Problems letting go of XI? Japanese too.

[Sephrick]

I'm sure 2.0 will see new players but there is one thing that concerns me. All the updates we're getting are supposed to be huge but I don't see anybody returning, in fact it seems to me like the numbers are still going down.

Because SE hasn't advertised the game since, well, ever. They had that Japan-only live action trailer and Yoshida's 2.0 announcement media tour but to bring in players advertising needs to be persistent.

I know all about Rifts patches and I've never even bothered with even the free trial of the game. How do I know about it? Rift has a persistent marketing campaign for each and every content patch.

Even Blizzard still advertises the crap out of WoW. My Grandmother knew what WoW was and she didn't even know how to turn on a computer.

SE isn't advertising 1.x and rightfully so, it's just a pacifier for dedicated fans. That's why Yoshida went on a media tour to talk about 2.0, and why the E3 trailer will be 2.0 only. 1.x is dead to the general gaming community.

Most gamers don't know about any of the changes to 1.x because they aren't wishfully checking Lodestone in hopes of the patch that will bring them into the game. They've moved on and will stay away until SE puts it infront of their faces and shows them why they should spend their precious free time playing XIV instead of WoW/Rift/SW:TOR/Aoin/Tera/GW2/Blade & Soul/DC Universe/Dust 514 so on and so forth.

Not to mention a lot has changed since 2002. MMOs aren't the only way to play with friends anymore.

They also aren't future proofing content, if other things had been patched to be kept relevant we'd have a lot of end game. However the way they're doing it now every patch nerfs all the new stuff from the last patch so we only have 2 things to do. I found that it wasn't that 1.0 wasn't a fun game, it was the bad UI and lack of content.

They're not "future proofing" it because in about nine months it's all getting deleted.

We have a few months to gather Darklight gear, then a few months to farm Garuda weapons(1.22), then a few months to witness the Seventh Umbral Era events (1.23) that will change the face of Eorzea. Then it's 2.0 time.

1.x is only to keep us busy till 2.0. They said even the primal battles will be different in 2.0.

They won't advertise this game much till 2.0 when they fix the bad UI and the interface lag and the struggling engine and crippled servers.

And I agree, you can't blame Tanaka. Tanaka is a brilliant game designer but when you're given strict rules you have to follow how can you put your full creativeness into a project? SE also makes a big mistake when they get the "Next-Gen" concept in mind. Next-Gen graphics, sure but when you change gameplay too much your fan base isn't going to like it.

You put your full creativeness into a project by being a professional and doing your job. I have no dobt Tanaka's original vision could have been an awesome game. And he did have the rug pulled out from under him. But that said, 2002 gameplay won't sell a game today. XIV needed to be something fresh and still does.

[Rydin]

Because SE hasn't advertised the game since, well, ever. They had that Japan-only live action trailer and Yoshida's 2.0 announcement media tour but to bring in players advertising needs to be persistent.

To be fair... SE doesn't really advertise anything in NA....
I saw the Leona Lewis "My hands" commercial a few times for XIII and thats its... I've never seen SE on TV other than that