Billing issues for areas not covered by ClickandBuy or Crysta

[Knives]

Still being real here, there are a lot of players out there who don't strictly adhere to the US/UK/JP areas and only use those SKUs to play the game because their own countries do not have a specific version, like Australia. Legally and officially SE never provided for them in the first place, but players from these other countries still found ways to play using their own time and money. These players are still a large chunk of the playerbase, and if they can't play anymore, they'll be taking their money with them. I assume Square likes money, so even though these players don't fit into a specific region, Square is screwing themselves out of money in the process.

[RAIST]

I can sympathize but we have to be real here, if a product or service isn't supported in your area but you still got access somehow and suddenly you no longer can access it, there's nothing wrong because legally and officially it was never supported to begin with.

The whole billing issue affects everyone in the end though.

That may apply in the general sense...but they were/are SELLING THE GAME IN/TO THOSE REGIONS. It's not that far fetched to think that if you can buy the game in your region, you should be able to play it too.

[RAIST]

Looks like another SE screw up. SE just couldn't wait until they got approval from every country for crysta and whatnot before they just went up and did this. As if SE didn't learn already from the mess they made of Final Fantasy XIV, and quite frankly, things like this will cause people to leave in droves... and not because they want to.. but because they have to. SE, your business antics are sloppy, and you remind me of Luther Corp.. not giving a shit about your customers, and pulling these little experiments to "imrpove the quality of gaming life."

It isn't necessarily that a country won't let them sell the Crysta. Granted, some may have something on the books that prevents it, idk for certain. But there are countries that have precedence in the courts and possibly laws/regulations concerning virtual property rights that would override their ToS and render SE liable to refund people for unused Crysta. As such, they may be OPTING not to support those regions. Might also explain why the original game services were never extended to some regions--SE Legal Division didn't want to have to wrangle with contrary VP legalities.

[RAIST]

...

The solution is simple: Add more options to pay without the Crystanonsense.
How simple it would be to implement, well, that's not for me to say, but I'm sure it's nothing SqEX couldn't do!

or they could just replicate what they did for the JP region and let everyone else pay them directly with their credit cards also. They already have the agreements to process our cards for their online store, so they have a means to take our money on the back-end--they just opted (for whatever reason, it was a decision they made--it CAN be done as evidenced by them doing it for nearly a decade via POL system) not to put a front-end on the site and link to that back-end this time around.

[Mayoyama]

I live in Australia and I didnt have any issues setting up the click and buy payments O.o My friend in NZ didnt have an issue either. Really wierd how some people have issues and others dont.

Exchange rates fluctuate, but the Euro has been consistently more expensive for Australian players (and I dare say others in a similar position). At one stage a friend who looked in to playing was faced with upwards of $40 AU a month on euro conversion, whereas my US$ conversion was a little over half that.

I've been playing for 3.5 years and had to pay in euros which after conversion rates, conversion and intl transaction fees from the bank every month it does add up quite quickly (eg back when I used to have 2 accounts it would cost me upwards of AUD70+ per month! That's almost a whole day's pay). If I had the choice I would DEFINATELY prefer to pay in USD which would as Zyhlaari said would make the cost of this game so much cheaper (considering atm AUD is higher than USD). If we're getting forced to use clickandbuy is it not possible to be given the option to pay in USD?

Please SE take other countries like Australia into consideration; after all we have all the cute Koalas and Kangaroos that you like to come to Sydney to see lol

[RAIST]

Count yourself lucky...the other posts I've seen from AU/NZ are having C&B blocked by firms that were letting SE bill no problem.

[Drusenija]

I can sympathize but we have to be real here, if a product or service isn't supported in your area but you still got access somehow and suddenly you no longer can access it, there's nothing wrong because legally and officially it was never supported to begin with.

Australia is (was?) supported though; we're considered part of Europe (I suppose SE still thinks we're just ex-British convicts ^^), but the game was officially released here and was sold through EB Games and other major game retailers.

[Drusenija]

Here you go ^^ I think they have most of them here.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/503...sion-Cutscenes

Thank you thank you! ^^ I think I'll have an evening watching the FFXI storyline tonight!

Edit:
BG only has the WotG videos, but I've found another site that has a lot of them:
http://ffxicutscenes.blogspot.com/

[Revanchist]

I live in Australia and I didnt have any issues setting up the click and buy payments O.o My friend in NZ didnt have an issue either. Really wierd how some people have issues and others dont.

I tried setting up and C&B account last night (an act of desperation but also curiosity), and was asked to provide my passport/driver's license/power bill info. Sorry, but I don't supply that kind of info just to have a account to play a game, where the previous payment option worked.

I've been playing for 3.5 years and had to pay in euros which after conversion rates, conversion and intl transaction fees from the bank every month it does add up quite quickly (eg back when I used to have 2 accounts it would cost me upwards of AUD70+ per month! That's almost a whole day's pay). If I had the choice I would DEFINATELY prefer to pay in USD which would as Zyhlaari said would make the cost of this game so much cheaper (considering atm AUD is higher than USD). If we're getting forced to use clickandbuy is it not possible to be given the option to pay in USD?

I've been playing since December 16th, 2006... and had to pay in Euro's ever since (on Xbox 360). I admit, there have been some months where money was a little tight, but overall worked fine. Had my bank keep aside X amount of funds solely for the payment to SE for FFXI, and was able to (eventually) work out a budget which included payment not just for FFXI, but for other things as well (Telephone, power, water, general cost of living etc). A friend of mine, has been playing since 2005 (on PC and paid in USD) and while she did complain about the recent switch from USD to Euro's earlier this year, the fact that we were paying via our Debit Cards directly to SE Europe (Then on to to SE Japan), it was simplier to do so.

The two methods of payment now... after my attempt to register with C&B last night, I refuse to have anything to do with them period. That leaves PlaySpan... which I'm still looking into (via asking at local game stores if they can get those cards), but if we had the choice (which atm, we don't), I'd prefer to stick with the method I've been using for all of my FFXI career.

Please SE take other countries like Australia into consideration; after all we have all the cute Koalas and Kangaroos that you like to come to Sydney to see lol

Sadly, all we can do for the next 30 days, is wait and see what SE decides to do...

[Drusenija]

Still being real here, there are a lot of players out there who don't strictly adhere to the US/UK/JP areas and only use those SKUs to play the game because their own countries do not have a specific version, like Australia.

For what it's worth, Australia very rarely gets localised versions of games, mainly because we don't need them. We're an English speaking country, so a US or EU version of the game is usually fine. The best we usually get is an Australian ratings label on the box.