Tag: Final Fantasy XIV

Most Aggressive Developer of 2011: Square Enix


When Final Fantasy XIV launched in September 2010, it drew a backlash from its userbase the likes of which haven’t been seen since Sony Online Entertainment implemented the Combat Upgrade and New Game Enhancements in Star Wars Galaxies back in 2005. For an MMO, it was one of the most disappointing releases of 2010. The development team was “reshuffled” and a fair amount of people were fired. Naoki Yoshida was put in charge and Square Enix would later come out to state that Final Fantasy XIV had done a fair amount of damage to the brand name.

But despite this, Square Enix refused to give up. Rather than shut the game down, Square threw years of precedent into the garbage and did what none of us could have seen coming: They opened up and started listening to their players. Instead of laying off staff, Square expanded the Final Fantasy XIV team to accommodate the larger work load. Instead of expecting players to pay each month for a broken game, they suspended subscriptions for over a year, and even delayed the Playstation 3 release until (estimated) a 2012 release. Since September 2010, Final Fantasy XIV has gone under update after update to implement what players were asking for, and remove what they had never wanted.

Final Fantasy XIV 2.0 is set to release at some point in late 2012/early 2013, and until then players will be asked to start paying a reduced subscription rate in January 2012. 2.0 is said to be a major overhaul of the game, so much so that Square feels confident in basing the release of the Playstation 3 version around it. If Square can find success in the years and millions of dollars they spent reviving this game from the ground up, well it puts them above certain other developers who simply hit the kill switch when accounting didn’t report the numbers they were hoping for.

Runner Up: Trion, Rift

If anyone needs to be commended for the most aggressive marketing campaign of the year, it is Trion with Rift. I hate to use the phrase “shoving it down our throats,” but since Rift got past the initial “our servers are crippled because we didn’t expect this much success,” the company has gone on to throw everything but the kitchen sink at potential customers, only prior to throwing the actual kitchen sink. For the fact that Rift has been with us less than a year, the game has gone on sale more often than most multi-year MMOs. Rift ads can be seen anywhere an MMO website can be found, and for a while potential and past players were invited on a regular basis to come back for a few days and play for free.

In the end, however, I had to give the award to Square Enix. An aggressive marketing plan is great, but even if you hate Square Enix, Final Fantasy, MMOs, or any combination of the three, you can’t ignore the sheer dedication it takes to spend the time and money that Square is to fix what they wholly admit was a result of their arrogance. You can argue that the game should have never shipped as it did in the first place, but it did. It happened, and this is how Square is fixing it.

Stay tuned for a new award every day throughout the end of December.

Final Fantasy XIV Billing Starts January 6th


We all knew this time would come eventually, when Square Enix would shake off the training wheels and Final Fantasy XIV would transition back to its intended subscription system. Last month, Square announced that billing would start around the time the much anticipated 2.0 update released, around November or December of this year. Today, in an article on Gamasutra, Square is ready to announce a final date: January 6th. According to Gamasutra, the 2.0 update, billed as a remade version of the game, is set to launch sometime in late 2012.

Until version 2.0 is released, players who opt to continue playing will enjoy reduced subscription rates, starting at $6.99 per month with the cost decreasing for 90 and 180 day subscriptions. The Playstation 3 version is expected in early 2013.

Important: Final Fantasy XIV Subscriptions Start Soon


It’s been ten long months since someone at Square Enix restructured the Final Fantasy XIV team with the human resources equivalent of a carpet bomb, and since then the game has arguably come a long way, both in the huge number of updates bringing in new content, much needed content, fixing the old, purging the bad (physical levels?) and a new way of thinking for the FFXIV team. Unfortunately for us, the time we all knew was coming has shown is ugly head: The free period of Final Fantasy XIV will be coming to a close.

In a new lodestone, President Yoichi Wada announced that the transition will come in late November or early December of this year 2012. But hey, anyone who has been with FFXIV since the beginning has had a full year to play for free. Unless you are me, who adopted early and thanks to my already slow leveling process managed to get three skills above level ten. More importantly, as any person who bought the game should question, what about the subscriptions we still had to sign up to when the game started?

Anyone who has played FINAL FANTASY XIV at any time since its release is already in possession of a FINAL FANTASY XIV service account. These accounts are set to renew their subscriptions automatically, barring deactivation by the account holder. Therefore, if we were to begin regular subscription billings for all existing contracts, players who will not see this announcement or who may not currently wish to pay subscription fees would automatically begin to be charged for their accounts. To avoid this, we have decided to first suspend all automated renewals for service accounts. Only account holders who have agreed to reactivate the automated renewal system will be billed.

That’s generous of them. Final Fantasy has had a year of player dropoff, making for a lot of people who stopped playing and probably don’t follow the game anymore. You can read the entire announcement, as well as download a few documents outlining the team’s plans for the future.

Final Fantasy XIV Patch Notes Are A Novel


Final Fantasy’s slightly delayed 1.19 (not to be confused with Minecraft 1.9) patch doesn’t come for another few days, but you can read the patch notes and list of planned changes right now, and a long read it is. The update is enormous and covers so many things that I couldn’t possibly go into each and every aspect in this blog post (but I’ll try anyway). Square Enix is implementing a wide variety of updates, from abolishing physical levels, attribute points, and elemental points. The update also introduces a massive change to the crafting system, with some new recipes, a lot of altered recipes, and a couple abolished recipes. Players will also be able to rent/buy chocobo, travel in air ships, and take part in new guild leves, grand company quests, and more.

Again there is far too much for me to fully explain here. It’s good to see the Final Fantasy XIV team is still trucking along, even hiring new people to expand the team, especially after Square Enix boss Yaochi Wada stated a few days ago at a press conference that “the Final Fantasy brand has been greatly damaged,” placing much of the blame on Square’s most recent MMO.

More on Final Fantasy XIV as it appears.

Square Enix Expanding Final Fantasy XIV Development Team


As I’ve said before, Square Enix has a long history of going away from the norm on a design level and a corporate level. If you’re one of the unbelieving heathens who looked at Final Fantasy XIV and thought “well this will just continue diminishing until there’s nothing left of the development team,” I’m going to hit you on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Not only are you wrong, you couldn’t be any more off-base unless Square Enix turned out to have never existed and the Final Fantasy series was an M Night Shyamalan film.

Dual Shockers has an article noting that Square Enix is not only not downsizing the Final Fantasy XIV team, they’re hiring more people to work on the resurfacing MMO. Eleven new positions have been created, with another confirmation that the PS3 version is still in development.

As part of this new initiative, I will be shipping Yoshi-P a new t-shirt to wear around the office that says “troll-proof.”

Final Fantasy XIV: PS3 Coming "At All Costs"


I’m such an egg-head. Without regards to a certain outfit publishing a review of Final Fantasy XIV just before a major game-altering patch, hopeful fans of Square Enix’s baby may be giving up hope of ever seeing the game hit Playstation 3, which Square’s Yoshida has promised will only come as the defining moment where Square can release the game as a finished product. There is no timetable for release.

In an interview over at the Final Fantasy XIV boards, Yoshida and crew want to be very clear: Playstation 3 users will not be given the same indefinite delay shtick as 360 users were given last year. Rather, Yoshida says very clearly:

It’s not canceled. Development is underway, don’t worry! The PS3 version will be released at all costs.

There is a massive list of updates being planned and currently set for release in Final Fantasy XIV, everything from the major combat system changes in patch 1.18 to player owned housing, jumping (yes this is a notable addition, given Square), the scrapping of the fatigue system, the possible removal of physical levels, and more.

You can get a look at what is in development here. The page has had a facelift since we last posted it.

Final Fantasy XIV: PS3 Coming “At All Costs”


I’m such an egg-head. Without regards to a certain outfit publishing a review of Final Fantasy XIV just before a major game-altering patch, hopeful fans of Square Enix’s baby may be giving up hope of ever seeing the game hit Playstation 3, which Square’s Yoshida has promised will only come as the defining moment where Square can release the game as a finished product. There is no timetable for release.

In an interview over at the Final Fantasy XIV boards, Yoshida and crew want to be very clear: Playstation 3 users will not be given the same indefinite delay shtick as 360 users were given last year. Rather, Yoshida says very clearly:

It’s not canceled. Development is underway, don’t worry! The PS3 version will be released at all costs.

There is a massive list of updates being planned and currently set for release in Final Fantasy XIV, everything from the major combat system changes in patch 1.18 to player owned housing, jumping (yes this is a notable addition, given Square), the scrapping of the fatigue system, the possible removal of physical levels, and more.

You can get a look at what is in development here. The page has had a facelift since we last posted it.

What Happened This Week: 4/15-4/21 Edition


This weeks question is for those of you who have quit an MMO (so virtually all of you). What level of interaction do you keep with your estranged title? Do you forget all about it and move on to your next title of choice, or are you one of those people who turns on jihad mode and begins a crusade to bring the game and company down because they did something that caused you to quit? Do you keep watch to see if they improve upon what made you quit to begin with, or is it a matter of once they lose your interest, it’s gone forever?

I can’t explain my interest in Hellgate Global. When I played the game at launch, I wasn’t too interested in it. In a way, I had the same reaction to Hellgate as I did with All Points Bulletin, in that it was a shooter/sword/RPG that tried to combine the best of both worlds, but ended up not doing either in a unique way. Essentially, it was Diablo, but played from a different perspective, and I lost interest in the same fashion I lost interest in Diablo: Going through similar looking dungeons (often the same dungeon several times for different missions) over and over again. And yet, I’m signed up for the beta. I could not give a single valid explanation why, other than that I paid the money for the boxed copy.

1. Yoshi’s Cookie: I Admire the Final Fantasy XIV Team

Say what you want about Final Fantasy XIV and odds are your complaints are very valid. What you can’t say is that the current development team, lead by Naoki “Yoshi” Yoshida, lacks motivation. Reading the producer’s letters, I can’t help but admire the devotion and passion that Yoshi and his team have put into Final Fantasy XIV in the past few months. Development has been steaming forward, with a ton of needed updates to turn Final Fantasy XIV into a viable product. FFXIV is functionally a great game, but it needs content and direction so players are doing something other than grinding exp and taking up the same leves over and over again.

What Yoshi has proven is that the team is not above slashing content that doesn’t work, or making drastic changes to other content. Among the updates in the works are the complete removal of physical levels, reworking the battle system, changing the job titles to be more recognizable, introducing grand companies and an achievement system. You can read the list of planned and currently in-the-works updates here.

2. Omali, Why Do You Hate Gamersfirst So Much?

I don’t have a personal grudge against Gamersfirst, I just have very low confidence in the company’s ability to police their own games, mainly because the company has absolutely failed to police their own games. The titles they do maintain are filled to the brim, as I’ve said before, with cheaters and gold farmers. So although I’d like to believe Gamersfirst when they say they have the cheaters all figured out, that’s exactly what Jagex said about gold farmers in Runescape, and I have the feeling Jagex has better resources for catching cheaters than G1.

Those of you who frequent MMO Fallout are well aware that I refuse to join in on the “I hope ___ game fails because I hate ___ company” trash that populates video game forums, and that it’s rather rare that a game comes out that can be labeled purely garbage. Just to name a few examples, DC Universe is a game I harp on, and my issues are not in the gameplay, but its longevity. The original All Points Bulletin had a lot of promise, but needed a real identity as either a shooter or an MMO, but not both. Earth Eternal had less bugs than any other game I’ve ever played but had almost no content outside of kill quests.

I want All Points Bulletin to become Gamersfirst’s big title that will come out and virtually lobotomize all of the cheaters that Realtime Worlds never dealt with, that will inspire the company to run the gold farmers out of their other games. If they are unable to, hopefully Gamersfirst will be able to survive the disappointing reception. Realtime Worlds didn’t.

3. Let’s See Some More Games Revived.

Let’s go over some titles, shall we? Earth Eternal is being revived by a Japanese company, APB by G1, Star Trek Online was revived by Cryptic, Gods & Heroes is entering closed beta under Heatwave Interactive, T3fun is bringing back Hellgate London, and there are probably a few more I can’t think of right now. If The Mummy can get an MMO deal, I want to see some of these other defunct MMOs come back.

I want to see Tabula Rasa brought back, because with all the changes that the developers made in the two months before the game shut down, a lot of the community’s problems were fixed, albeit too late. Shadowbane should be brought back now that the existing version wouldn’t suffer the same problems of the original run (remember the Shadowbane reboot?), and would be run by a single, stable company. I want Dungeon Runners brought back as a free to play title with a cash shop, so the game can financially support more than three people. But above all, I want Tabula Rasa brought back, so I can shoot Richard Garriot in the face with a level 40 shotgun for allowing his team to screw the game two ways to Sunday.

4. I Don’t Have Autism.

The reason I set up MMO Fallout is because of my fascination with the business side of the genre. This is one of the few sections of the gaming industry where a company can’t just throw a game into the open, occasionally lower its price, and then get to work on the sequel. Currently, I feature over 70 MMOs on the category list, including news for games I don’t list (Guild Wars among them).

I noticed a surge in this after Minecraft really gathered steam, and that’s the amount of people who are equating what they see as hard work to autism, and I’ve had a few people asking me if I have autism. First of all that’s an incredibly offensive thing to ask someone, and as a random person on the internet it’s none of your damn business.

Next, I want to make something clear about MMO Fallout. I have a job, I work around generally between 25-30 hours a week at my retail job that I’m using to pay for my car and insurance. I subscribe to, at most, two MMOs, by virtue of my own wallet and time. Writing articles for MMO Fallout takes up a couple of hours of the day at most, spread out throughout my free time. So I wouldn’t call MMO Fallout my “second job.” More like a hobby I’m using to get myself trained for my ultimate end-game (as you’d see in my about page, talk radio).

5. Taking MMO Fallout To The Next Level

I’m going to start trying to get some interviews with different developers. When I call MMO Fallout a hobby, that doesn’t change how serious I am with expanding this website into something bigger. I have a lot of ideas on what I want to do with this blog, and simple text based articles aren’t going to cut it.

Square Enix Posts "Extraordinary Losses"


Square Enix posted a $16 million loss for Q1 2011, posting an even more bleak forecast for the rest of the year. The tsunami that hit Japan earlier this year is a major player in the report, coupled with the ongoing development of Final Fantasy XIV while the servers remain free of charge, and the lackluster sales of certain Square Enix properties.

Due to the recording of extraordinary losses, forecasted net income (loss) is revised for fiscal year.

The report also notes the cancellation of some projects, none are mentioned specifically. According to Wikipedia, Square’s last cancellation was in March over a 3rd person shooter called Gun Loco, a 360 exclusive. Square Enix has several titles still to release this year, including Wakfu, Dungeon Siege 3, Dead Island, Deus Ex, and a few others that should bolster their sales.

Square Enix Posts “Extraordinary Losses”


Square Enix posted a $16 million loss for Q1 2011, posting an even more bleak forecast for the rest of the year. The tsunami that hit Japan earlier this year is a major player in the report, coupled with the ongoing development of Final Fantasy XIV while the servers remain free of charge, and the lackluster sales of certain Square Enix properties.

Due to the recording of extraordinary losses, forecasted net income (loss) is revised for fiscal year.

The report also notes the cancellation of some projects, none are mentioned specifically. According to Wikipedia, Square’s last cancellation was in March over a 3rd person shooter called Gun Loco, a 360 exclusive. Square Enix has several titles still to release this year, including Wakfu, Dungeon Siege 3, Dead Island, Deus Ex, and a few others that should bolster their sales.

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