Is SE's Marketing / PR department -severely- hurting the games chances of success?

[Shai]

That's not to say that if each of us lured back 2 of our friends we wouldn't double the population, but I just think Square Enix has set its sights higher than that.

Now I'm curious, will this strategy succeed? Will the PS3 launch reviews even be good?

[Azurymber]

The more I think about Jynx's argument, though (or my interpretation of it) - the more I'm inclined to agree.

You say that not pleasing us is hurting the games reputation. From our perspective I would say that is true. We grow more frustrated and disgruntled every day. I believe the developers don't want us to leave, but even if we do their master plan is to re-capture the world's attention at a later date. Who's to say (from their point of view) it won't recapture ours as well if we quit now?

You follow what I mean so far?

As for the rest of the world (those not playing XIV), the majority has written this game off already. They don't want to hear about it (for the most part) when we say it's gotten better. They laugh at us when we say we enjoy playing it. They simply accept the game as a failure (based on their first experience, or reviews, or sales/returns, on something) and are happy to look to the horizon for new games or return to tried & true game experiences.

This is better for Square Enix because XIV is literally biding its time. It's not changing overnight or exploding into exciting new adventures every day. It's a long, arduous process of transforming from what it was in September to what it might be when they are ready to relaunch it on PS3. At this moment there may still be many who have been pushed too far (as you suggest we may be) or stick to their guns that the game isn't worth playing, but...

New reviews will come out that (presumably) sing the praises on what Square Enix has managed in "only a year" or "only 16 months!" (a lifetime to us players, but not long to people who aren't thinking, or caring, or wondering about what happened to XIV). Instead they would be interested in seeing how a company turded (edit: lol Freudian slip, "turned") such a launch flop into a praise-worthy game. It will recapture their attention (and presumably our attention) in an instant.

What we say, think, feel right now doesn't really amount to much. We may bring back 1, 2, 10 friends, or we may naysay and turn off 1-10 friends. They're looking to suck in THOUSANDS of people, and those of us still playing the game may even be on board (by then) saying "It was a rough 16 months, but damn this game is fun now."

So yeah, I think Jynx has hit it out of the park upon further reflection of the marketing strategy.

This has never worked for anything in real life. At least not to my knowledge.
Once you have negative publicity that publicity sticks for YEARS.
In otherwords, even if this game gets all 10s, most people (A high majority) remembering a bad review will assume the game is bad.
And this is based on scientific studies, not on some magic theory.

That`s why when companies like Toyota lose consumer trust they spend millions trying to regain it. And even with millions spent, Toyota is preforming horribly compared to its competitors.

Relaunching a failed game is not an easy task. Especially when it only appeals to niche markets. Even if this game is fixed it will need word of mouth to actually revive it. If SE actually thinks they will will be able to re-market a year old game that is considered by almost everyone that would play it to be a joke, they are in for a big surprise and a big failure.

Remember this isn`t a single player game. Almost everyone who plays MMOs knows about it and about the horrible reviews, and many who bought it ended up quitting quickly. It got a TON of bad press about the surplus system even before the release. And anyone who has visited any board has seen constant hate threads

Most new players to MMOs (even WoW) join to play with friends and not to play alone. If SE thinks they will magically convince 1000s of new players to join a game which has 5.0 and worse reviews on many sites (and they won't ever disappear) they are kidding themselves.

[Rentahamster]

I only read 12's so far, but you do realize that's a discussion about the "success" of 12?

It's a look back with analysis. What are you trying to imply here?

[Jynx]

Most new players to MMOs (even WoW) join to play with friends and not to play alone. If SE thinks they will magically convince 1000s of new players to join a game which has 5.0 and worse reviews on many sites (and they won't ever disappear) they are kidding themselves.

Negative PR is a double edged sword, you can turn it to work in your favor to mitigate the damage it will inflict upon yourself. I also feel you are overestimating the star-power the few remaining players in this game have. There are thousands of players sitting on the fence waiting for the game to get good, when it does get good they will come back despite how they treated the current players, the on the fence guys could care less if you cry about "Crappy patchers, bad communication, long periods of nothing" Because when they come back the game will be functioning.

There will always be a large enough player base who will spread the word eagerily when the game shapes up, mainly due to them wanting to scream and shout how they endured the grueling process of getting the game back on it's feet. Those few who are still unpleased will be drown out in a chorus of fanatical supporters, new and old players finally hitting that "Play" button after 8 months away from the game.

I've allready explained how easy it will be to turn those 5.0 scores into a positive thing for the game at large. PS3 launch WILL be treated like an expansion pack to more or less force the press to give the game another round in the media outlets. If the game is good it will be lauded as rising from "What many reviewers called impossible to come back from" ashes. Of course this all pans on the game actually being good when they relaunch.

But I doubt anyone is going to say this game will ever suceed without becoming fun first. Your analogy of people never coming to XIV because they don't want to play alone is flawed. Thousands picked up XIV in the first place with maybe a few friends at best willing to pick it up despite the reviews "hardly any reviews were held back at all and most released far before the game hit store shelves". I can guarantee tens of thousands of people will pick it up again if they treat the PS3 launch as a expansion with a shiny new coat.

Negative PR can and has been overcome millions of times before by companies. Companies like Schniders can KILL people with tainted meat and they litteraly ran over the bad PR with a "Ooops our bad" and a few months of people being sketchy of the meat.

Once the reason the hate emerged is gone, the hate will subside quickly as well. People are not as begrudging as you make them out to be.

[Azurymber]

Negative PR is a double edged sword, you can turn it to work in your favor to mitigate the damage it will inflict upon yourself. I also feel you are overestimating the star-power the few remaining players in this game have. There are thousands of players sitting on the fence waiting for the game to get good, when it does get good they will come back despite how they treated the current players, the on the fence guys could care less if you cry about "Crappy patchers, bad communication, long periods of nothing" Because when they come back the game will be functioning.

There will always be a large enough player base who will spread the word eagerily when the game shapes up, mainly due to them wanting to scream and shout how they endured the grueling process of getting the game back on it's feet. Those few who are still unpleased will be drown out in a chorus of fanatical supporters, new and old players finally hitting that "Play" button after 8 months away from the game.

I've allready explained how easy it will be to turn those 5.0 scores into a positive thing for the game at large. PS3 launch WILL be treated like an expansion pack to more or less force the press to give the game another round in the media outlets. If the game is good it will be lauded as rising from "What many reviewers called impossible to come back from" ashes. Of course this all pans on the game actually being good when they relaunch.

But I doubt anyone is going to say this game will ever suceed without becoming fun first. Your analogy of people never coming to XIV because they don't want to play alone is flawed. Thousands picked up XIV in the first place with maybe a few friends at best willing to pick it up despite the reviews "hardly any reviews were held back at all and most released far before the game hit store shelves". I can guarantee tens of thousands of people will pick it up again if they treat the PS3 launch as a expansion with a shiny new coat.

Negative PR can and has been overcome millions of times before by companies. Companies like Schniders can KILL people with tainted meat and they litteraly ran over the bad PR with a "Ooops our bad" and a few months of people being sketchy of the meat.

Once the reason the hate emerged is gone, the hate will subside quickly as well. People are not as begrudging as you make them out to be.

Didn't games like LOTR + AoC make huge comebacks (went from a horrible game to a fun game)? and they haven't really seen success
And just to point out LotrO and AoC Had great reviews on release. they just lacked content or had issues at the start. But nothing close to FFXIV's problems.

And then you have SwG which remodeled the game to attract new players, pissed off all its current players, and essentially failed because of it.

What MMO has gone from being considered a failure to rebounding and becoming a huge success?

[Jynx]

None, but it doesn't mean it can't happen. No MMO has done things to the extent XIV has even SWG was not this intensive. It's all a matter of if the game is worth playing after it's "Fixed"

SWG wasn't they screwed it up hardcore.

FFXIV is also in a unique situation from the standpoint of Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings are. It has a second release, on a new platform. The media can't ignore one of the few Console MMO's when it returns, hell in those terms SE created the most sucsesfull multi-platform MMO and XIV is it's next game.

You are overly pessimistic, you obviously don't have much hope for the game at all. If your not willing to buy into the fact XIV can dig itself out of it's grave I'm not sure why you are here at all. Beating the proverbial dead horse that you don't think can make a comeback. If they can't engage new players even if they did everything to keep us hardcore fans here it would doom them to shut the game down. A few thousand souls waiting to the bitter end don't make a profitable MMO.

XIV is a special case for faulty start MMO's, if you don't want to accept that then be my guest and leave. Becasuse if the press doesn't give SE another round then it's all for naught anyways.

[Azurymber]

None, but it doesn't mean it can't happen. No MMO has done things to the extent XIV has even SWG was not this intensive. It's all a matter of if the game is worth playing after it's "Fixed"

SWG wasn't they screwed it up hardcore.

FFXIV is also in a unique situation from the standpoint of Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings are. It has a second release, on a new platform. The media can't ignore one of the few Console MMO's when it returns, hell in those terms SE created the most sucsesfull multi-platform MMO and XIV is it's next game.

You are overly pessimistic, you obviously don't have much hope for the game at all. If your not willing to buy into the fact XIV can dig itself out of it's grave I'm not sure why you are here at all. Beating the proverbial dead horse that you don't think can make a comeback. If they can't engage new players even if they did everything to keep us hardcore fans here it would doom them to shut the game down. A few thousand souls waiting to the bitter end don't make a profitable MMO.

XIV is a special case for faulty start MMO's, if you don't want to accept that then be my guest and leave. Becasuse if the press doesn't give SE another round then it's all for naught anyways.

I disagree. you are overly optimistic and I'm a realist.
If no other game has done it, and if all past marketing history would suggest it isn't do-able then the chances of it happening are very low. Thats not pessimism, thats realism.
And what do you mean by "No MMO has done things to the extent XIV has"
XIV hasn't done anything yet but fix a few of the many things that should have been fixed at the start. they -MIGHT- revolutionize things with this summer's patches, but again if you go on history, what have they actually come through with? The market ward fix is probably the biggest "improvement" so far, and thats even incomplete (ex. you cant see a diff between normal+1 +2 +3 and everyone is centered in ul'dah)

All im saying is for the game to be successful improving it is not enough. Improving its image and how people perceive it is. And for an MMO, word of mouth is the best way to do that.

SE could do small things that make huge differences and would please MANY people, but instead they are very good at causing speculation, not communicating, and pissing people off (like with this new patch). After the whole surplus negative-media boom that happen I would have thought they learned their lesson. My point is they are still making the same mistakes with communication that has been hurting this game from the start, and if they don't fix that, this game won't succeed.

A lot of people read player reviews before buying MMOs because they realize that official sites dont play enough of the MMO to get a real feel for it. So when FFXIV comes out on PS3, the PS3 users will go on sites like gamefaqs and check out how OTHERS reviewed the product. So a marketing campaign wont do much.

Word of mouth is the key to MMOs. Almost no one decides to play MMOs alone. The majority join up with friends. Even FFXIV's original playerbase was mostly friends from XI starting together.
When you buy an MMO you aren't just paying for a game, you're expecting to pay for like a years worth of gameplay which is like buying 4 games. And you also expect to invest time. So people do a lot of reasearch and don't impulse buy. And even if there are some good new reviews, the horrible word of mouth and old reviews and the poor reputation can sabotage the improvements.

Its kind of like Toyota having tons of recalls on cars and saying "well we aren't going to really care about looking into these cars or dealing with this issue, we will just build our new cars better and advertise to new people". Obviously did not work very well and they quickly changed their stance.

[Jynx]

I guess you stick with your stance and I will stick with mine. We are obviously at an impass as you think the current player base is going to somehow convince everyone to come back.

SE can't sneeze without these people complaining so I doubt that will ever happen. You give the average consumer too much credit that they "Do research" on a game before they buy it. They will glance at the newest review and go from there, informed consumers are rare and dying breed. Sure you and I may look up stuff and do proper research yet somehow we both ended up with this game in out laps despite the lack of positive reviews and or poor alpha and beta testing enviroment.

What makes you think other people wont do the same? People didn't pick up WoW at first with "Word of mouth" People didn't pick up XI first with "Word of mouth" No new MMO was picked up by "Word of mouth" there was no "Word" to go with besides the proffesional reviews. If XIV shapes up to be a fun game supporters will outshine negative people 10 to 1 wether they pandered to you or not.

[Ostia]

Actually vanilla wow, was mostly advertised by worth of mouth.

[Azurymber]

WoW was first picked up by WC3 fans and then word of mouth
FFXI was first picked up by FF fans and then word of mouth. It also had -really- good reviews
FFXIV was picked up by FFXI and FF Fans and failed, then gained a reputation for being a failure in the MMO community.

If your right though and SE needs to attract new players who havent heard of the failure and don't do research they should seriously just make skanky outfits and put lots of cute things in the game and then have commercials with cute or hot girls. Thats how F2P MMOs do it and it works.

Edit: also i liked the game at release. I think it was a much better game than it is now. When they changed the SP system and everything became coblyns and leves the game seemed to die. Before that you could fight a whole variety of stuff and there were all-day-long parties going on