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[General Article] Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Review in Progress 1
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Quick! Name a major title that launched earlier this week with several issues causing player headaches. If you said "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn", you win a hearty handshake. We begin our review in progress series today with a few early impressions and many thoughts about launch day. Read on and then share your experiences in the comments.
It became very apparent in early access that Square Enix was clearly "not prepared". As of Thursday a few days after release this is still the case. To be clear, A Realm Reborn is vastly superior in many ways to its predecessor and we will cover these improvements going forward in the Review in Progress series. But as much as I, and many other people enjoy the game, some of these missteps by Square Enix are unacceptable and need to be addressed.
Read more of Rob Lashley's Final Fantasy XIV: Review in Progress #1.
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Comments
1. no proper queue system.
2. not enough servers (they are adding more next week). SE should also add free transfers to these new servers for people that want to move.
3. no auto-kick for afk players.
I believe that the hype was WAY low for ARR. Mostly in NA and EU. But also in Japan.
For some reason players flocked to and attempted to play ARR in droves. Possibly since there hasn't been many launches lately. Possibly because the MMORPG genera is now played by the same group that buy all the new console games each month.
But...like Woodstock in the 60s, I think that ARR will in the end be a huge success. (For those unfamiliar, Woodstock was a concert in a cornfield in upstate NY. It was hoped that 100,000 would come, but 400,000 ended up attending.
I am having a blast playing this game. It's awesome. But, the poster above me is correct. Wt least in his points 1 and 3. 2 Probably wouldn't have been helpful since all servers were full.
MMORPG Rating 5.1, while player rating 9.0 - Yet, it is "Vastly superior" to version 1.0?
FFXIV's current problems are mostly due to it being "vastly superior" to it's first version, and it garnering more players than they ever thought possible after their initial failure. Those that do get to play, also like the game a lot.
Their server stability problems would be gone if the game wasn't popular.
I would really like to see what MMORPG's staff's have to say to back up this lackluster number, because I can think of MANY games that are much worse than this one, yet get rated several points higher than this. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, we get GW2 with an amazing 9.3, yet a much more realistic 8.7 by the players... Not saying there might be some schilling going on... but I do know SE wouldn't pay a western company for a positive review...
"They were just not prepared for the onslaught of players they are facing."
They should be... You sell 6M copies of your game in pre-order you have 3M FFXIV 1.0 users (who you give 15 days free as well) and your servers can hold a mere 200K players..? That's asking for problems at launch...
Also, if my memory serves me correct, these same problems have occurred with the release of FFXIV 1.0 as well where there was nop login queue, players were kicked from the server and unable to log back in due to still being online and such.
No, SE has done a terrible job on the relaunch of FFXIV:ARR. They should have been more prepared than they are now. There simply is NO EXCUSE for the login issues they have now.
Than being said... Once you are able to login into the game you'll see one of the better MMOs release over the course of the last 5 years...
Though i agree wit your opinion on the game itself. ALOT of games that started off with alot of servers had to close down 50% of those afterwards which is alot worse then having some small ques (though i do have to agree that underestimated the "small ques XD". SE did calculate in the masses of people, but just as in all games they expected the population to slightly lower over time... not rise to double the amount and then break a few records in the going XD
ah well.. at least they will give people some extra free days once the problems are fixed :P
https://ashesofcreation.com/r/Y4U3PQCASUPJ5SED
I understand that SE will 'plan ahead' for server space needed 3 months from now. But only 200K players on all those servers at once is still way too low... I think they should have at least doubled that maximum at start.
And yeah... The extra time is always welcome. Couple of more days before my next timecard hast o be added ;-)
its zoned, aka alot of loading screens in cites, not so much later on, but still..
however, its not instanced, so you dont have your friends the same place in 4 different instances, if you are in thanalan, you are all in thanalan. its a great game, dont let 2 secs of loading make you skip it:)
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A Realm Reborn is essentially a new game (new engine, new dev team, etc), and as such, should not be linked (for the purposes of scoring) to the canceled and scrapped 1.0.
If only for the purpose of removing "reader" confusion.
*included Grakulen's post
Just to clarify.
There is a Que it just only holds so many. I was getting 1017 last night for about 5 min before getting into the que and was 129 and waiting.
Guessing the que only holds 150 players.
I have only been able to log in long enough to get a Conjurer to level 7. Can't log in 90% of the time and when i do finally get in I usually get booted after 30-40 minutes of game play. So I can't make any comments with regards to gameplay but I have to say the log in issue is reminiscent of trying to log in to SWG and Anarchy Online at launch.
Disappointing.
I find it slightly frustrating when i have had some issues but no where near the problems that are being reported. I found the key system easy to use and have had some errors and one day was particularly bad but thats it.
And you know what, I forgive them for that day because this is a "launch". I always expect problems when ordering a new mmorpg and no mmorpg I have played launched smooth.
I really like this game and once all chicken flappers leave, I will have this marvelous deep mmorpg to myself with like minded others.
As a customer this launch has not been poo to me. I have played 80% of the time I have wanted to except for one day when the issues were really bad.
I think the queues are real small as well. I've had that 1017 as well once and when I got into queue I was #63.
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I have always been able to play when I wanted to even during peak hours, it just takes persistence. Spamming a button to log in for 15 to 30 min is nothing for someone that camped NM's in FFXI for many hours at a time. I can only recall one time not getting in for over an hour. I do empathize for those that don't have that kind of time and wish they could play immediately, but it doesn't bother me as much.
I have been #179 in queue so my guess is that it holds 200 people.
Aside from the congestion this game is great. The more I play the more I like it, and that is rare.
So where was the review of the actual game? All you talked about was the horrible state of the login system. I'm as irritated about it as everyone but the biggest reason I'm irritated is because this is a great game and it keeps me from playing it as often as I'd like.
So are you gonna actually review the game or just rant about the login system like all the other trolls across the forums?
I appreciate a new score wil be given but in the interim shouldn't the old one be removed?
Anyway, as to those server issues my theory is SE got a flurry of pre-orders in the week between open beta and early access. They said themselves they had low expectations so maybe the store side of the operation never saw a reason to cap sales, even if they did see them fly up.
Most large companies tend to have communication issues between different departments, I suspect later that week some one from the store division went "Look how many copies we've sold guys" at which point various people from network engineers to Yoshida himself suddenly hit the Oh Shit button, which lead to the urgent order of additional server equipment.
Anyway, that's my theory, bottom line is the game has actually been a victim of its own success. Despite some issues in OB, a lot of people, either from sites such as this or word of mouth, have heard about the solid and fun gameplay and decided to grab a copy.
Think about it, nobody wants to die, there's rules to this game son, I'm justified.
I think this article is spot on. While, I'm enjoying the game, I gave up on NA servers and decided on a JP server and I'm loving it but I'm going to have to agree with good old Illidan here, they really weren't prepared lol.
If I recall during the start of CB1, they had server problems aswell. I also agree, they shouldn't have done OB so close to release, the game is good, doing an earlier, little more extended OB would have been very beneficial to them, might even have even attracted those poor bootleg F2P people or F2P trolls for accuracy, cause when you play it you realize "dang. . .we really got something good here."
Oh well, in all honesty, I don't think these "oo this is the worst launch ever! I'm not playing this garbage" people are going to NOT NOT play this game so I say to them: "I'll see you filthy basement dwelling trolls in game." haha