013 Earrings

Square Enix’s booth at Tokyo Game Show has an interesting challenge: Defeat a special version of the Titan Battle Challenge from FFXIV and win yourself a free “I Beat The Titan” t-shirt. The good news is that the rewards don’t stop there. For every player who beats the challenge, Square has been selecting one random server to receive Cactaur earrings. The attributes are nothing special, but they are a nice cosmetic item to have. Just about a day and a half into TGS, enough titans had been defeated to unlock the Cactaur across all servers.

Next, Square Enix has offered bomb earrings to players on a random server every time a Titan falls. As with the Cactaur earrings, attendees took little time to fall well over sixty Titans and unlock the earrings for all servers. The details on how the earrings will be delivered to players (presumably in-game mail, as with most of the other rewards) will be revealed in the next week or so.

(Source: Square Enix)

FFXIV Back On (Digital) Store Shelves

Good news, everyone. A couple of weeks have passed since Final Fantasy XIV entered its head start phase, during which the servers became consistently flooded with players all looking to make their home in Eorzea. Due to the overwhelming response by players, Square Enix decided to temporarily halt digital sales of the game on their official website and via third parties. The good news is that the game appears to be back on digital shelves and is once again for sale, meaning if you didn’t manage to get your hands on it the first time around, your opportunity has come again.

Players who started out when the game went live should see their subscriptions begin renewing soon.

(Source: Square Store)

FFXIV Will Have Some Functionality on the Vita

When Sony announced that every game on the PlayStation 4 would support some form of remote play via the PS Vita, it was only a matter of time before we heard something about Final Fantasy XIV. According to Naoki Yoshida, it looks like players won’t be able to access the entirety of Final Fantasy XIV, with any content requiring a party locked off to the home console. Gathering and crafting are expected to work fine, and there is the possibility that minor questing could be accomplished through the handheld. End-game and party content, on the other hand, will remain inaccessible.

On the other hand, if you play FFXIV on the PC you can already access the fully featured version via remote play. All you need is a smartphone, tablet, or laptop capable of running a remote desktop app, as well as a decent connection to wifi or (if you love paying bandwidth fees) 3G/4G wireless. Yes it involves leaving your computer on when you leave the house and yes it depends on your modem’s capabilities. On the other hand, it will give you full access to the game.

Now to wait until Sony Online Entertainment talks about Planetside 2, DC Universe Online, and Everquest Next remote play. Goodbye productivity at work.

(Source: Kotaku)

FFXIV Impressions: Stop Teasing Me, Square, Let Me In

Square Enix is a company that I desperately want to love, because they did what no other developer would do and came through on their promise to improve a failed MMO from the ground up. Apart from Darkfall and maybe one or two other titles, this doesn’t happen. You have companies like NCSoft who would rather fire everyone and chalk it off as a loss than take even the tiniest of risks in improving the product, Mythic Entertainment who will dump on their previous product to promote the next low-seller, and then you have Battleground Europe who respond to low subscribers by simply deleting any criticism. So the simple fact that FFXIV: A Realm Reborn exists is enough to earn Square Enix a lot of respect in my books.

First of all, let’s talk story. A Realm Reborn takes place after the events of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0, where the Garlean Empire invades Eorzea with the goal of military conquest, and Bahamut (the giant dragon from the end of game trailer) descends upon the world and destroys many of the major cities. When the attempt to contain Bahamut fails, the adventurers (players) are teleported a short distance into the future and in order to maintain continuity, no one remembers who they are or what they look like. Five years later, the adventurers begin appearing in Eorzea, ready to aid the land once again in the fight against monsters, the Garlean Empire, and a rising tide of evil.

There’s a special five letter word I like to break out when referring to Square Enix: Inane. The company appears to be peppered with inanity from the very tip top all the way down to the bottom. Inane people who think that selling 3.5 million copies of Tomb Raider is a disappointment. Who greedily approved and released the shameful non-game that was Final Fantasy: All The Bravest. And finally, the people who designed the systems around Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I could use this time to question why my pre order of FFXIV directly from Square required me to use the forums to receive a link to find my order (it was never sent to my email) so that I could go to a third party website, bring up a pre order code that came back as invalid. Oh wait, I have to put that code in another website which then generates my pre order code, which is different from the beta code and product code and even though I purchased the game directly from Square, not automatically applied to the account. Nevermind the fact that these websites were broken much of the time, returning an invalid code notice to people with valid codes without telling them that they were actually supposed to wait until predetermined dates before they could be entered, assuming they hadn’t been sent a code for the wrong region or just not at all.

And now let’s talk about server traffic, AFK, and the perception of customer value. Even post-launch, players have found themselves unable to log in with the most grueling of all errors: Error 1017, or “this world is full.” Why is the world full? Because everyone refuses to log off. Square Enix decided once again that they would not implement an auto-kick function. Couple high traffic with the fact that people will not log out in fear of losing their spot and you end up with a game where the servers are consistently full and the normal cycle of slots freeing up when someone logs off is mostly broken.

On the other hand, the game is a lot of fun when it does work, and you can hear more on that in Part 2 of our impressions piece coming later this week.

Naoki Yoshida Apologizes For FFXIV Launch Issues

If you’ve tried playing Final Fantasy XIV in Europe or North America, you are likely fully acquainted with the extended length of downtime and maintenance period on the related server clusters. A large number of players were completely unable to log in on Sunday, and the problems with heavy loads continue to plague FFXIV’s servers. FFXIV’s producer, Naoki Yoshida, has posted an apology on the official forums in response to the ongoing issues, noting that while many of the login bugs have been fixed, there is still problems related to heavy traffic that must be attended to. Unfortunately for eager players, it looks like the login restrictions will not be going right away.

Although we have successfully addressed a number of serious issues in the past several days, we have nevertheless decided to implement login restrictions for the time being due to the extremely heavy load being placed upon the servers. In this way, we can ensure that the maximum number of players can play the game without risking a server crash. I know no one wants to wait to log in, but I hope you all understand why we believe this precaution is necessary.

(Source: FFXIV Forums)

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