Merge the servers, and kill the game in the gaming comunity.

[Jennestia]

I didn't even see that many sites report on the FFXIV 2.0 announcement. Something makes me think that they could not care less if there was a server merge.

This isn't how gaming media works -- If they can slander a bad project even further, why would they report something positive about it unless it was already overhyped? XIV 2.0 announcement and PDFs is a very positive change for a product with a negative image -- If SE merges, you can guarantee sites will report that over the 2.0 information.

[MariyaShidou]

there is a big difference between a game like rift, from not a huge company, with a much smaller rep, and its not based on one of the worlds largest IPs, with a past game still running strong after a decade. Compare them dropping 99 to 47, to 18 to like 8.

RIFT isn't cheap to make, I would guess around 50m. APB wasn't cheap either, RTW was in the red of about 100m when they went burst. FFXIV on the other hand, I doubt the figures would be that high because SE develop many games sharing same assets like the graphic engine (at the very least FFXIII, XIII-2, XIV and XIII vs). Like someone said before, there's a difference between SE and Trion. SE produce many games of different genres on many platforms, Trion pretty much produce only MMORPG (3 for now). And don't you forget that RIFT used to boast they are the 2nd most popular Western MMORPG.

[Mihana]

I've read a few entries and I can't believe people are still whining about it going pay-to-play now! I'm sorry but if you didn't want this you shouldn't have paid for your access to the game already. Just cancel your subscription and quit playing already, please. I'm sorry, I'm simply tired of seeing this stupid crap come up constantly. It's done and over with, let it be. But on topic of the server merges, I don't think it'd destroy the game or do any further harm than what's already done. But what I am concerned with is how naming might be handled for servers that are merged. It's true our names are far more unique these days seeing how we can set a first and last name, yet you see people who use names from video games, anime, moves, tv shows or even real life celebrities. Personally, it wouldn't bother me there... Yet there's still that rare off-chance that somebody else has an identical name to your own but on another server. If they do a server merge you risk losing that name to somebody else if they exist on your server they merge.

More than how the game might be perceived after a merger I'd be more concerned on just how SE intends on handling this issue. It reminds me of the problem that ZAM.com's own Pikko had to face. When her server had a merge in FFXI she logged in after it to discover there had already been a "Pikko" on a world she was merging to. The sad fate of it is she had to replace her name with a brand new one, all because either an inactive player or mule had her name.

EDIT: There's also the question about linkshells, upon merging servers will these be removed or will they still exist? In the event a linkshell exists with the same name as yours it could mean renaming your LS, or you might even have to repearl everybody should they all be destroyed.

[Katt]

@Currahee You said that the market isn't focased on one game that might be crap. And from the feel I get from you read this was one time miss-hap.

The Final Fantasy franchise has been hurting for some time. X-2 was beyound help. XIII had good graphics, and a good story line.... But as for game play, it was lacking majorly. So this isn't the first time a Final Fantasy game missed the mark.

As for what Zanfire pointed out.

SE isnt ran by people who want to lose money, its run by big business men that will look over each project and see if its worth putting that much more time and money and people into. All companys, funded in or out have games scrapped, even close to done because the big guys dont think its worth it. Do you think they will keep this game going with a tiny playerbase and constant bad press?

noone does this purely for the sake of doing it, they do it to make money, and right now FF14 is not making them jack shit (even with these payments now) and has a good chance of not making it when 2.0 hits (like i said, first impressions are the biggest, many people wont even take a second glance at this game ever again)

and its also been a "shit stain" on the FF name, which this is their bread and butter, they dont want to hurt it.

in the end they cant win. Merge servers...more bad press, leave them up, tick off more players and waste more money. If they kept it free until 2.0, they could have avoided this very likely, but we all know someone on the top wanted to make some sort of money off this game, so Yoshi was stuck doing it. I can bet you its the last thing he wanted to do until 2.0 was ready.

The game as it stands in the puplic eye, the game failed BIG TIME. To quote Zanfire "First impressions are the biggest"

Let role-play a little;

Lets forget that we've ever played the game, and we see the Title Final Fantasy-14 for sale at our local game store. We look at the game box, and then ask the store staff about the game. They tell us everything bad thing about the game in there view. Even looking online at IGN.com and there view on the game. the score they gave the game is 5.5 of 10 and they even posted this on Dec 6, 2010

-------

Square Enix will finally start charging players a subscription fee to continue adventuring in Eorzea. It's pretty well established at this point that Final Fantasy XIV launched well before it should have, and as a result the game has been in an extended free trial period for over one year. In the time since launch Square Enix made drastic moves, completely restructuring the development team and setting out to address player complaints with the Version 2.0 plan, outlined in detail on the Final Fantasy XIV official site

-------

Reading this would turn me off of the game compleatly. If anything it would be an after thought next year. As for the players that are here and will play vr 2.0. Of course will all think its great. We've been eating cat food for so long, a fried liver with onions will look like a AAA grade stake.

I do agree with Ranfire more so as he pointed out, that Square Enix is in trouble no matter what they do.

A: Merge the servers, and everyone will see that they don't have the player base and the title failed.

B: Leave the servers alone and make the current players upset since there's very few people to play with now. and the only way to keep them happy is to merge the servers (See A for info)

C: Start charging for the game to recoup. some of the loss money and hope there's enough to pay for the lights and pay for coffee afterwords. But since this will cause players to leave the game and play other Online games, see B & A on what will happen.

Like I said before, I've paid for the game. Heck I'm logged in right now. I mostly wanted to see what the drop was going to be like once billing started. But I do agree with a lot of people out there, that think and say. "Square Enix is charging to soon for the game" The best thing that they could have done is kept the game free to play until vr. 2.0, instead of losing 80% of the player base.

[Katt]

This isn't how gaming media works -- If they can slander a bad project even further, why would they report something positive about it unless it was already overhyped? XIV 2.0 announcement and PDFs is a very positive change for a product with a negative image -- If SE merges, you can guarantee sites will report that over the 2.0 information.

I agree. I looked at four different gaming websites, and none of them even touch what's been shown for vr 2.0. All the sites bring it up and have a link to the Final Fantasy site that covers it, but nothing else. And I do agree with Jennestia's last remark. All the sites and magazines will comment on the merge servers before the press release of 2.0 since it's something we can all see.

[Delsus]

@Currahee You said that the market isn't focased on one game that might be crap. And from the feel I get from you read this was one time miss-hap.

The Final Fantasy franchise has been hurting for some time. X-2 was beyound help. XIII had good graphics, and a good story line.... But as for game play, it was lacking majorly. So this isn't the first time a Final Fantasy game missed the mark.

As for what Zanfire pointed out.



The game as it stands in the puplic eye, the game failed BIG TIME. To quote Zanfire "First impressions are the biggest"

Let role-play a little;

Lets forget that we've ever played the game, and we see the Title Final Fantasy-14 for sale at our local game store. We look at the game box, and then ask the store staff about the game. They tell us everything bad thing about the game in there view. Even looking online at IGN.com and there view on the game. the score they gave the game is 5.5 of 10 and they even posted this on Dec 6, 2010

-------

Square Enix will finally start charging players a subscription fee to continue adventuring in Eorzea. It's pretty well established at this point that Final Fantasy XIV launched well before it should have, and as a result the game has been in an extended free trial period for over one year. In the time since launch Square Enix made drastic moves, completely restructuring the development team and setting out to address player complaints with the Version 2.0 plan, outlined in detail on the Final Fantasy XIV official site

-------

Reading this would turn me off of the game compleatly. If anything it would be an after thought next year. As for the players that are here and will play vr 2.0. Of course will all think its great. We've been eating cat food for so long, a fried liver with onions will look like a AAA grade stake.

I do agree with Ranfire more so as he pointed out, that Square Enix is in trouble no matter what they do.

A: Merge the servers, and everyone will see that they don't have the player base and the title failed.

B: Leave the servers alone and make the current players upset since there's very few people to play with now. and the only way to keep them happy is to merge the servers (See A for info)

C: Start charging for the game to recoup. some of the loss money and hope there's enough to pay for the lights and pay for coffee afterwords. But since this will cause players to leave the game and play other Online games, see B & A on what will happen.

Like I said before, I've paid for the game. Heck I'm logged in right now. I mostly wanted to see what the drop was going to be like once billing started. But I do agree with a lot of people out there, that think and say. "Square Enix is charging to soon for the game" The best thing that they could have done is kept the game free to play until vr. 2.0, instead of losing 80% of the player base.

If I was in this position I would probably buy the game for the bargain basement price play for the 1 month free trial and if I didnt like what I saw I would quit but keep upto date with news, forums and patches and maybe pay 1 month here and there to see what it is like.

Infact thats what I did when I started playing at release, I bought the CE played through sept, then was off the game for 1 month, came back, off for a few months came back etc etc until 1.18 when I started playing alot more with the improvements.

[Nikita]

This isn't how gaming media works -- If they can slander a bad project even further, why would they report something positive about it unless it was already overhyped? XIV 2.0 announcement and PDFs is a very positive change for a product with a negative image -- If SE merges, you can guarantee sites will report that over the 2.0 information.

Honestly, I doubt it. And as I said before, I think people were expecting mergers quite a long time ago with all of these media sites reporting on the state of the game's release. If sites wanted to report on anything they could say "even despite the lack of subscribers, SquareEnix refuses to merge servers, stranding players on sometimes desolate servers with hardly anyone to play with". What kind of message does that send to people? SE isn't even willing to improve the play experience of paying players in a game everyone already knows has an incredibly small population? It's almost as if some of you don't realize that the majority of the gaming community already knows that this game had the launch that it did.

And as someone pointed out before, server merges are completely normal, given that game companies have to overcompensate for the influx of players at the launch of their MMOs that eventually lead to a decrease in population after the "shiny new game" feeling wears off.

[Hunnybunny]

But what I am concerned with is how naming might be handled for servers that are merged. It's true our names are far more unique these days seeing how we can set a first and last name, yet you see people who use names from video games, anime, moves, tv shows or even real life celebrities. Personally, it wouldn't bother me there... Yet there's still that rare off-chance that somebody else has an identical name to your own but on another server. If they do a server merge you risk losing that name to somebody else if they exist on your server they merge.

More than how the game might be perceived after a merger I'd be more concerned on just how SE intends on handling this issue.

I'll tell you how Square handles this because we called SE this week about it. Unbelievably, there is another character with my husband's name on another server. This person is just a fisher (probably an rmt). Their entire history is just fishing and reaching a few crystals and doing related fishing quests. That's it. According to their history, their first achievement was 10/11, whereas my husband has been playing since the beginning and our last names match. It's not even a common last name and not chosen after any person/character we are aware of. How they chose that exact name is unknown, unless they truly are an RMT and just stealing names.

So SE says that the server that we merge to gets to keep their names and he would have to change his. Now, if our server were the one they merge to, they'd lose.

I do remember this happening to Pikko. I don't understand why they can't see who's been with them the longest.

This is my greatest complaint about SE--their miserable, poorly handled customer service in all regards.

[Zeref]

Now looking at this from an outside point of view. If a company merges there serviers it shows investors, Gaming websites, magazines, people that sell games at countless stores, that the game is dyeing.

two points:

1: No, not really, it shows sites/magazines/etc... that the company is merging servers, for one, current reasons not withstanding, there are plenty of causes for a company to merge servers, hell, everquest merged servers several times and it was one of the greatest MMOs of its time and stood as a king in the online community for nearly a decade and its still going strong.

2: I don't see why servers merging would mean that the game is changing colors.

[Griss]

Yea gaming sites would most likely report on a server merger before saying piss all about 2.0 if they even still cared at all. People love to kick something when its down, Schadenfreude and all that.

Thing is mergers/transfers are the correct thing to do right now flack be damned. Yea people are a bit squirrly over the issue, The details are a big stinky unkown.

Though from the little they have said it sounds like they are going to go with mass transfers rather then hard mergers. while it will be a logicstical headache for larger shells on the closing servers it should work out for the best.