Official Petition to Bring Back PlayOnline for ARR

I like some features of POL. Like the chat feature that gave you something to do other than go outside on patch day was one of them lol.

But I think this is safely filed in the let sleeping dogs lie category.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tomoken

I was always a Solid Wax kind of guy

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I was always partial to Funky Monkey myself.

At start SE had good plans with its PlayOnline Services. They wanted to use it for many online games. They had a mail system, chatrooms, additional styles and background music to download and the possibility to send post cards. Then it had a lot of informational pages like a kind of newspaper with additional lore. You should be able to setup membership and payment information for all those games and services only once.
I liked how I could write with ls members in PlayOnline Chatrooms while maintenance times of FFXI. Or the possibility to play TetraMaster. You could send messages from FFXI to friends playing TetraMaster, too. I formed groups with friends to send messages to all of them at once - like a newsgroup. Later they made a web portal to the freindlist which made it possible to send messages to your friends from computers where no PlayOnline was installed (eg. at work or in your holidays). And they made a 2nd executable of the PlayOnline Viewer with a shortcut to the FFXI page right after login. And you could apply for FFXI wedding service in the PlayOnline Viewer. You could read a F.A.Q. for membership questions and call a GM from outside of FFXI via PlayOnline Viewer if you had any problem.
The idea was a good thing and I liked the idea. POL made more than only just a game (FFXI).
(And .hack remined me to that, too.)

Unfortunaltey they went other ways. Except TetraMaster there were never any other game beside FFXI for PlayOnline here in Germany. I've heard of Front Mission Online, but that game didn't make it to Europe as far as I know. Someone told me that in Japan there were another game for PlayOnline, too.

The PlayOnline Accounts got hacked more often because players could save their passwords and other software was able to read the saved passwords. Then SquareEnix thought about a better and saver system. As many other games at that time used simple login windows and web based management SquareEnix created something more that direction and stopped development on PlayOnline. They created SquareEnix Accounts which could use tokens for more savety. They let PlayOnline users connect their PlayOnline account with a new SquareEnix account and didn't allow players to save the new password again.

Then after some time they stopped to show the newspaper in PlayOnline Viewer and you could read it only on website. Then again some time later they removed the newspaper completely without a comment...
They stopped the FFXI wedding service (you can buy the equip ingame now and do the wedding on your own now without a GM wedding master).

After some time they connected SquareEnix Accounts to their entertainment site and started FFXIV which directly used SquareEnix Accounts. Then they forced PlayOnline users to transfer their PlayOnline account to a SquareEnix account. And after that payment and membership was done via SquareEnix account instead of PlayOnline Viewer. And buying AddOns was done via SquareEnix Account management, too. Though POL lost its use for those basical things, too.

After that they stopped TetraMaster, too. Then the PlayOnline Viewer's only function left was to login the player and start FFXI. (with email, chatroom and friendlist left) Though the PlayOnline Viewer has died.


I think they could have done a great job with the PlayOnline Viewer if they upgraded it to more modern systems and brought the new features into PlayOnline. They could have turned PlayOnline Accounts to that what SquareEnix accounts are now. Add the savety features and make the web management only additional to the one in the PlayOnline Viewer. That way players could choose which management system they want to use for changes. They could have changed the PlayOnline Viewer that you can directly start the games from the first screen after login to get into the games fast. But still give people the possibility to chat or send messages to each other regardless of which game they are in atm or only in PlayOnline. They could have added services to download videos, music, mangas and such. And later when other systems like that got established (like PlayStationNetwork for PS3, Steam or battle.net for PC and such) they could have tried to make connections to those that you can access music, videos and such which you've bought in the other portal.
They could have improved the Update progress that you can do other things while updates are running and make the updates faster and more stable.
If SquareEnix would make the PlayOnline Viewer such powerfull then players would accept it and like it.

But as we see, SquareEnix has abandoned the PlayOnline Viewer. And they have no replacement for it. They have only an web-based account management for all their actual games, the games itself and a website. But they had the website with PlayOnline, too. What about gamers who don't have a PC or Laptop but only a PS3? They can't check Lodestone for information while playing the game. Same for other consoles. With a system like PlayOnline they could get update news and such without the need of a PC or Laptop.

I would welcome a new better shiny PlayOnline like the old ideas were just with moder features and more savety. Not the one we got for FFXI in the end.
But sadly SE isn't going to create something like that.

Urrrr. I'm about to go Madea up in heerrr. No to the play to the online