Final Fantasy XIV Digital Sales Halt, Servers Melting Under Strain

[IndomitableSam]

Here's a quick "checklist" for you if you ever feel the need to try the game:

1) Do you enjoy typical Final Fantasy Music? [ ]
2) Do you like iconic Final Fantasy staples such as chocobos, airships, crystals, materia and moogles? [ ]
3) Do you generally prefer class and job based characters, a la Final Fantasy Tactics? [ ]
4) Would you like all classes, jobs and item creation skills on ONE character? ('Cause you totally can, if you wish.) [ ]
5) Do you prefer soloing or partying? (Either or does not detract from the overall gaming experience.) [ ]
6) Like little minions to trod along side you? (I have a wind-up airship as my minion.) [ ]
7) Do you like customization? [ ]
8) Want a myriad of quick travel choices? [ ]

If you checked the majority of these, I humbly suggest you find videos of the game on-line at the very least. I was skeptical at first, and the instance servers crashing did kind of dissapoint me, but the game is otherwise a great addition to the Final Fantasy name. IMHO, more so than the other two Final Fantasy MMOs combined.

Is it F2P or sub? If it's the latter, I might not bother with it, but if it's a former, I might give it a shot.

Subscription, and wil stay that way as the director has stated. Massive content updates every 3 months, also. Not expansion packs, content updates. I've supped for 120 days to save a bit of money - we'll see what they come up with. Housing should be out next patch. Yeah, housing. Been a while since an MMO did that.

 

[Zeckt]

Bought the game, fully intend to play it in a month or 2 because playing mmo's at launch for me has been a frustrating experience.

 

[Nilanius]

I've been playing this game since beta phase 3. And I have to say I am very happy with my purchase. Yes launch saw the game being too popular and servers filled up fast. But Square Enix has been hard at work to fix the overloads. And they intend to extend the server capacity to accommodate more players. I could even see them opening a few additional regional servers. Not many mind you, maybe one or two tops. But I don't believe they will go hog wild like a certain other company *cough*Blizzard*cough* did.

Gameplay wise, it is simple yet challenging. Yeah there's been a couple quests I failed a couple times, but they only made me desire to run back and try a different tactic each time. Classes are simplistic and seeing as you can be any class/job and be able to mix your other class skills/spells, you can quite literally hybridize yourself. No easter egg quests that I've found at least, which is good, because the story writers have some amazing story telling going on in the questing. The only easter eggs I've found is names seen in other final fantasy games.

 

[Faith Meade]

More reasons why I don't play MMO's.

 

[Miyenne]

The main quest line is actually really engaging and interesting, and all the funny little side quests are great. Some of them really have me giggling. Like the woman "who looks like she's really in need of some meat." and other such things.

Or the instance where the pirates kidnap all the women, the things the women say are disturbing. "What's left of my purity" or something like that.

It's beautiful to look at too. And when you run up to npcs that you can't talk to, they get little speech bubbles and sometimes it's hilarious, or in the case of the kidnapped women, upsetting.

I'm quickly becoming addicted.

 

[Scrythe]

"We thought, 'Whatever game we make, players will play it,'" game director Naoki Yoshida [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122356-FFXIV-Director-We-Took-Final-Fantasy-For-Granted] admitted. "I think that was a very big mistake we made."

Normally I'd be quick to call out such a blatantly cynical outlook coming from a gigantic company like Squeenix, but in the case of Final Fantasy, this is sadly true.

Square Enix could literally take a shit in a jar, slap a sticker of Cloud or [Insert you favorite Kingdom Hearts character here], and people will line up for blocks just to pay for the privilege to have some of it rubbed all over their faces. Remember Final Fantasy: ATB [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy:_All_the_Bravest]?

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Here's a quick "checklist" for you if you ever feel the need to try the game:

1) Do you enjoy typical Final Fantasy Music? [ ]
2) Do you like iconic Final Fantasy staples such as chocobos, airships, crystals, materia and moogles? [ ]
3) Do you generally prefer class and job based characters, a la Final Fantasy Tactics? [ ]
4) Would you like all classes, jobs and item creation skills on ONE character? ('Cause you totally can, if you wish.) [ ]
5) Do you prefer soloing or partying? (Either or does not detract from the overall gaming experience.) [ ]
6) Like little minions to trod along side you? (I have a wind-up airship as my minion.) [ ]
7) Do you like customization? [ ]
8) Want a myriad of quick travel choices? [ ]

If you checked the majority of these, I humbly suggest you find videos of the game on-line at the very least. I was skeptical at first, and the instance servers crashing did kind of dissapoint me, but the game is otherwise a great addition to the Final Fantasy name. IMHO, more so than the other two Final Fantasy MMOs combined.

Is it F2P or sub? If it's the latter, I might not bother with it, but if it's a former, I might give it a shot.

It is subscription, but I noticed on my box that there was 30-day free sub upon purchase. So, that's a thing.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Add this to the long list of reasons why the idea of a 'digital only future' can go fuck itself. I'll stick with my discs and games that you actually buy and own and shit, ta.

This is an MMO. It kind of HAS to be online, that's how they work.

Lmao add that to the list of things that should not have to be said.

On topic though you guys are all really making me want to go buy this game!

 

[Miyenne]

Lmao add that to the list of things that should not have to be said.

On topic though you guys are all really making me want to go buy this game!

Great! The more the merrier! .... Once the login issues are fixed, anyways.


The subscription fees aren't much anyways. I think I'm only going to be paying $12.99 a month, but that's American so actually a bit more for me. Still, not bad.

If you do join, we have our Free Company (guild) on Malboro server with a good amount of us Escapists there.

 

[Lilani]

Legitimately struggling to see what your point here is, no fooling.

In fact, surely it backs up my reticence of a digitally driven gaming climate that despite full knowledge that this was an entirely online focussed experience, FAR more so than any other product Squeenix have out there right now, they fucked up the infrastructure and people are struggling to play what they bought, or struggling to buy so they can play. And this is a major we're talking about. They have no excuses at all cause it's not like they didn't see big things coming, cause like you say(with reckless twee), this kind of HAS to be online. So why have they not set it up to work?

Besides, even if this isn't their fault and it's just one of those things, surely you can see this exact thing becoming a major issue if the big players keep pushing for a digital world that simply can't meet demand?

As others have already said, every other major MMO has wait times and server congestion at launch, or whenever launching new expansion packs. This is nothing unusual for popular MMOs. And yeah, they did see big things coming, but it was only a week before launch, and only five days before pre-launch. The open beta ended on Monday, which is when they saw the 150,000 concurrent logins. Since the open beta was free for everyone, I think it was safe of them to estimate that that's when they'd see the most congestion.

But then the pre-orders began flooding in, and just a few days later was the pre-launch. The game had worked perfectly fine until then, when the servers got bogged down with more than they'd ever even seen before.

I also don't see why you're throwing digital sales under the bus because of all this. The only reason they halted digital sales is because it's a lot easier to stop those than to stop retail sales, and it wouldn't be worth their time to pull it from shelves anyway since it's only a matter of increasing the server capacity. Nothing is wrong with the game gameplay-wise, it's just the server capacity is too low. All the reviewers who are bothering to look passed the login issues confirm it's [http://www.forbes.com/sites/danieltack/2013/08/27/final-fantasy-xiv-a-realm-reborn-early-access-and-launch/] fine [http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/27/final-fantasy-xiv-a-realm-reborn-review-in-progress]. Yes was an oversight of sorts, but certainly not uncommon for MMOs. The only thing digital sales did to fail them was make it very easy for lots more people than anticipated to quickly buy or pre-order and get into the game.

You're making this out to be some sort of permanent and unfix-able problem, but it's simply a problem of server capacity. The rest of the game is fine. Hundreds of thousands of eager players and several major reviewers agree--there are capacity problems, but this is no SimCity.

 

[Strazdas]

As usual, they underestimate popularity at launch, the "login, play for 5 hours, decide to never play it again" crowd is going to swing by in a week and youll be able to play normally. patience will win once again.

Damn, Square Enix fails at life again. Why in the world is this an issue. They already launched it once, did they forget what an MMO launch is like. I figure you need to plan on how many servers you need, then increase that number by 50%. They can be consolidated later if it's necessary (which it will be).

Well, to be fair the user spike at launch is always like double the stable userbase after, say, 2 weeks. many people want to "Try it out" and then quit it in a week. not to mention all of those who login just to review the "Fresh game" or "to try it all but not really play". you know, those people whose accounts have 1000 games, but neither of them above 6 hours uptime. buying servers for these people will mean you will ahve double server upkeep prices with half usage. So maybe they think its worth to have problems for a week rather than afford these servers till (If) the game gets so popular that its userbase doubles.

 

[Lilani]

I'm not making this out to be anything other than what it is: One more reason why I personally am very reluctant to accept the model that this stuff is the future that big publishers seem to be pushing.

This might not be a game ender, but remember the sim city thing?

Remember EA shutting down their couple of year old game because they can, rendering it completely unplayable for everyone?

Remember there are loads of people that have given Squeenix some money basically for the sheer pleasure of doing so at this point?

This is just one more thing for me. Major releases from enourmous publishers are being released into the market and for a lot of people the game just isn't playing. Thats normal is it? Fuck that. You say that like it's a good thing. Here's genuinely hoping they don't become one more irrelevant MMO on the market and lots of people bought the $200 game for no reason and with no way to recoup, cause that would suck.

You still don't seem to get it, this is why I felt the need to point out it was an MMO before. MMOs have always been reliant upon their servers being on. Every single one of them. WoW, Runescape, Everquest, EVE, Tera, FlyFF. Every single one of them, ever since they first came into being. Every single person who pays money into an MMO understands the servers have to be on. They always have. This isn't a "new model" for MMOs, it's how they have always worked. It's how they HAVE to work. It is the most basic element of an MMO--playing online.

And as far as Square Enix, I'd just like to point out that their first MMO that's more than 10 years old now, Final Fantasy XI is STILL running, even though this game was essentially made to replace it (there was even a system in place with the first version of FFXIV to transfer a certain amount of player data from FFXI to FFXIV). They even made another new expansion for it this last year, even though its player base is minuscule and it's only going to go down from here. As far as their MMOs are concerned, Square is no EA. They have been highly dedicated to their online communities, hell that's why they bothered rebuilding the game in the first place rather than taking their initial earnings and running.

And again, I'd just like to point out that the game works just fine. This is a server capacity problem. If you're trying to cram 50 people into a Ferrari, you aren't exactly going to blame the Ferrari for your problems, are you?

 

[spoonybard.hahs]

Hindsight is 20/20. Fact of the matter is, they could have avoided this by coding the servers with a maximum load, and then cutting off server registrations once the maximum number of characters created on it was met. Then once this issue started happening, they could have created new servers to alleviate the strain and go back and increase previous server populations.

However, the game is indeed amazing. I never played 1.0, but everyone I talked to who has said it is infinitely better.

If you're trying to cram 50 people into a Ferrari, you aren't exactly going to blame the Ferrari for your problems, are you?

But aren't we only talking like 200k subscriptions or something? I'll be honest I don't know how that rates in terms of MMOs, but major console MP games get millions of players and handle it, not a couple hundred thousand then it's telling people to try again later.

That's because multiplayer games typically use a player as the host for the game, which will last anywhere from five to thirty minutes with two to eighteen players. A developer's servers in those games are used only for matchmaking lobbies and stats tracking.

 

[rbstewart7263]

If you're trying to cram 50 people into a Ferrari, you aren't exactly going to blame the Ferrari for your problems, are you?

Depends, has Ferrari sold a super capacity Ferrari that can supposedly hold 50 people but can only hold 25? Cause that's definitely their fuck up.

I don't get what you're fighting for here tbh. You're the one that brought up this specific games actual content and the entire MMO sphere, I'm just reading a story about a dedicated online game not doing the dedicated online thing and my thoughts were pretty much as I said. "Oh look, one more cock up for the online world. Too bad they still don't have the infrastructure to support that shit". I really don't care if 10 million people call being pissed on rain. If out the gate false starts and server crashes are standard and you're happy with that, cool.

But aren't we only talking like 200k subscriptions or something? I'll be honest I don't know how that rates in terms of MMOs, but major console MP games get millions of players and handle it, not a coupld hundred thousand then it's telling people to try again later.

This arguements confusing are you confusing the nature of mmos with the drm debacle that was ea?

One took a game that shouldnt have required you to be online constantly if you wanted to play alone.

The other is a necessity of Massively multiplayer ONLINE games. Titanfall if I remember correctly is multiplayer only so without online it makes since to not buy it there being no single player.

So to conclude one has a reason to be online constantly and the other does not.

also escapist theres a blue moon add floating in front of my text box called "behind
the craft"? can you guys move that or get rid of that?

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Lmao add that to the list of things that should not have to be said.

On topic though you guys are all really making me want to go buy this game!

Great! The more the merrier! .... Once the login issues are fixed, anyways.


The subscription fees aren't much anyways. I think I'm only going to be paying $12.99 a month, but that's American so actually a bit more for me. Still, not bad.

If you do join, we have our Free Company (guild) on Malboro server with a good amount of us Escapists there.

QQ I'm on Balmung. Had I known a good deal of Escapists were on there, I would've joined there instead of Balmung.

This makes me all sorts of sad panda right now. =(

 

[Miyenne]

QQ I'm on Balmung. Had I known a good deal of Escapists were on there, I would've joined there instead of Balmung.

This makes me all sorts of sad panda right now. =(

Can always transfer when it's up.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

QQ I'm on Balmung. Had I known a good deal of Escapists were on there, I would've joined there instead of Balmung.

This makes me all sorts of sad panda right now. =(

Can always transfer when it's up.

Or I can make a new character on that server, now that I'm not thinking like a sad panda.

Spoiler: Which, now thinking about, makes me feel kinda like this