SE Needs to Market FFXIV/Offer 10 Day Free Trials

[Wolfie]

Do I really need to point out the myriad of fishing bots that used to be set up in FFXI for the sole purpose of catching and auctioning off/vendoring moat carp? It's just 1 example of many that could be done en masse without hampering much of anything really. I'm sure if you think outside the box you can find something similar bots can accomplish in this game. Considering the quick (especially by comparison to FFXI) respawn of mobs, killing everything on the map isn't as much of a deterrent as you might think either.

It may not occur as often in games that use copper/silver/gold increments either. But if you look even there you can find work arounds. Taking an example from WoW, picking peacebloom, an item any lvl 1 herbalist could get could net 20 gold a stack when they added the inscription profession to the game. And last I played, they still sold fast and for about 2 gold a stack. I was rolling around on a lvl 19 character with more gold than my other toon had at 50. Of course it goes without saying no one cares about RMT in WoW because gold flows like water and has no value. I don't know why people buy it, but to each his own.

You write off "lowbie stuff" as worthless because performing it manually with a single toon on an account you paid for isn't getting your money's worth out of the game. To a cheater who's abusing the living hell out of free trials, things take on a different light. It becomes worth the money to setup the machines, because bots don't need a fantastically expensive lag free machine to operate. Let's also remember that most RMT operations are in countries where a dollar or euro goes much farther. And adding more exponentially increases the amount of in game currency you net. They pay for themselves, and I'm sure IGE has made millions off them. I'm willing to bet that any MMO offering a free trial has some facet that RMT abuse.

Unreal. Is there a single person on this board that doesn't resort to strawman fallacies?

There are no bots that do low level herbalism in WOW because:

1. There is a limited supply of peaceblooms and silverleaf to go around.
2. Lowbie inventory space is limited.
3. It's more profitable to purchase (or steal) a fully paid account, level your character to 85, and farm high tier ores, herbs, and even vendor trash.
4. Peaceblooms are expensive BECAUSE nobody specifically targets them. If people started botting these, they'd dip in price dramatically.

If botting using trial accounts was ever profitable, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EXPLOITED ALREADY. The fact that IT LITERALLY HASN'T HAPPENED means that it's NOT PROFITABLE, EVEN IF YOU ARE PAYING NOTHING FOR YOUR ACCOUNT. It's not worth the time and computer hardware investment.

Furthermore, denomination of copper/silver/gold has nothing to do with why lowbie bots don't exist. It's the fact that, regardless of denominations, rewards at lower levels are almost always minuscule compared to mid and high levels. I hope you're not seriously suggesting that if FFXI and FFXIV had free trials, that people would set up bots to receive 100-900 gil rewards from repeatable quests or leves, when they could receive 100x times that amount by getting a full account and doing mid-high level repeatables.

[Nikita]

Unreal. Is there a single person on this board that doesn't resort to strawman fallacies?

There are no bots that do low level herbalism in WOW because:

1. There is a limited supply of peaceblooms and silverleaf to go around.
2. Lowbie inventory space is limited.
3. It's more profitable to purchase (or steal) a fully paid account, level your character to 85, and farm high tier ores, herbs, and even vendor trash.
4. Peaceblooms are expensive BECAUSE nobody specifically targets them. If people started botting these, they'd dip in price dramatically.

If botting using trial accounts was ever profitable, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EXPLOITED ALREADY. The fact that IT LITERALLY HASN'T HAPPENED means that it's NOT PROFITABLE, EVEN IF YOU ARE PAYING NOTHING FOR YOUR ACCOUNT. It's not worth the time and computer hardware investment.

Furthermore, denomination of copper/silver/gold has nothing to do with why lowbie bots don't exist. It's the fact that, regardless of denominations, rewards at lower levels are almost always minuscule compared to mid and high levels. I hope you're not seriously suggesting that if FFXI and FFXIV had free trials, that people would set up bots to receive 100-900 gil rewards from repeatable quests or leves, when they could receive 100x times that amount by getting a full account and doing mid-high level repeatables.

Exactly! xD I still don't see the argument against trial accounts (other than they need to improve the game first). As mentioned, they could restrict the chat functions for the trial accounts. Another thing that most other MMOs do with trial accounts is restrict the use of auction house (market wards) and restrict being able to trade with other players.

Look at how media distribution is evolving, you get to preview almost everything now, from video games (demos) to music (youtube, 30 second clips on iTunes, etc.). I haven't seen any commercials for FFXIV, besides the Japanese ones, but the adds I see online aren't even gameplay, only clips from the opening trailer. People wan't to see what they are paying for before they buy something, and if they go off reviews of FFXIV, I don't see them coming over.

If Square wants to get the word about FFXIV out there in the open, it wouldn't hurt to do some 7-10 day free trials. All they would need to do is limit the chat and trade functionality. There are quests and vendors that have the gear people could use, there is no need for a free trial to use the market wards (some would argue that would only further turn them away from FFXIV! lol), so I don't see why not add them when the game improves.