Dear Yoshida...どうもありがとうございました！

[Agoven]

At the end of the day they dethroned Tanaka cause the board didn't want to take blame for making him rush the game to market. The heart of the matter is at the end of the day Tanaka's heart was broken...the board which probably forced him to release it used him as a scapegoat. It's that simple. When a business forgets about it's product and rushes to make money it doesn't always work out...no matter how loyal fans are...now they have seen for the 2nd time the error of their ways...but SE is learning...they want to be in the social gaming market for a long time. They just learned the hard way this time too. The life cycle of an MMO is akin to the life cycle of a console system. When you first release it at a high cost to make up for all the development costs there's not much content. You take time to build your assets and your library...then you peak out and start all over again.

[User201109011315]

There was never any problem with the direction of FFXIV. The problem was with incompetence, underfunding, and early release. Two of these three problems persist.

[Kiroh]

At the end of the day they dethroned Tanaka cause the board didn't want to take blame for making him rush the game to market. The heart of the matter is at the end of the day Tanaka's heart was broken...the board which probably forced him to release it used him as a scapegoat. It's that simple. When a business forgets about it's product and rushes to make money it doesn't always work out...no matter how loyal fans are...now they have seen for the 2nd time the error of their ways...but SE is learning...they want to be in the social gaming market for a long time. They just learned the hard way this time too. The life cycle of an MMO is akin to the life cycle of a console system. When you first release it at a high cost to make up for all the development costs there's not much content. You take time to build your assets and your library...then you peak out and start all over again.

I agree that most of the blame still lies with the people who decided this game was ready for a retail release, which was no one in the development team. I agree the higher ups used Tanaka as a very convenient scapegoat to blame their own poor decisions on. Still, Tanaka is not entirely without blame as some of the things he put in the game shouldn't have been part of an MMO in 2001 much less 2011.

[Agoven]

I enjoyed the game from day one...people may have other opinions to this. Can't design for everyone's liking. Should design for your intended player base however. Yoshida took the reigns and his direction has been very positive and I'm liking the changes. Anyways I didn't want to turn this thread away from the reason why I posted it. I just want to thank Yoshida and the team for all their hard work and I appreciate everything they doing and continue to do. So raise your glass to them boys and girls and here's to another wonderful year!!!

[Agoven]

And I don't believe they mentioned anywhere that they replaced the whole dev team. They just replaced certain core people to change the direction of a game that the masses didn't seem to appreciate at release. There's no reason to throw out great coders or graphic designers etc. A game is all about planning...making goals and reaching objectives. It's more planning a proper road map and a direction then anything else. That at the end of the day may just be a few key players.

[Xmbei]

It certainly has slowed it down rather considerably, particularly because they brought in a new development team that never had any kind of vision for the XIV project because they weren't part of creating the game in the first place.

It's all well and good that the new team is putting the work and effort in, but frankly the transition alone has set the progress of the project back at least 4-6 months.

the new team is like 60% the old team way to go!

[Agoven]

Nobody truly knows where we'd be except where we are today. I think the people who slow down the progress the most are the flamers and haters that add poison into the mix of peoples trying to create something magical. Time and patience people and the gratefulness that they kept the game running and continue to work as hard as they do for US!!!

[Konachibi]

I agree with the OP and would raise a glass too if I my energy drink weren't in a can.

I've enjoyed the game since I started playing and each and every day I find something new and fun, there's an absolute abundance of content already in the game for those willing to take the time to find it, and this is only just the beginning.

I don't mind the time it takes for patches to come out, compared to many mmo's out there it's actually pretty fast given how much stuff is crammed into each one, and besides, good things come to those who wait.

Hooray for yoshi

[User201109011315]

The dev team had a 1 year plan all laid out with the opening of ishgard, player run companies, shipbuilding, new UI, etc etc, which we would all have by now had Yoshi not entered the fray and spoiled everything.

I'd rather have that than what we have now; mediocrity.

[Konachibi]

There was never any problem with the direction of FFXIV. The problem was with incompetence, underfunding, and early release. Two of these three problems persist.

If you've got nothing good to say... you know the rest.