FFXIV is not a failure, never was.

[viion]

Tera is out only in Korea, 1 country, FFXI was out world wide and only attained 500k

See 1 country 200K! Worldwide 500K .....

Read the stars XD He knows.

Didnt XI even get up to 1.5m at one point? I remember a big celebration on playonline, Around 2005-6

But yeh your post proves what is a Success and what is a failure, tho TERA is not a success yet as its not worldwide yet, and even analysts say that 3-4m subs is extremely successful, most dont even expect to break 1m.

[Mishakai]

To be fair, what other next-gen MMOs are out right now?

Rift and DCUO are the only ones out right now that I'm aware of. People seem to like Rift quite a bit, thought whether it'll have staying power remains to be seen(Age of Conan I'm looking at you), and there seems to be a general panning of DCUO as being a pretty bland knockoff of City of Heroes/Villians(I'm just going off several review sites, podcasts, and forum posts though). I guess we could count LEGO Universe as well if we wanted, but that seems to be more reminiscent of Minecraft if anything.

The last contenders seem to be Guild Wars 2 and TERA, and from what I've seen, I'm banking on GW2. If there's anything ALL of us should have learned from FFXIV though, it's that it's best not to set expectations too high on anything until release.

Edit - Oh yeah, and SW: TOR, that may have a shot, although I won't be getting into it as I'm not the biggest Bioware fan and I think I've been burned out on Star Wars. Good luck to EA, though. Apparently it's the biggest investment they've put in a game ever.

It is hard to take your views as objective when your edit shows an emotional exclusion of a rather large title on the horizon.

That said..

I'm still having trouble buying the "next generation"-ness of XIV. I've stated it earlier, but they have made advances in some aspects, while completely ignoring other industry advancements that have been made over the last 8 years or so. There are some aspects of the game that are lacking compared to their own previous MMO offering.

I agree with you on Rift and DCUO, however, when looking at AoC, and looking at XIV objectively, I see the same thing. AoC, from what I hear, is actually quite the game now. Unfortunately, it never recovered from its launch. Looking at XIV, I fear the same fate. I believe the new team is working hard to bring the game up to the caliber it should be, and I believe they can and will do it. The question is, will there be enough people left to truly enjoy it? MMO's are quite dull when they feel void of population.

GW2 and TERA... I don't know about GW2. People are jumping on that like it's the holy grail of MMO's to come like I have never seen before.. Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid. TERA, if I am not mistaken is a conversion from a Korean game. They have Aion's reputation to break through to succeed. Speaking of which.. Another game that has suffered from a shaky launch with shallow content. Now that 2.0 is out, the game is pretty good from what I hear, but people seem to scarred to go back.

That brings us to the other 300lb elephant in the room that is slated (hopefully) for this year... TOR.. A company that has made quality games in an IP prior to converting that IP to an MMO. A company that has a solid reputation for quality products, period. Yeah, yeah, I hear some people complaining about Dragon Age II... Considering BioWare has been making arguably the best single player MMO's for what, like almost 20 years now, and are now taking a well known IP they have worked with before into the MMO genre, and have no problems delaying the game as often as necessary to release with quality content, even though the price tag has already exceeded 150 mil?

That's just too much to shrug off just becuase you might be burned on Star Wars I think. Yeah, there is still the chance that BioWare's gamble could fail. But they seem to be doing their best to make sure all the chips are in their favor, and something like that is what would bury XIV now. I'm a big FF fan, but I am also a realist, this game wouldn't be very fun without a good community to play with, and there are alot of other games on the horizon that could very well turn this game into a ghost town... Just like there are people here who say they would never ditch this game for say.. TOR... there were plenty of people... close to like 6+ million who said they would never play an MMO and are currently playing WoW. All it takes is the right game, at the right time, and they can pull it off. The MMO community is seething at the teeth for something new, if TOR delivers before XIV can, guess where they will go.

[MiNuN]

I'm in 3 LS's and respectively: 2 reforms + renames, 5 reforms, 3 reforms + rename. I've lost 2 LS's already as the cap hit in both and everyone kept quitting that people just left the LS's, these were @ the very start.

and many-many others are in the same boat.

The fact is, these are easy fixes that are not even acknowledged. Just goes to show how bad the development team are that they did not have this done in the first place.

I apologize for your bad experience, but the LS I am in, hit cap 3 times and reformed 4 times, and the longest it ever took was 3 days. Average = 2 days. No hard hassle for us.

[ryuuseikan]

A successful game does not get universally panned by every single professional critic on three continents, bleed players like a hemorrhaging artery, get its entire development team reorganized, replace key staff members, extend the free trial period indefinitely, or delay its release on a second platform. FFXIV has done all these things, and therefore cannot possibly be considered a success in its current state by any stretch of the imagination.

If SE plays their cards right, they might possibly be able to turn FFXIV around and mold it into something that can eventually become successful in the future. So there's still hope for the game down the line, but at the moment it's a failure, at least for the time being.

Just gonna quote this for those who are in denial about this game's initial failure, lol.

And yes, complaining about "negativity" is thread made for arguments is not silly at all!

[Akumu]

Read the stars XD He knows.

Didnt XI even get up to 1.5m at one point? I remember a big celebration on playonline, Around 2005-6

But yeh your post proves what is a Success and what is a failure, tho TERA is not a success yet as its not worldwide yet, and even analysts say that 3-4m subs is extremely successful, most dont even expect to break 1m.

Most Subs listed was 500,000 sometime in 2008. Total active characters(peoples alts included) 2M in 2009. by 2009 a lot already had about 9 alts for inventory space if nothing else(+1 adding their main).

So did they reach 1M at least? maybe but I doubt it.

[Ostia]

Read the stars XD He knows.

Didnt XI even get up to 1.5m at one point? I remember a big celebration on playonline, Around 2005-6

But yeh your post proves what is a Success and what is a failure, tho TERA is not a success yet as its not worldwide yet, and even analysts say that 3-4m subs is extremely successful, most dont even expect to break 1m.

Well now day's anything that gets 1-2mil subs is considered a success, it all depends on weather or not they can keep their subs in the long run, 1-2mil sold boxes is all good and dandy but the real money is in the sub's, look at WOW for example, by now 60% if not 80% of it's 12mil players have bough all 4 expansions, thats some serous money right there, but it pales in comparison to what they make month to month out of their subs.

[Ostia]

It is hard to take your views as objective when your edit shows an emotional exclusion of a rather large title on the horizon.

That said..

I'm still having trouble buying the "next generation"-ness of XIV. I've stated it earlier, but they have made advances in some aspects, while completely ignoring other industry advancements that have been made over the last 8 years or so. There are some aspects of the game that are lacking compared to their own previous MMO offering.

I agree with you on Rift and DCUO, however, when looking at AoC, and looking at XIV objectively, I see the same thing. AoC, from what I hear, is actually quite the game now. Unfortunately, it never recovered from its launch. Looking at XIV, I fear the same fate. I believe the new team is working hard to bring the game up to the caliber it should be, and I believe they can and will do it. The question is, will there be enough people left to truly enjoy it? MMO's are quite dull when they feel void of population.

GW2 and TERA... I don't know about GW2. People are jumping on that like it's the holy grail of MMO's to come like I have never seen before.. Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid. TERA, if I am not mistaken is a conversion from a Korean game. They have Aion's reputation to break through to succeed. Speaking of which.. Another game that has suffered from a shaky launch with shallow content. Now that 2.0 is out, the game is pretty good from what I hear, but people seem to scarred to go back.

That brings us to the other 300lb elephant in the room that is slated (hopefully) for this year... TOR.. A company that has made quality games in an IP prior to converting that IP to an MMO. A company that has a solid reputation for quality products, period. Yeah, yeah, I hear some people complaining about Dragon Age II... Considering BioWare has been making arguably the best single player MMO's for what, like almost 20 years now, and are now taking a well known IP they have worked with before into the MMO genre, and have no problems delaying the game as often as necessary to release with quality content, even though the price tag has already exceeded 150 mil?

That's just too much to shrug off just becuase you might be burned on Star Wars I think. Yeah, there is still the chance that BioWare's gamble could fail. But they seem to be doing their best to make sure all the chips are in their favor, and something like that is what would bury XIV now. I'm a big FF fan, but I am also a realist, this game wouldn't be very fun without a good community to play with, and there are alot of other games on the horizon that could very well turn this game into a ghost town... Just like there are people here who say they would never ditch this game for say.. TOR... there were plenty of people... close to like 6+ million who said they would never play an MMO and are currently playing WoW. All it takes is the right game, at the right time, and they can pull it off. The MMO community is seething at the teeth for something new, if TOR delivers before XIV can, guess where they will go.

As somebody that played DAO and is now playing DA2, i can see why some people might be feeling disappointed with the game, but it is not that bad, i really like it, it is not better than DAO, but it is not 100 steps backwards either.

[MiNuN]

I just want to bring attention to everyone that has been complaining about Linkshells management and how it should be solved first, the current team really wants to introduce "Companies" ASAP.

So the way I see it, is that "Companies" will come out very soon and that it will re-work the whole Linkshell system, that is why they did not get to actualizing Linkshell suggestions ASAP.

[Chardrizard]

not gonna read pages of mmo-comparison-101 but ffxiv at its current states is still a failure.
it might succeed but it also might not.

[Malakhim]

It is hard to take your views as objective when your edit shows an emotional exclusion of a rather large title on the horizon.

That said..

I'm still having trouble buying the "next generation"-ness of XIV. I've stated it earlier, but they have made advances in some aspects, while completely ignoring other industry advancements that have been made over the last 8 years or so. There are some aspects of the game that are lacking compared to their own previous MMO offering.

I agree with you on Rift and DCUO, however, when looking at AoC, and looking at XIV objectively, I see the same thing. AoC, from what I hear, is actually quite the game now. Unfortunately, it never recovered from its launch. Looking at XIV, I fear the same fate. I believe the new team is working hard to bring the game up to the caliber it should be, and I believe they can and will do it. The question is, will there be enough people left to truly enjoy it? MMO's are quite dull when they feel void of population.

GW2 and TERA... I don't know about GW2. People are jumping on that like it's the holy grail of MMO's to come like I have never seen before.. Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid. TERA, if I am not mistaken is a conversion from a Korean game. They have Aion's reputation to break through to succeed. Speaking of which.. Another game that has suffered from a shaky launch with shallow content. Now that 2.0 is out, the game is pretty good from what I hear, but people seem to scarred to go back.

That brings us to the other 300lb elephant in the room that is slated (hopefully) for this year... TOR.. A company that has made quality games in an IP prior to converting that IP to an MMO. A company that has a solid reputation for quality products, period. Yeah, yeah, I hear some people complaining about Dragon Age II... Considering BioWare has been making arguably the best single player MMO's for what, like almost 20 years now, and are now taking a well known IP they have worked with before into the MMO genre, and have no problems delaying the game as often as necessary to release with quality content, even though the price tag has already exceeded 150 mil?

That's just too much to shrug off just becuase you might be burned on Star Wars I think. Yeah, there is still the chance that BioWare's gamble could fail. But they seem to be doing their best to make sure all the chips are in their favor, and something like that is what would bury XIV now. I'm a big FF fan, but I am also a realist, this game wouldn't be very fun without a good community to play with, and there are alot of other games on the horizon that could very well turn this game into a ghost town... Just like there are people here who say they would never ditch this game for say.. TOR... there were plenty of people... close to like 6+ million who said they would never play an MMO and are currently playing WoW. All it takes is the right game, at the right time, and they can pull it off. The MMO community is seething at the teeth for something new, if TOR delivers before XIV can, guess where they will go.

I'm not saying TOR won't be successful or have a huge subscriber base, I'm just saying I probably won't be a part of it because I'm not into the Star Wars IP anywhere near as much as I used to be when I was younger, and you can probably thank the prequel trilogy/Expanded Universe/growing up for that one. If Bioware manages to create a compelling universe that doesn't feel like either a PG flick or Star Trek/Lord of The Rings fanfiction, then I might be swayed back into it.

Did I mention that I'm not the biggest Bioware fan yet? >.>

Anyway, the parallel you bring up about AoC and FFXIV is a valid one, and something that could happen easily to FFXIV, but the key difference is that FFXIV has a second chance at press: the PS3 release, and SE knows that they cannot under any circumstances screw that up, or the AoC comparison will be reality.

Also the only thing I have to go on about GW2 and TERA are just tradeshow gameplay vids and other assorted things from youtube, and from what I've seen, I'm more partial to GW2, albeit ever so slightly, although I could never get into the original. Although like I said before, if there's one thing FFXIV should have taught us ALL, it's that high expectations are easily crushed. I prefer to wait until release or a ways afterward.