Terrible User Experience for Returning Players

[Atoli]

A bit of a hop around, yes. Terrible? I think thats a bit of a strong word.

Considering it's in SE's best interest to actually get us to play the game, I think "terrible" is pretty adequate.
I had to reinstall at some point because I got a new PC, and after searching around for quite a while I just gave up and downloaded from an inofficial source because the official one was pretty much impossible to find.
Nearly all online games have a big "PLAY NOW" button at the top of the page that will take you directly to the download page with several options on how/where to download.
FFXIV is like "Nope, we don't want any of that sweet player money, first you have to prove yourself by finding a way to actually play the game because we ain't gonna provide one easily!".
How does that make ANY sense to you?

[Atoli]

I dont harass players, create new threads on the forums, quote them in a completely fresh thread, and then proceed to mock them either, so clearly we have differing views on things.

Lol, at least I don't drag my personal little sensibilities into unrelated threads..^^

[OmNommy]

Considering it's in SE's best interest to actually get us to play the game, I think "terrible" is pretty adequate.
I had to reinstall at some point because I got a new PC, and after searching around for quite a while I just gave up and downloaded from an inofficial source because the official one was pretty much impossible to find.
Nearly all online games have a big "PLAY NOW" button at the top of the page that will take you directly to the download page with several options on how/where to download.
FFXIV is like "Nope, we don't want any of that sweet player money, first you have to prove yourself by finding a way to actually play the game because we ain't gonna provide one easily!".
How does that make ANY sense to you?

This is exactly how I feel too. For example you can download the battle.net launcher in less than a minute from Blizzard's site even if it is your first time visiting the site. No need to traverse an obsene amount of clicks and links.