Final Fantasy XIV article in MCV

[Babydoll]

Word of mouth has little impact? Tell that to the guy who made the DayZ mod and now has 1 million players they are scrambling to accommodate.

While word of mouth is not horrible...having TV advertisements, billboards, internet ads all helps. I don't know who DayZ mod is also...and I spend quite a lot of time on the computer...well not as much as I used to but still lol. That is the first time I have heard of it.

I see your point...but every little bit helps. Again, its not my company, its theirs...I personally don't care what they do but if I was trying to advertise something I would try to appeal to as many people as possible. Remember the wow commercials? Nearly everyone knows about that game..even my mom lol she used to laugh at the Mr T one.

Even my nephew who is huge into gaming like me barely knows anything about XIV, but he is interested in it. Trust me, they would reach a LOT more people if they advertised with the TV and ads elsewhere besides word of mouth. I can't picture someone saying "TV ads!? That would only make the situation worse! I don't want TV ads, then less people might know about it!" Just does not make sense to me.

Also yes Arcell, I imagine they have this planned for closer to its release, probably starting in the fall SE though...has been kind of strange with advertising since FF7. FF7 was, imo the last game they advertised properly. Now I just feel like I don't care anymore...if they want to keep making the same mistakes of not advertising that is fine, I'll still play the game, etc lol.

[Krausus]

Doesn't sound too good..I hope whatever they consider isn't F2P.

Every game company does this, they would never say "we will never consider a F2P model" but I liked how he added we would have to succeed in a P2P model before we consider it. To me that means it wont happen because whats the point of going F2P model if you are succeeding in P2P.

[Krausus]

While word of mouth is not horrible...having TV advertisements, billboards, internet ads all helps. I don't know who DayZ mod is also...and I spend quite a lot of time on the computer...well not as much as I used to but still lol. That is the first time I have heard of it.

I see your point...but every little bit helps. Again, its not my company, its theirs...I personally don't care what they do but if I was trying to advertise something I would try to appeal to as many people as possible. Remember the wow commercials? Nearly everyone knows about that game..even my mom lol she used to laugh at the Mr T one.

Even my nephew who is huge into gaming like me barely knows anything about XIV, but he is interested in it. Trust me, they would reach a LOT more people if they advertised with the TV and ads elsewhere besides word of mouth. I can't picture someone saying "TV ads!? That would only make the situation worse! I don't want TV ads, then less people might know about it!" Just does not make sense to me.

Also yes Arcell, I imagine they have this planned for closer to its release, probably starting in the fall SE though...has been kind of strange with advertising since FF7. FF7 was, imo the last game they advertised properly. Now I just feel like I don't care anymore...if they want to keep making the same mistakes of not advertising that is fine, I'll still play the game, etc lol.

I think they are just waiting until they have a lot of information available, right now the new site is just a teaser I expect it will pick up quite a bit after gamescon.

[Jennestia]

Seriously. Now I want SE to troll us when they first start the presentation. Showing the characters in like 8 bit style with the classic striking motion.

Then the little text box shows "Dragonfire Dive" and the 8 bit dragoon jumps up into the air, the camera pans up, and when it pans down again, full graphical quality of the fiery explosion.

What, something like the Fangame from Vanafest this year?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csr_5t9VPtc

[Holy_Dragoon]

While word of mouth is not horrible...having TV advertisements, billboards, internet ads all helps. I don't know who DayZ mod is also...and I spend quite a lot of time on the computer...well not as much as I used to but still lol. That is the first time I have heard of it.

I see your point...but every little bit helps. Again, its not my company, its theirs...I personally don't care what they do but if I was trying to advertise something I would try to appeal to as many people as possible. Remember the wow commercials? Nearly everyone knows about that game..even my mom lol she used to laugh at the Mr T one.

Even my nephew who is huge into gaming like me barely knows anything about XIV, but he is interested in it. Trust me, they would reach a LOT more people if they advertised with the TV and ads elsewhere besides word of mouth. I can't picture someone saying "TV ads!? That would only make the situation worse! I don't want TV ads, then less people might know about it!" Just does not make sense to me.

Also yes Arcell, I imagine they have this planned for closer to its release, probably starting in the fall SE though...has been kind of strange with advertising since FF7. FF7 was, imo the last game they advertised properly. Now I just feel like I don't care anymore...if they want to keep making the same mistakes of not advertising that is fine, I'll still play the game, etc lol.

I completely agree. FFX|V media broadcast in a TV commercial format would help exposure, I just never discredit the power of word of mouth. SE needs a strong balanced marketing campaign to pull this off. I hope they do.

[Allcars]

If the game is truly fun and a great game, it will not fail. People will always spread the word of how much fun they are having. The game will pick up sales, look at minecraft, Dayz, counter-strike, Dota. These were all indie games that started as mods or as mans dream. They may have used another game's engine, but in no way were they made or marketed by a company until after the game became super popular.

If people try to give me flack for counter-strike, no valve did not make counter-strike, counter-strike was a mod that valve later bought due to its popularity.

[Ruisu]

What, something like the Fangame from Vanafest this year?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csr_5t9VPtc

This would be cool to see sometime down the road with XIV. Though now seems kinda early.

[Zumi]

SE should really embrace the F2P model. I don't really believe 2.0 can attract many new players at all with it being pay to play when theres so many F2P MMOs out there on the market at the moment. FFXIV still left a bad impression on the majority of PC gamers. Even EA with SWTOR couldn't pull off P2P and they had about 1m subs and are still going F2P.

Free to play done right can be really good. Like you can get all the content without paying but the stuff sold in the store would be exp boosts, and vanity items (shirts, hats, bows, new hairstyles, tabards underwear), mounts, pets ect. While keeping most progression gear obtainable from actually playing the game. Add new slots so players can wear vanity items over their real gear. That guy who wants a full set of slightly different color chocobos with different armor buys them each for $25 a pop probably would be paying for the equivalent of 10 peoples subs under P2P.

[Jennestia]

SWTOR's problems wasn't the P2P plan as proven by how popular it was -- It was a mediocre game and once you did most of what it had to offer..you're left with "now what?" F2P done right can be good however there hasn't really been a F2P MMO that has done it correctly. Usually it lacks in one area and fully fleshed out in another -- for example Maplestory lacks in tangible content but my god can you pimp yourself out on cosmetic cashshop items including pets.

[Antipika]

Some games does it right, you aren't aware of them that's it.

Dofus is free to play (freemium more precisely, you can play for free, but have to pay to access all features/zones) and perform really well. 500K paid subscribers for France alone, that's as most as XI during most of its lifetime, but with a single country that's twice less populated than Japan alone, with a game from a "small" company (Ankama is far from being SE) and without a big license such as FF.

And the subscribtion itself is cheap (48 euros for 12 months, which is less than the price of a "normal" game per year). The game targets a very young audience (12~18 years old), hence why freemium was the way to go. Same for the low membership fee, which parents aren't reluctant to pay for their child.

There isn't any cash shop. You only receive vanity rewards for subscribing (lot of P2P games do that like Rift). You can also pay for extra services such as World Transfer, Character Rename etc. (then again lot of P2P do that, even XI).

Note that the "sequel", Wakfu, is being published by Square Enix in North America. (No idea how it performs there, but the billing model is the same with an item shop however).