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Tag: Naoki Yoshida
Final Fantasy XIV Patch 5.3 Delayed At Least A Month
Square Enix Apologizes For FFXIV On Mac, Offers Refunds
Direct Naoki Yoshida has posted a letter to Final Fantasy XIV fans, apologizing for issues with the mac client. The mac version of FFXIV launched on June 23rd, and it became immediately apparent that the game was not running properly on many systems, even those who met the minimum requirements. According to Yoshida, in the chaos before the launch, the wrong system requirements were posted, leading to players purchasing the game who would be unable to play it.
I believe that the biggest problem with the Mac version release was the significant discrepancy between the performance of the product our development team produced and the expectations our customers had for it, which was due to the lack of information available on our product when sales commenced, as well as other issues. I would like to explain in detail how this happened.
For players who purchased FFXIV and cannot play it, Square is offering refunds. This includes refunds for those of you who purchased game time cards. You can find the rather lengthy explanation at the link below.
(Source: FFXIV)
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)
FFXIV Enjoys 500,000 Daily Players
Naoki Yoshida has revealed in an interview to 4Gamer that Final Fantasy XIV currently carries 1.8 million player accounts, 6.75 million characters created, and 500,000 active daily users.
Well, the number for daily active user count can be misleading…. The peak time for Japan and oversea countries are different, for example. But if we simply look at the number of people logging in every day, I’d say we have about 500,000 people worldwide.
Yoshida also talks about Final Fantasy XI, Dragon Quest X, and an obsession with Everquest while Final Fantasy XI was in development. You can read the entire translated interview at the link below.
(Source: Square Enix interview)
FFXIV Shuts Down November 11th For 2.0
I think Final Fantasy XIV is the first time I’ve ever said “this game is shutting down” with a positive outlook. Earlier this month, Naoki Yoshida explained to us that Final Fantasy XIV will shut down at some point in the future in order in order to make way for the MMO’s relaunch, A Realm Reborn. In a producer’s letter released today, Yoshi revealed that the shut down date has been determined: November 11th, at midnight PST (8:00am GMT). The servers will remain down until A Realm Reborn launches.
A Realm Reborn will initially roll out in a four phase alpha test. The first test will only be available to Japan, however Yoshi has asked the players to answer a poll if they would prefer to keep the current version servers online (albeit with no progress saved to Realm Reborn after the initial shut down) so they can at least play while they wait.
(Source: FFXIV)
Final Fantasy XIV Shutting Down In Preparation For Realm Reborn
Consider this your first heads up, FFXIV players: At some point in the future Final Fantasy XIV will shut down, but only temporarily. At Gamescom, Square Enix announced that instead of simply updating FFXIV when the game’s 2.0 relaunch goes live, the servers will need to be shut down for an indeterminate amount of time. Naoki Yoshida, director/producer, stated that the shut down will occur at some day in the near future, and is required in order to transition all of the character files over to the new game.
“Basically what’s going to happen is that the current story is still continuing now, but some day in the near future — and we’ll make sure we tell the players what day that is — something is going to happen in the story, and at that time, the servers are going to shut down,”
Players will have plenty of notice ahead of time as to when the servers will shut down. A Realm Reborn is set for launch on PC and PS3.
(Source: Massively.com)
MMO Fallout 