Expansion rollout strategy

I've been playing this game for a while. I bought everything at full price when it came out. I finally got my wife into it - we bought ARR just to make sure she'd like the game enough to get to 50 before we invested in the expansions but she's about there now and I said okay, so we pre-ordered ShadowBringers.

You would think that buying ShadowBringers, which comes bundled with Heavensward and Stormblood, would give you access to those expansions once you pay for it and you just have to wait for ShadowBringers 'til June like everyone else. But it doesn't. They want you to pay twice if you want to play the other expansions before then.

It seems ridiculous to me to have to buy the expansions to this game so many times, but I contacted chat support (who was EXTREMELY rude to me by the way, despite being polite and understanding of their position) they refused to escalate my issue to someone else, then literally told me "I have already provided you with a resolution to this issue. As it seems you have no other account or technical issues I can currently assist you with, I will be ending this chat at this time as I do have to assist other customers as well." and disconnected the chat before I could respond.

Calling was also fruitless, I was basically informed that the bundled expansions reflected a price change set in the future and that if I wanted the first 2 expansions now I'd have to pay again separately. I think that is RIDICULOUS. They said they'd "make sure my feedback is received" but we all know that won't go anywhere. I'm sure this won't either but I thought I should at least let SE know that I'm annoyed about it. I'm sure people who pre-ordered the other expansions had similar issues, I think it's a really bad policy and it should change.

That's all. I really like this game, I just hate the way it's sold.

Expansions dont come bundled with the previous ones by default, thats a concession made after the expansion is released.
If you want to play an expansion now, then you need to buy that expansion now.
Not sure what's so hard to understand about that.

Otherwise you'd be playing current content now without paying for it, while others who have already purchased Stormblood would still be charged the sane amount to preorder Shadowbringers.

Otherwise, why not preorder expansion 7.0 now and get 5.0 and 6.0 included?

I don't think any game on the market is any different when it comes to expansions, you have to buy expansions separately for everything as far as I've seen.

I'm gonna agree with the OP that this seems like derp on SE part.

Particularly because the rest of the Pre-Order bonuses become available on March 1st (or 3rd, can't remember date... sometime early March I think).


SURE, some players in game will be using the items to catch up alt jobs before ShB... In my case (and others but I don't have hard numbers), I already have all jobs at 70. I can use the minion right away, but I get no benefit from the earring until ShB actually comes out and I need to catch up GUN and ???(2nd job).

The main draw of the earrings will be to catch up newer players. And if SE's end goal is to get a higher player base installed for the launch of ShB... to me it would make sense to give these pre-orders access to HW and SB early as well (perhaps March with the rest of the pre-order bonuses).

I bought Heavensward when it came out. I bought Stormblood when it came out. (Actually I pre-ordered both of them)

Going by logic: Can I get a discount on Shadowbringers now, because I already own two of the three expansions they're selling you?

I was under the impression that it is a courtesy by SE to include previous expansions into the newer once, not a real "bundle" they're selling you. You didnt pre-order FFXIV: From Ishgard to Shadowbringers, you pre-ordered just Shadowbringers and your mainly paying for that. The other two are a bonus, specially for people who come to the game later.

Currently, I only have experience with two other games in terms of Expansion content, WoW and Guild Wars, and both of them have been fairly strict on opening old expansion content. For WoW, the current expansions have been bundled into the base game roughly a month prior to the release of a new expansion since as far back as Warlords of Dranor. If you wanted to catch up before the new expansion before then, you needed to buy the current one as well (while prior to WoD, you had to spend ~$60 + the new expansion to catch up). Guild Wars on the other hand seems to prefer doing sales of their old expansions during the release of new ones, allowing you to bundle the older expansions into your new purchase for a slight discount. Opting out of that forces you to pay the full price for each expansion separately.

As far as I can tell, Shadowbringers not unlocking old content until release seems more or less par for the course, only being slightly worse than WoW's release method and definitely better than GW2's method. At the very least, you won't have to buy Heavensward as well as Stormblood if you want to pick up right away. It sucks, but you'd be hard pressed to find anything more generous than this in the market today.

Finally, a quick search revealed Stormblood to be around $25-$30 on amazon depending on what platform you choose to play on, so at least there's that.

Part of the issue I think is if you give people the expansions too early without the actual product then people might just use that as a method of getting the other older expansions free.

With subs and stuff they tend to be pretty aggressive if you charged them back, but with pre-order there may be reasons why they have to be more lenient since you might cancel your order for example (legal or perhaps just some people forgot it'll be charged soon if they pre-ordered early and spaced it.. and SE wouldn't want to be like BAN BYE HAHAHA). Charge back != canceling order, so two different concerns to think about with early gifting of expansions.

Maybe they could sell the previous expansions with a coupon like mechanic to discount shadowbringers? Buying the expansions at a more regular price and then taking that to basically carve out the cost that might have been written off before in shadowbringers.

The only response here that has any real merit to it is the one that raised concerns about people pre-ordering the expansion and then canceling or charging it back. I can understand them not wanting to give out codes for the expansions with pre-orders if there's a significant risk of them not getting paid for them at all, which would probably result in them having to ban accounts over it and it being a huge mess. There's got to be some way to work around that though.

The other stuff though I really don't get. I PAID for ShadowBringers - included in what I paid for IN FULL is the Heavensward and Stormblood expansions, which are products that are out and available now, not gated behind a release date. Saying that they are only there as a courtesy makes no sense, they are there because you need them in order to play the new expansion. You can't play ShB at all unless you've completed the other two expansions. If you're going to sell all three expansions in one bundle and then not let me have the two which are currently out, then you should be offering ShB at a discounted price for people who already own the other two, to make it worthwhile to buy them early instead of forcing me to pay for them again.

I bought everything when it came out on my own account. I was fine with it. But for someone like my wife, who is interested in picking up the game now, SE is offering a product which bundles everything together, letting you pay for it, and then saying sorry you can't play any of it until June even though everyone else can.

I'm just saying there's got to be a better solution than what is going on now, and I don't think citing precedent from other MMOs with similar business models really addresses the issue - I don't think it's fine for them to do it that way either. If you sell me something which is available now, I want to use it now. I don't want to have to wait just because a part of the bundle won't be available for a few months. That doesn't make sense to me.

Unlocking Heavensward content to ARR players who preorder Shadowbringers seems a fair concession considering you've paid for Shadowbringers, but not for the current expansion, Stormblood. To me, that seems a fair concession that Square could make if they chose. However, not liking the answer doesn't mean you're entitled to escalate the issue (I used to work in customer service, and really would hate that people would demand someone higher up just because they didn't like the answer the company had to give)

Including the previous two expansions, to me, feels like a favor on the part of Square making it so you don't have to pay for every expansion seperately, and instead just want you to pay for the base game, and then for the current expansion. Seems to me you have two choices, wait until the product you actually paid for launches, or pay for the current content to keep playing. What you're asking for is to be given something you ordered before the date it was promised to be delivered, and then getting upset that you didn't get it on your schedule as opposed to the promised delivery date.

look at it this way, you preorder shb, receive your code for hw/sb, then turn around and cancel your shb order, how is squeenix going to prevent you from turning around and using that free code for 2 expansions (or selling that code online), and if someone truly wanted to abuse that system you could pull what people did with fo76 and preorder/cancel the order multiple times and get a new code each time you did it

so to prevent that loophole from being abused to shit they by necessity have to tie the expansions to your shb code, and unless they figured out a way to release the shb code to you early but not run afoul of consumer protection laws in europe that prevents corporations from making preorders nonrefundable and requires a period of time post launch where you can receive a refund from i dont see a way they could give you early access to hw/sb

btw, be glad they dont make you buy each and every expansion separate like wow used to do (or when they started doing the packaged deals youd rebuy all the expansions plus the base game you already have like 4 different ways)

I think part of the problem is the existence of the Starter edition. As soon as Stormblood was launched, SE should just stick to selling the Complete edition, especially now with a non-expiring free trial up to level 35 (which is halfway to current max level). People who are new and just bought the Complete edition would then immediately have up to Stormblood to play. And then once Shadowbringers is released, the Complete edition would include that too moving forward for new people buying after release.

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Originally Posted by linay

I think part of the problem is the existence of the Starter edition. As soon as Stormblood was launched, SE should just stick to selling the Complete edition, especially now with a non-expiring free trial up to level 35 (which is halfway to current max level). People who are new and just bought the Complete edition would then immediately have up to Stormblood to play. And then once Shadowbringers is released, the Complete edition would include that too moving forward for new people buying after release.

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This really.
There's really no point in buying the starter edition when the complete edition, on sale or not, offers far better value.

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Originally Posted by Aogami

The other stuff though I really don't get. I PAID for ShadowBringers - included in what I paid for IN FULL is the Heavensward and Stormblood expansions, which are products that are out and available now, not gated behind a release date.

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The product is clearly marked as pre-order, which means you are reserving a copy in advance of release. You haven't obtained that copy yet and until you receive it, you would not have access to the things it includes unless it specifically states those items will be available in advance (such as the Aetheryte Earrings being available on March 1).

If SE has already charged your credit card or other payment method, you might have a case for expecting them to deliver the portions of the product already available since they have already received the funds but that would depends on the consumer laws where you live. Contact your local Consumer Affairs/Consumer Protection agency.