What was FFXI like when that first launched?

[Reika]

Problem is FFXI, when first released in 2002, was only in Japan. NA/EU got it when the "beta test" ended and if I remember right that was in 2004. The game still had massive amounts of problems but it was still widely appealing.

FFXIV released worldwide, with a bigger gaming market, a much bigger campaign advertisement, and most of all as a successor to FFXI. A lot of the mistakes in FFXIV has happened in FFXI as well, but XIV barely had anything at all upon release. Most of all the game was virtually unplayable due to a terrible laggy UI and the Market Wards not having a search function, and all you could basically do is grind to rank 50 and hang up the game.

FFXI may have been garbage but FFXIV was a complete train wreck and all the passengers died on board.

Actually that link up there says Actual beta ended in April 2002, went live a month later, and saw NA release in October 2003, a years and 5 months later. And it wasn't all the bomb after that, especially because of the requirement to group for EVERYTHING past level 12.

And I wouldnt say FFXIV was totally worse than XI's launch. I've been playing FFXIV since October, and my UI was never laggy beyond the obvious server-side UI crap that they still have going on today, and the Market wards lack of search function just made it take an extremely long time to find anything, but they didnt make it unplayable.

And the train wreck was only really bad to those who thot MMO's launched with flawless victories 100% of the time. I survived it because I knew it was a new MMO and what to expect from new MMO's.

Maybe people would feel a whole lot better if they just released it in Japan in September, then made NA/EU wait a year and 5 months to play it with a possible first expansion again? I sure as hell am glad they didn't do that again. And it's not like we are paying anything right now, SE is just keeping the servers open while they make fixes and additions and prepare for a re-release ^^