Quote Originally Posted by raelgun View Post
This game has the strangest defenders, its defence for the long patch cycles is, why are you playing this game?
The official forums are basically a place where "just play other games" type-people meet people who are only here to air grievances until they unsub and can't post here anymore. If these forums allowed unsubbed players or even trial players to post, you'd see way more criticism than we're even seeing now, but most people actually do just unsubscribe and play other games. I'm playing another MMO currently, and there are so many former XIV players in it that they're calling us "refugees." And all of them have cited similar reasons for leaving the game behind. Like, I'm getting WoW refugee vibes from the whole situation. Remember when WoW players were flooding into XIV, saying the future for their old game just seemed bleak? Same situation here. It's uncanny. Of course, none of them can post here because their accounts are no longer active or whatever. I think for a more holistic picture, it's important to look at the entire thing. Yeah, there are a lot of people who still love this game and they come here to defend it. The people who'd disagree with them are largely barred from posting here, but they're quite vocal (if you ask them why they quit xiv) when you run into them in other games. TLDR I think if the forums let anyone with a SQEX account post, a lot of these frivolous "just play something else" type arguments would get overwhelmed with derision from an ocean of people with basic sense. Like... obviously the option exists to play other games. People want to play this one. That's why they're here, paying monthly for it.