Bad decision by SE

[Losara]

The expansion is clearly going to be awesome. If we have to wait a little longer for it then we need to adapt graciously. The devs are doing as much as they can to give us this content as soon as possible with the good quality such an ending requires.

It might be an inconvenience to some who booked time off well in advance but in the end you need to accept that circumstances can change. There isn't a guarantee that any MMO will release on a given date, just look at what happened to New World with its launch delays. If SE needs to take another 2 weeks to accomplish something they need to then so be it.

[Phaty]

More games could do with delays these days.

[Phaty]

This is the problem, those of us in retail can't December is a no holiday month for retail workers, as its super busy with xmas shoppers, and into January too, so this move is actually far more detrimental for retail workers, then the office people, who don't have 2 months of a calender blocked out, because they can't afford staff shortages, in the biggest taking season.

And releasing in November is "detrimental" for airframe technicians like me since its the busiest flying month so a lot of timed maintenance comes due and along with that is mandatory OT. Its almost like you can't always get what you want. Its not the end of the world and definitely isn't harmful

[Sotaris]

And here I thought New World was enough of a cautionary tale, but players still don't get it.

Quality > Speed

It's not that people don't understand the concept of delaying something to make it better.
It's people being disappointed in it cause they expected a release (and the dev teams has had a good record of not deleying much in the past outside of their own control i.e the postponed release from summer to fall due to covid and wfh changes.)

[Penthea]

Look can we be real here. Take a step out from the game and see the world for what it is - ruthless. I'm sure this wasn't a Yoshi P decision, but one from the higher ups that are probably fed up with blizzards practices. I am too, they always pull stupid crap like what they are trying to do for endwalker's initial release. In my eyes, it is great that they are playing with them at their own game, and this isn't a FOMO thing for them. It is to make sure they get the player count they have worked so hard to attain, so let them have that without being fruity about it. Gaming companies are still businesses, you have to respect that fact, and at least square as a business are not disgusting like Blizzard are. Let them have this one and just wait.

There is no way I would ever believe that SE would make a decision that they know would hugely upset the playerbase just to get back at Blizzard for how they time their releases. They never tried to combat it before, why try now? Every expansion has had congestion issues before the huge influx of WoW players came to the game. You really think they would change the date to invite potentially more server issues than they can handle? Seriously? Never mind the fact that there have already been congestion issues during a CONTENT DROUGHT, and they have had huge troubling tackling it due to covid making server hardware difficult to obtain. If anything Blizzard would be doing SE a favour by drawing away some players for the EW launch so that those who do want to play FF right away would be more likely to have a better experience.

I hate that the delay happened but this doesn't mean I think there is some conspiracy behind it. SE have never given us any reason to think that they're devious enough to upset their own players just to combat what another game studio is doing. No one was surprised when patches got delayed and when EW wasn't announced sooner because of covid. This is just another delay occurring during the pandemic, a very difficult time to be working with deadlines.

If you booked a holiday just shift it real quick.

You forget the time of year EW is being launched. For anyone in retail getting that time off shifted to December at such short notice would be close to impossible because that's the Xmas season. Many workplaces in general would not accept a change in holiday dates with such short notice. Everyone I know who has seen the news so far are unable to change the dates of their holidays. Two weeks is just too little time to change everyone's shifts to enable a person's change in holiday time.

[TalonBlades]

Well, given how now a good half of the player base is going to be stuck in work, due to holiday season, and the ban it brings if there are any issues, SE have messed up big, since there will now be a huge reduction in the players being home to enjoy the content, this would be until mid / late Jan.
I can accept a push back, to fix content, but 2 weeks, will not fix much at all, 2 months + acceptable.
Those poor employees will be working 25/8 up to the start of the holiday season, give them a break, delay the push back much further, and have something to be more proud of, then burnt out staff, and half the community, really mad at the company for the joke of a push back which will not fix much at all.

[Halivel]

I am writing this today, as SE made a very poor judgment, which effects many of us across the globe, and to this, will cause issues for far too many of us.
December and January is a busy time for retail, and it requires full staff to avoid disruption. Many of us, kept our annual leave days, so we could play and enjoy the Endwalker story at its original release dats, this will now not happen, because of the bad decision to move it into the worst time of year for retail workers. Some like myslef won't be able to enjoy the story until at least February or March now, or to be able to keep up with savage raiding, will have to skip the story entirely, as of this poor new release.

To counter this, and stop you ruining a lot of players fun and the want to enjoy the game and story properly, you need to either honour your original release date, or the release needs to be postponed until at least February or March 2020, so the whole player base can enjoy the story without rushing or skipping, to keep up with endgame progression.

This is one of the worst decisions in SE history along with the making of "The Avengers" game.

It's not like he wanted to do this.

The expansion was already pretty much completed and they moved to the testing stage, why should they delay it by 2 months just because it's December when the product is techincally ready to be released and they simply don't want the repition of 4.0? We already waited for almost half a year longer thanks to Covid-19 as it is. If they decided that 2 weeks is enough - it's enough.

I had my 2 weeks annual paid vacation scheduled to allign with release but so what? It'll just mean that I will rest as intended but with different activities in mind (finishing relic, playing other games along the way). It's a game, not a second a job. Unless you're participating in World 1st Clear races, starting story and raids a bit later shouldn't affect you all that much other than slowing down your progress a little bit.

[NatePride]

Except it is. Not many people have time for both games

Endwalker still wont disappear like the WoW stuff will so this isnt FOMO

[Ranaku]

I think we all can understand why the delay is happening but still i agree with OP even though i am not affected by it in any way. They could've said in advance that they need more time, this delay basically ruins all the plans tens of thousands of players had and that they took their days off for exactly that specific release.

And i know christmas isn't big in Japan probably but SE is going to hurt themself a bit with pushing their release date into that month of the year. It was just a bad choice overall, would've been better if they had said they need until next year some months in advance, not literally two weeks before release.

We might all understand it, some might not be affected by it but still it was a really really bad timing and for a gaming corp. a really really bad decision cause there are now hundreds of thousand of players which got their free days forked. I hope for them that in the end that delay will be worth it.

[Medura]

Telling them to either not delay or do it much later, thinking only about onself and not the people who actually can play and a small delay doesn't really matter for. Really, its just some days, a few months on the other hand is what makes companies lose thrust and customers.