Square Enix – Page 12

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 Accounts Being Stolen Via 3rd Party Websites

Gold farmers often make use of accounts stolen from their previous customers or by breaching security at third party websites and matching lists of usernames and passwords, and as with any big MMO launch, Final Fantasy XIV is already seeing a surge in stolen accounts. In a post on the FFXIV forums, Square has confirmed that a third party source is using a list of stolen accounts from an outside website in order to break into player accounts and use them for gold farming and chat spam.

Currently, we have confirmed that a third party is using account names and passwords, thought to be obtained from security breaches of other companys’ online services, in attempts to gain unauthorized access to Square Enix accounts. If you are using the same account name or password as your Square Enix account on other online services, there is a much greater chance that a security breach at any of the other online services could potentially lead to your Square Enix account being compromised.

Accounts suspected of being stolen will be restricted until the user can verify their ownership.

(Source: FFXIV)

FFXIV Review Part 2: The Bad

(Editor’s Note: This was originally supposed to be a one part article, but for some reason it was playing hell with the server, so it has been split up)

Now let’s talk about the negatives, starting with everyone’s favorite piece from 1.0: Levequests. Levequests are back and they are just as convoluted as they were in their past iterations. Levequests work by accepting them at an appropriate NPC, who then directs you to another area where you enter a specific location and “initiate” the levequest. This generates monsters that are specific to you and cannot be attacked by anyone else, and at the end you are rewarded bonus experience and gil. Remember the artificial limits I mentioned that were in that other game? They are back. Levequests are limited to six daily, however they roll over and stack for any days you miss or don’t run any. What this means is that the more dedicated players will quickly run out of things to do, since traditional quests are sparse and easily completed.

For now, players are power leveling by completing FATES, the game’s open quest system similar to those found in Guild Wars 2, Rift, Defiance, etc. The FATE system not only awards extremely generous amounts of experience, but they pop up fast enough that they are not only the best form of leveling up, but compared to the sparse story quests and limited levequests, they are the only viable option for a solo player to level up that doesn’t involve sitting around just killing stuff for base experience.

And I’ve already touched on this in the previous, very short impressions piece, but the more I look at it the more I believe that Square Enix hires their designers by going to McDonald’s, finding the people who weren’t qualified to work there, and ignoring them for the homeless person rummaging through the dumpster out back. Now that the server issues are mostly squared away, I can turn my attention to other choices that would qualify under “why didn’t you learn this the first time?” Like the horrible chat interface that forces you type a person’s name in if you want to blacklist their chat, making blocking goldfarmers just about impossible when they are either spamming too fast to writer their names down or, god forbid, their name uses confusing or special characters that can’t be replicated on an American keyboard. Forgetting an easy ignore button in an MMO is something I’d expect from a startup company, not from a game that is built from the remains (and lessons) of one of the worst launches in gaming history.

There are plenty of rookie mistakes that Square continues to make, including the total lack of an AFK kick function resulting in unnecessary server congestion, being unable to leave chat on “shout” and having to select it every time, the fact that you have to log in to multiple different websites to manage various aspects of one account, and the total lack of defense against gold spam.

I did my best to review Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn without thinking about the MMO’s prior release, but I found that the game is just too deeply burned into my brain to not make comparisons. That being said, I think that people who even slightly enjoyed the original MMO will be very happy to see the improvements that Square Enix has made. Those of you who are just coming in for the first time will either be overjoyed or disappointed to know that FFXIV doesn’t deviate from the standard MMO spectrum all that much.

If you put a gun to my head and asked for a numerical score, I’d give it a 9.0 out of 10. Yes it isn’t perfect, and I’m sure there are a lot of people who simply will not like it. I can see myself paying the monthly subscription for this, which is a lot more than I can say for most other MMOs.

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)

Extra Free Trial Time For FFXIV

If there is one word that can be used to describe Final Fantasy XIV’s launch, it would be “extra smooth,” in that it is neither one word nor is it accurate. While Square Enix continues to monitor server stability and population, and while FFXIV remains unavailable for purchase, Naoki Yoshida has once again turned to the forums to explain that they are indeed working on solutions to overpopulation and a general inability for players to log in or create characters due to overwhelming traffic. Wednesday will see the addition of new worlds, tweaks to existing servers, and more.

As an apology to fans who are unable to log in, or having difficulty creating characters, Square Enix will be extending the free trial period for seven days to all players, including those returning from legacy 1.0 accounts. Trial extension will be handed out on Wednesday with the server maintenance.

(Source: FFXIV)

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.

MMOrning Shots: Fishing Buddies

In Final Fantasy XIV, fishing isn’t just a skill, it is a way of life. Well maybe not, but it is rather addictive. Not to throw fuel on the fire but like many of the other components, fishing in FFXIV 1.0 wasn’t just boring, it was needlessly complicated, and it wasn’t nearly as useful as it is now. These days, fishing does everything from curing hunger, athlete’s foot, finds tax loopholes, and in special occasions can even be used in Finnish dance. And if you look hard enough, you can even find some fish.

Once you hit level 10 in your first chosen class, you are able to travel to Limsa Lominsa (I suggest waiting until 15 when you unlock the airship, it is a long walk otherwise) assuming you didn’t start there, and join the Fishing Guild. Once you start, the goal is to complete your fishing log, complete the occasional quest, and work on your records. The fishing log is a handy tool which fills in with information as you catch fish, detailing prime locations and some information. Quests are available every five levels, and your records are updated whenever you catch a larger fish in a specific category.

Square Enix Halts FFXIV Digital Sales Due To Traffic

Final Fantasy XIV is selling so well that Square Enix can’t keep up with the traffic. Early Access became three days of players being unable to log in due to emergency maintenance, server loads, high traffic, errors, worlds being full, server queues full, and worlds being locked to new characters. For the sake of limiting new customers until they can deal with the current crop, Square has announced that they will be halting digital sales of FFXIV for the time being.

Important Notice About FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn – Due to the overwhelmingly positive response to FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn, we are currently experiencing extremely long wait times for users to be able to log in and play. As a temporary measure, we will halt sales of FINAL FANTASY XIV: A REALM REBORN’s digital download products so we can accommodate all of those wishing to play. We are working to expand our server capacity in the coming days. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this causes.

(Source: FFXIV Blog)

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