(another) Inability to Play Purchased Game post

Yeah, I know there's about five thousand of these here, but hey, I'm American - venting a problem is a relaxing activity, and I'm pretty miffed right now.

I have been able to put in MAYBE 10 hours of game play since the beginning of "Early Access" - though the amount of time I have fought the system trying to play far exceeds that number. I understand launch problems. I understand networking issues. I understand repair time. I'm not new to any of this. Generally, though, the purpose of an "open beta" before launch is so you can find exactly these errors and get them out of the way in time for official.

"Early" = "Official" whether or not people choose to accept it - it's like throwing a bone to the players who support you before the title's even out - it's not supposed to be an extended beta, because people actually paid for the right to access this time by purchasing the product.

I'm generally patient. I'm also generally very understanding with MMOs (Stuck through a lot of FFXI, Rift, and Secret World despite the issues they had), but this one is irritating me far more than anything in any of those. The type of person I am becomes extremely displeased when I am not given what I paid for, and regardless of how you try and paint this, it's exactly what this situation currently is.

The entire reason for me pre-ordering, is because I had this weekend open entirely before starting a new job - allowing me to actually have more free time to spend with my wife - so her and I intended to spend it playing together. Out of a 48 hour time-frame, we've had the chance to spend 6 hours (at most) doing so. This is incredibly frustrating, and damn near unacceptable. I have spent the last 6 hours trying without any success to log in and play the game with my wife, who had been logged in not 4 feet from me for the entirety (somehow) of those 6 hours. The entire point of our weekend, and spending the money that we technically didn't have to pre-order (I was unemployed until Friday), got me less than 30% of what I specifically paid for.

I'll echo former thoughts: If these problems exist, why do the JP servers not seem to suffer them? If they do suffer these, then they must be resolved infinitely more efficiently than ours, because theirs are almost always up when ours are down, without fail. Their downtime is fractional comparatively, and I can't help but raise an eyebrow to it. I may not be a tried and true codemonkey, then you should have a point of reference to make the other work just as well.

What's more, much like a vicious backhand to the face of someone already disheartened, came the most insulting error of the evening: "You are ### in que. Please wait." - que ends, load screen goes for a while, THEN I get the "The server is full. Please try back when there's a space" error - with NO way to tell when there's a space, and regardless of me actually having a place in line, and a connection graded as "Excellent" by the very server that claims I can't connect to. That is brutally insulting, and had happened no less than 4 times over the course of the hours I tried to get on the game, when it should have been up and accessible.

I was so very hopeful for this. I've been in since phase 2 of the beta, and they've had a lot of time to work these things out.
I thought it had great potential, and I was optimistic for a fun duo-play weekend with my wife.

As I've said, I am now extremely disappointed.
Again I reiterate: The purpose of a beta is to purge errors before launch. To see none during beta, then be railed by half a dozen or more different numbered errors at launch is one of those things that devastates the foundation of trust required for a player to become a loyal subscriber. First impressions, in any format, are very important - and FFXIV ARR just showed up to a 4-star dinner date wearing their laundry day attire.

I feel better having aired these thoughts, which are in fact technical problem at their root.
I still, however, feel incredibly cheated by the entirety of this weekend. It's like saying you can have the book early because you purchased it early, but we're going to tear out pages 56-358, and give them to you if and when we feel like it.

I want to love this game. I really do.
I want to rekindle the passion I had for FFXI once upon a time.
I want to relive my adventures in a new setting with old friends. We all do.

But more than anything, I just want what was paid for, what was waited for, what's reasonable...
Without being made to feel like an annoying fool for having realistic expectations.

(sigh) If I knew this would happen... If I could have trusted the time estimates - even if they had over estimated the lengths - my wife and I could have made other plans, rather than sitting at our computers for hours on end eagerly awaiting something promised that we would never see. A massive disappointment.