I regret buying your product.

[C-croft]

He has the RIGHT to "QQ", you go buy a car and it is messed up at home what do you do, QQ. You go buy ANYTHING and bring it home and it doesn't work WHAT IN THE $%^& DO YOU DO< YOU %^&*ING QUE QUE

You are correct. He could also QQ in the other 100 threads QQ'ing about the same thing. S/he isn't a special snowflake and doesn't deserves any more attention than any other person screwed by 1017. We all have the right to QQ, but it's getting old. Use the search, find the largest thread QQ'ing and QQ there. Besides, a post with 1000 responses will get more attention than 1000 posts QQ'ing about it. After 20 they probably just start ignoring them.

[Alerith]

Why do you guys defend a company's shortcomings? Do you work for SE? Do you have stock invested in SE? Are you part of their PR department? What do you get out it? Seriously, I'd love to know.

It's called critical thinking.

You have to know when to defend and when to attack a company. Attacking them repeatedly over an issue they didn't anticipate (more players than they could have hoped for), have acknowledged (repeated posts and apologies), are working to fix (again, repeated posts), and are offering compensation for (at least 7 additional days free) is not acceptable.

Had they not acknowledged the issue, not made us aware it was being worked on and not offered compensation, than outrage would be acceptable. As it stands, however, there is nothing else that complaining will achieve. It's not about White Knighting. It's about understanding that everything that can be done is being done, and no further amount of rage and complaints is going to change the speed at which it is accomplished.

[DezyRavioli]

Posts like this are remind of me babies crying for their baba's. Don't worry little ones, you'll have all the milk bottles you can drink soon enough and then you can shut the hell up.

[DeadlySwordz]

They are going to fix the connection issues. its not like they are ignoring it. so in the meantime..........

[Andvari2297]

This morning I saw a picture of a mass grave of Syrian children who were allegedly gassed to death.

But by all means please tell us more about how your lack of game play is ruining your life.

[Norack]

No where near as bad as Duke Nukem forever. I paid $62.50 for that game and i wouldn't pay more than a penny for it. Hell i wouldnt play that game again if someone offered me money to play it again.

[Invz]

Game Working Fine for me usually in after a couple 1017's. Went a whole 48 hours ish with 5 accounts logged in other day

1/10 for making me reply. try harder.

[roflcaust]

It's called critical thinking.

-snip-

I think the outrage is totally justified. We're 8 days into this game's release (I'm counting EA as well) and I still had to spam the 0 key on my numpad for approximately 4 hours today to be able to finally play. It didn't kill me nor am I super-mad-bro but it wasn't how I exactly envisioned to spend some of my Saturday afternoon.

It also speaks volume about the game industry (and the MMO industry in particular) when an honest and due apology is provided and considered as an act unprecedented in nature or completely unique for an MMO. That's baffling: we shouldn't applaud Yoshida's communication with us as a gift but rather seriously ask why we are still being treated as second-hand customers who are often abused, lied to, ignored, and marginalized (we really take a lot of shit as gamers that consumers of other products would never subject themselves to).

SE bears the majority of the responsibility in this "two-way relationship:" this is the revival of a dead game that is largely reliant on word-of-mouth marketing to generate continuous sales. To dispel the negative implications that were created due to FFXIV 1.0 is nothing short of a herculean effort and I'm confident that Yoshida & Co. are very aware of that fact. However the relationship has been quite rocky since the end of OB. For one, 7 free days is not much in terms of compensation. How about giving everyone the possibility to modify their character's appearance (the thing you get for signing-up for a month) on top of that free 7-days? Or how about a whole free month of game time (on top of the free month you get from purchasing the game?). They can really throw a few more goodwill gestures towards us by getting creative with it but 7-free days of gametime isn't exactly going to make ripples in people's memories.

Moreover, why are you guys so lenient of SE's accounting, sales, and marketing departments? Maybe you haven't had experience with the dealings and inner-workings of these departments IRL, but it's very clear that one department (or all of them collectively) dropped the ball in terms of accurately forecasting the demands for their products (hence why you have to constantly run multiple regressions with new data that you obtain from suppliers and other BI systems). A lot of these mishaps indicate inexperience in dealing with their American/EU counterparts; poor communication with the companies they license their games to. I think this is a problem of SE as a whole and not of the FFXIV team so I might be unfair. One element, however, that I was not very happy to learn was the fact that the surge of interest and purchases in NA/EU came as a surprise to Yoshi & SE. That means they weren't looking the NA/EU regions very seriously as their goals to become the Blizzard of Japan are quite apparent.

Last but not least, the consumer's trust in regards to the team that has been out-sourced to maintain and resolve these server-side technical issues is basically non-existent. We were assured and promised that Errors 90000 and 3012 were fixed and done away but they're still here.

SE has a lot to prove right now and I think outbursts of anger and frustration should be met with understanding rather than ridicule, insults, and authoritarian statements advocating people to delete their accounts and quit the game.

[Issac]

I think the outrage is totally justified. We're 8 days into this game's release (I'm counting EA as well) and I still had to spam the 0 key on my numpad for approximately 4 hours today to be able to finally play. It didn't kill me nor am I super-mad-bro but it wasn't how I exactly envisioned to spend some of my Saturday afternoon.

It also speaks volume about the game industry (and the MMO industry in particular) when an honest and due apology is provided and considered as an act unprecedented in nature or completely unique for an MMO. That's baffling: we shouldn't applaud Yoshida's communication with us as a gift but rather seriously ask why we are still being treated as second-hand customers who are often abused, lied to, ignored, and marginalized (we really take a lot of shit as gamers that consumers of other products would never subject themselves to).

SE bears the majority of the responsibility in this "two-way relationship" with their customers: this is the revival of a dead game that is largely reliant on word-of-mouth marketing to generate continuous sales beyond the introduction of the software to the market. As it currently stands, the relationship has been quite rocky since the end of OB. For one, 7 free days is not much in terms of compensation. How about giving everyone the possibility to modify their character's appearance (the thing you get for signing-up for a month). We can really throw a few more goodwill gestures towards us but 7-free days and paying $9.99 instead of $12.99 isn't exactly going to make ripples in people's memories -- the publicity would have been amazing and well worth the short-term drop in revenue.

Moreover, why are you guys so lenient of SE's accounting, sales, and marketing departments? Maybe you haven't had experience with the dealings and inner-workings of these departments IRL, but it's very clear that one department (or all of them collectively) dropped the ball in terms of accurately forecasting the demand for their product. That means inexperience in dealing with their American/EU counterparts in terms of suppliers; poor communication with the companies they license their games to. I think this is a problem of SE as a whole and not necessiraly focused on the FFXIV team so I might be unfair. One element, however, that I was not very happy to learn was the fact that the surge of interest and purchases in NA/EU came as a surprise to Yoshi & SE.

Last but not least, the consumer's trust in regards to the team that has been out-sourced to maintain and resolve these server-side technical issues is basically non-existent. We were assured and promised that Errors 90000 and 3012 were fixed and done away but they're still here.

SE has a lot to prove right now and I think outbursts of anger and frustration should be met with understanding rather than ridicule, insults, and authoritarian statements advocating people to delete their accounts and quit the game.

No. If it honestly took you four hours, then you were not constantly trying. Every 15-30 minutes SE opens the floodgates from my experience. If you sit there and try and try again, the longest it should possibly take you is 60 minutes if you are EXTREMELY unlucky. But four? You were not genuinely trying, my friend.

And if you were, and if I am wrong, then that is damn unlucky. However, people tend to exaggerate and make the situation sound far worse when they are upset. Said exaggeration is done so to put a more emergent light on the situation so that people understand and empathize.

While I agree that SE is taking a bit too long to get things corrected, they are in fact doing what needs to be done. No amount of spam in bitching and whining will do anything positive towards the resolution of the issue. They know. Be patient.

In all honesty, regarding the people trying to make the "buy a car" analogy, you are way off base. Yes, you bought a product. But you also purchased a product in which you knew was only an initial investment. Your investment will be returned as you enjoy the game for weeks, or years; however finicky you may or may not be, however interested you are. Knowing that the game itself was just the initial purchase before a subscription, why the hell do you bring up this analogy? You know that whether it be 2 weeks or 2 years, you still paid the initial price to install the game and get an account. How about an analogy that makes sense? Here:

If your cable company expects you to own your modem and you purchase it to receive their service (internet connectivity,) and they have a 3-day outage, what do they compensate you for?

When you found the answer to that question, realize that's exactly what SE is doing. Even though they are not the first nor the last MMO launch to have a rocky start. Think in the long term. If this issue goes on for months or happens intermittently so, then I will grant that it's an outrage. However, popularity in the game is higher than their forecasts. You can blame it on whatever incompetence of theirs that you want (Preorder sale ignorance, for example,) but unless you have personal experience in this business and can cite how you avoided all possible traps, stop speaking like you know what caused the problem. It can be any combination of reasons, and regardless of said reasons, SE is doing everything they can to resolve it.

[HealBus]

It's interesting that in any other industry this would get you crucified. But SE has legions with SE branded lube in hand ready to pounce at negative feedback.