Forced to buy game again???!!!

FrostFreiDen

Allright, I first purchased FFXI when the game first hit the shelves in america! It was FINAL FANTASY and I HAD to have it! Got the game, installed it, and played for 3-5 months everyday! I loved it. Sooner or later the inevitable happens and i got somewhat bored of it. I cancelled my account and unsubscribed so i wouldnt be charged. Just makes sense.

Well, got bored since there are not really any great mmo's out at the time, so decided to have at it with the old FFXI again! I was drooling with anticipation of being a Tarataru White mage and aiding all the galka and elvan warriors as they chopped through the dreaded enemies. I couldnt take it anymore. Popped in the old PlayOnline CD and installed. installed the FFXI cd's and started off with membership all over again. SADLY, THIS STORY TURNS SAD.....

I had written my Playonline password and Name down but no matter what i tried, it wouldnt work. I decided to call. The rep. told me i just needed to enter the name and password in and it should connect and i could get going. Sadly it wasnt that easy. I called again and after giving a different rep some info about myself and the billing address and whatnot. Here is how the conversation goes

Me : Yeah so, Just kind of curious cause it wont log me in and i dont know what to do

REP : Well Christopher, the way this works out is, After you unsubscribe from the game, your only allowed 80 days to resubscribe to the playonline. After the 80 days is up, your registration numbers and all info about you is deleted. So, pretty much ( verbatim ) if you wanna play the game again, your going to have to go and buy a new copy...

Me : Thanks...

 

I couldnt believe my ears. You gotta be joking right? I bought this game from Squre-Enix... FINAL FANTASY!!!! and now your telling me that because i didnt want to play it for a little while, im being told that i have to throw out another 50$ just to purchase a new set of registration keys? Even though i have the box and cd's and everything right here in front of me? WHAT A JOKE!!!!

 

Either way, I decided its best just to not worry about it. It'd probably be better if i was paying someone elses wages with a different game anyway....

 

 

"Arguing on the Internet is like competing in the 'special olympics'. Whoever wins, your still retarded"

Delikar

Well it just so happens to be that my brother had undergone the same problem, but he luckily recovered by stealing my account and keycodes. To my knowledge POL doesn't say anything about "canceling" your account when you go inactive for 3 monthes, because it is not in the FFXI/Tetra Master booklet. All I can say is to contact someone on POL, not Squenix because they control nothing that goes on with POL. Hope you get things figured out, if not I guess theres always...Ehh......FF9....God what a crappy game...GO FF7!

Zephrith

Dude, thats total bull.

FrostFreiDen

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Originally posted by Zephrith
Dude, thats total bull.

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Yeah, I was really upset, and I still am upset. I have DOOM and play that every once in a while, but now that im in hell its just so hard and more importantly, i really wanna get into an mmorpg instead of a FPS. I'm still a little upset over the whole idea and wish I could be playing it right now...I just cant afford to throw out an additional 45-50 bucks whatever the cost is to play the game again. Specially not when WOW and EQII will be coming out in a few months... IF the game was closer to 20 bucks i would buy it again, but by the time the game goes down in price to 20 bucks... if ever, there will probably be no one playing it... If the game goes down in hype...So yeah... Maybe I'll win the lottery!!

"When i grow up, Im gonna be a Predator!"

Lell

Guess it's time to throw out my disks.

rathma

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Originally posted by FrostFreiDen

 the way this works out is, After you unsubscribe from the game, your only allowed 80 days to resubscribe to the playonline. After the 80 days is up, your registration numbers and all info about you is deleted. So, pretty much ( verbatim ) if you wanna play the game again, your going to have to go and buy a new copy...

"Arguing on the Internet is like competing in the 'special olympics'. Whoever wins, your still retarded"

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 Wait, hold on.... *Grabs calculator and calendar* Son of a...... That's bullshit, my cd's are useless. If they really think you are going to go out and buy ANOTHER game, they are f*cked up.

 And I thought SOE was bad... Now i have a new enemy.

nooblet

Hahaha yes Square-enix are the worst...that merge with enix really did something nasty lol. The same thing happened to me...i suddenly felt like playing again and then to find out i hada buy a new copy I will not buy any online game ever again from square-enix. They make SOE cs look like the best.

EQ2 Qeynos Guild- http://www.imperium-arcanum.com

Kloe

so you can't just make a new account to log in with? becasue i have had a few friends stop playing and got their account cancelled, and then come back to playing without having to buy a new game... i think you were lied to.

FrostFreiDen

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Originally posted by Kloe

so you can't just make a new account to log in with? becasue i have had a few friends stop playing and got their account cancelled, and then come back to playing without having to buy a new game... i think you were lied to.

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Sadly, No... If you unsubscribe you really have to resubscribe for the 80 day deadline which is just bull, but yeah. You see, Right when you buy the game, you type in your registration codes thats in the back of the book. Square-Enix has a list sort of, of all the legal registration codes. Once you type yours in and its confirmed, its as though its taken and you cant use it again. Thats simple enough, that way no one can use your code. But if you uninstall the game, and come back after its "too late" you wont be able to type in the registration codes again cause you already used them once, and you wont be able to retype your playonline member name or password in again, cause they already deleted all that information as well! So... Yeah

"When i grow up, Im gonna be a Predator!"

Kloe

oh ok, so if you just cancel your content ID you're fine, but if you cancel your POL thing then your screwed. thanks for the warning even though i wont be cancelling anything anytime soon :P

Z0mbyra

That is pretty sad that u had to buy the game all over again, there should be a freeze acount where you freeze it and you can freeze it for like a year or sumthing like that.

But telling you that you had to buy a copy again and wasting more money is sad

FrostFreiDen

Oh no, I didnt buy the game again. No way was i going to fork out an additional 50 bucks when EQ II and WOW are so close to release! Square-Enix will just have to look elsewhere. Now, If the game goes down to say 24.99 or something, than yeah, i'll buy it again, but not when its over 30... They really showed their ugly side, and thta just makes me not want to buy their products.

"When i grow up, Im gonna be a Predator!"

Dekron

I smell a fat class action lawsuit coming to Square-Enix!

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Achiever 53%
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Z0mbyra

So you stoped playing untill it is cheaper?

lonelyrobot

If anything, thanks for sharing that; you just saved me $100-150. I was just checking out the current state of the game before my fiance and I returned (was going to head out tomorrow to pick up the PS2 version so i could play it from the couch and her the -better- computer this time around).

What i find funny is that tiny little companies like mythic can hold someone's characters since launch and a great big corporation such as square can't even hold onto them for 80 days.

FrostFreiDen

Hey, Im glad i could help, You know, I've never really thought about it, but your right. It is sad how you can start up a game and wait forever and a day but as long as you remember ( write down ) your member name and password ( not like you couldnt email them for the info ) than you can go right back to where you started... lol.. Sometimes, even though the game says FFXI.. I dont like to consider it the Final Fantasy Genre just because well... Its 100% ass backwards from the FF series. OF course, the story line is good, but we all know how little it can compare to the storylines of 7-9.. even 10! I would say the lower numbers, but i've never really played them. But anyway.. The truth is a terrible terrible true thing..

"When i grow up, Im gonna be a Predator!"

Locutus0

Wait a minute! I read here that you can "pause" your Content ID which basically means you cancel your payments (and characters after 3 months) and can unpause it whenever you would like as long as you don't cancel it. Is this true?

Resistance is futile!
Your biological and technilogical distinctiveness will be added to our own.
You will become one with the morgue.

Effect

That is so messed up. I was thinking of going back but not now. I kept my disc, manual  for nothing then if that's how things are run.

mphilips

 Why would you cancel your PlayOnline in the first place? it is 100% free. They even state that you are supposed to cancel your content ID's. Although it is still pretty retarded that they can't just let you make a new account. Their billing system is just as bad though, if you sign up even a day before the 1st of the month you get billed twice.

jimothypetro

I stopped for 6 months, came back, logged in, got my characters back, and was playing within a few minutes. I know a bunch of friends of mine that came back long after the 80 days, too.

I guess we got lucky.

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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977

FrostFreiDen

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Originally posted by jimothypetro

I stopped for 6 months, came back, logged in, got my characters back, and was playing within a few minutes. I know a bunch of friends of mine that came back long after the 80 days, too.
I guess we got lucky.
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Yeah... As long as you dont unsubscribe from the playonline account...

"When i grow up, Im gonna be a Predator!"

Locutus0

Don't buy it again. All it will be is a second waste of money. I can't imagine what it would have felt like to buy the PS2 version. At least then you have something worthwhile to show for it. A new hard drive and LAN card. Here you have a game that crashes all the time and is only good for a coffee table matched set of coasters. It's the worst piece of shit programming I've ever seen in my life. I could single handedly program a game that crashed less than this if the game was designed to crash every time you press a key.

This game is a piece of shit. Don't waste your money on it. It's a case of frisbees, a stack of coasters, and my wits end all in one nice little look-it-me-I'm-square-I'm-great-now-bend-over package.

Did I mention it crashes all the time!?!?!?

Resistance is futile!
Your biological and technilogical distinctiveness will be added to our own.
You will become one with the morgue.

jimothypetro

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Originally posted by FrostFreiDen
Originally posted by jimothypetro
I stopped for 6 months, came back, logged in, got my characters back, and was playing within a few minutes. I know a bunch of friends of mine that came back long after the 80 days, too.
I guess we got lucky.
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Yeah... As long as you dont unsubscribe from the playonline account..."When i grow up, Im gonna be a Predator!"

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I cancelled my content IDs, thats all you have to do to not get billed.

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Did I mention it crashes all the time!?!?!?

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I have never once have had this game crash on me. While it has it's problems in gameplay, it is easily the most stable game I have ever played.

The only times I have ever been kicked off the game was when:

1) There was scheduled downtime.
2) My power went off.

And I think I have come across one bug in the entire game, up to level 58. And that is just the one where you could walk on the side of the airship.

If you're going to flame the game, at least flame something that is actually wrong with the game, and not your computer.

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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977

DarkFenix

Ok, well I played it to and I will admit they are very very very money greedy.  I to first got the game when it first came out and ended up getting warrior to 30 and getting every other unlockable class, then quit for awhile to notice they were trying to charge me money to store my character every month, that is just stupid im sorry, but no other mmorpg charges you to store a character no less just 1 character since thats all they let you create unless you want to dish out more money...

jimothypetro

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Originally posted by DarkFenix
Ok, well I played it to and I will admit they are very very very money greedy. I to first got the game when it first came out and ended up getting warrior to 30 and getting every other unlockable class, then quit for awhile to notice they were trying to charge me money to store my character every month, that is just stupid im sorry, but no other mmorpg charges you to store a character no less just 1 character since thats all they let you create unless you want to dish out more money...

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You don't have to pay to "store" a character. You did something wrong when you cancelled your account.

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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977

zensaber

i had some thing like that happen to me once with runescape i played the game for a few months straight then i quit (free account) then runescape 2 came out and i wanted to try fine so i poped in my user and pass and nuttin worked i just assumed ethat i forgot my pass word but mybe my account got deleted.