FINAL FANTASY XI: Ultimate Collection - Abyssea Edition (Steam) Crashes on load

Just bought the Abyssea Edition on Steam and I had already owned the previous "Ultimate" collection. Now the game suddenly crashes whenever I try to start it, it also says that my key is invalid when I try to redeem (however for some reason the silly hat redeem key worked just fine?)

I am able to log into POL, but I get errors when trying to access mail or my friend list.

If I try to start the game, the game goes full screen (even though it is set not to do that, and for non-steam users the steam version gives you a non-modded option to do so) and then the game crashes.

What exactly is going on here?

If you let Steam start installing FFXI to it's folder, it breaks the retail install of FFXI. You have to not start downloading FFXI at all or it does this.

Thank you. I did a clean install and this fixed everything. Where would I put in my key for the Abyssea edition? It keeps saying my key is wrong under expanded services or Reward code registration.

Was my key simply bad?

EDIT: SOLVED:

This ONLY works when you register your key as "HEROES OF ABYSSEA"

They should really fix this.

Im having the same issue but i can't figure out how to fix it, ive uninstalled the game and re-installed and it still doesn't work.

Im having a problem with the steam thing everytime i hit the play button it freezes at the POL thing or it will ask for the msi package for pol and tetra master so i dont know what to do help me please

also where is the hat at?