So 1.0 owners have to start paying the monthly fee immediately?

[shane239]

Open beta is everyone's free period.
People who buy the game for the first time get the 30 days free WE ALL GOT when we purchased the game initially.
Quit complaining.

Well said!

[Abriael]

Dude, I edited it two full minutes before you before you posted your jargon correction schpeel.

Get with the times. My post DOES say "purchase".

Too bad that it didn't. Just like your previous post:

I guess we found an exception. Let's call the jargon police to settle this.

Really, you are complaining that 1.0 players were first going to be granted free access and later weren't, based on a quote which was only referring to an unrelated post-launch bonus for people who get ARR pre-orders.

Looks like you're back-pedaling full force and trying to cover your mistake, that you won't even admit lol.

Open beta is everyone's free period.

Only, betas are not free. Betas are a give and take affair. People get to play part of the game and the developer gets thousands of testers working for them.

[Duuude007]

Too bad that it didn't. Just like your previous post.

<more banter intended to inflame>

I am happy to concede that I mixed terminology in a couple posts, and I am more than willing to fix them, but that is a distraction from the real points-

• Hvinire said the bonus subscription post launch was for ARR purchases, not 1.0 players.
• The timeline references free time for 1.0 players before launch
• Beta 3 is free time granted to 1.0 players before launch.

Therefore, my point stands.

[Abriael]

[*]Hvinire said the bonus subscription post launch was for ARR purchases, not 1.0 players.

Which is entirely pertinent to my post, as my post is *exactly* about that. Post launch or prior to launch is irrelevant, as the timings are completely changed now.

[*]The timeline references free time for 1.0 players before launch[*]Beta 3 is free time granted to 1.0 players before launch.

Betas are not in any shape or form "free". You don't pay with money, but you still pay with volunteer work as a tester, which is why no one in the industry ever refers to betas as "free trials", but they call em "beta testing".

I am happy to concede

You didn't seem too happy to concede anything.

[Aldora]

But a beta is a beta, meaning that there'll still be bugs, server problems, and stuff to fix. It's not the best environment to ascertain the final quality of the game, and most definitely not what I'd use to advertise the game to those that already quit because its previous incarnation was poor. When you want to get people's trust back, you bring you A game. A beta isn't your A game.

Well, sure. In a beta there are still bugs to be fixed. But, lets be honest. Even if the game is released, the game will still have bugs in them. No product on the market is bug free and will never be entirely bug free. Even though the 4th Phase is still part of the beta, it will be pretty close to the official release of the game. The risk of "reworking"/"overhauling" an existing feature is extremely risky "right before" the official release. Who know what game breaking bugs will be introduced because of it.

Therefore, during that phase, the working being done will mostly be tweaks or bug fixes. However, if a feature is in fact broken (resulting in game breaking experiences) and has to be fixed, the feature will either be temporary disabled until it is fixed or postponed until the next patch/update. SE mentioned that Arcanist and Summoner are on schedule for the release, but will most likely not make it for the 4th Beta Phase. That's a risky choice. Let's say the Arcanist doesn't make it to the Beta (which is the most likely scenario, even with the most certainty) and will be introduced during the release. The balancing of the Class and its Summoner Job will be done in-house only and not by the End User. Chances are that the Class will be overpowered when compared with their designated alternative classes. The Class/Job balance will have to be fixed/adjusted via a Patch or even an Update. We've seen before that 1 skill can even crash a server due to a bug. End Users (Players) are better at finding these types of bugs then the developers themselves, since developers simply cannot match the vast diversity of situations during their testing schedule, which their playerbase can cover during their play sessions.

I've talked too much about this... In short, yes... The game is in a Beta, but the quality of the game during the final beta phase will be pretty close to the quality of the game once it's been released. Those who are under the restrictions of the NDA cannot speak freely, but since you've written an article with permission of SE regarding the Beta so far, i think you can say that the current 2.0 Beta from it's core implementation is by far better then it's 1.0 predecessor.

I can pretty much guarantee a lot of people are gonna be pissed, strengthened by the fact that there's already a lot of negativity on the game outside of its remaining community, for obvious reasons, this can easily become a deal breaker for many.

A "free trial" is perceived as a perk/freebie. A beta access isn't perceived by many as a freebie, as it's give and take. SE lets us play, and we do the testing for them.

People expecting a freebie and suddenly seeing themselves with something that isn't really a freebie, are gonna be naturally disappointed.

Is it a deal breaker for me? no. But I'm a fan. I've been hooked to the idea of ARR since when it wasn't even called ARR yet.

SE is facing the rather difficult task of getting back those that aren't fans anymore and are jaded about that game.

The 20-25k (personal estimate, don't quote me) people that remained til the end of the world are already in the bag. The 800k that quit, aren't quite in the bag. Putting a credit card barrier between them and the finished game is bound to turn away quite a good percentage of them, and I don't think that "screw them cheapos!" is the right attitude to take in order to facilitate the success of ARR.

I'm a fan of the game and it's franchise as well and i'm most definitely not implying that you're not. I'm just here to speak my mind, share my opinions and form a civil discussion based on my experiences, knowledge and opinions. (^_^ ) I think we share a common goal there. (^_~ )

But, i honestly have to say that i'm bugged by your (personal) estimation regarding the remaining people who played till the end and the ones that have presumably quit the game.

Do you honestly believe that approximately 95% of the entire player quit the game, lost faith and never returned to the game? That is a rather grim perception/estimation of our player base...

Final Fantasy XI never had a playerbase that could match (for instance) WoW. We know that. I also believe that Final Fantasy XIV didn't have a lot of subscribers at launch and that a lot of people left during the first few months. But more then 90%? And never returned? I would find that hard to believe.

If i were to make an estimation, it would be more in the lines of 250k initial subscribers of which around 15 to 20% (let's say around 40k subscribers) remained after the first few months. I suspected that the player base slightly increased from 1.19 onward, to about 30% of the original player base. That would be around 70k subscribers across, how many servers did we have in 1.0? 10? That would be an average of 7k subscribers per server.

That would sound more reasonable in my opinion. But, like i said, that's my opinion.

You can say i have more faith in our player base. (^_~ )

A "free trial" is perceived as a perk/freebie. A beta access isn't perceived by many as a freebie, as it's give and take. SE lets us play, and we do the testing for them.

People expecting a freebie and suddenly seeing themselves with something that isn't really a freebie, are gonna be naturally disappointed.

A "Free trail" might be perceived as a perk/freebie to many, but let me quote this from my previous post:

For those who played 1.0, aren't we already glad that SE managed to make 2.0, gave us the opportunity to support the game and help SE make the game better by supplying them with our thoughts and feedback? On top of that, there are players amongst us who have been classified as Legacy players with a permanent discount and free in-game item(s) that come along with it? On top of that, people who purchased the 1.0 CE version will get the in-game items from the 2.0 CE version. If i remember correctly, the existing players will get early access to the game, like the new players who will pre-order CE version of 2.0.

It's not like they are not giving us freebie's, right? It may not be a "Free Trail", but nonetheless... What more can we ask from a company that has invested this much to save their game?

Do you remember that people were flooding the forums, saying that they wanted to be in the beta so that they can get an early hand-on? To them, getting access to the beta is like a "Free trail", because they can get to "play the game for free". It's not the same as having a 30 day "Free Trail", but to them the result is the same, they are able to play the game.

Don't you agree?

[Duuude007]

Which is entirely pertinent to my post, as my post is *exactly* about that. Post launch or prior to launch is irrelevant, as the timings are completely changed now.

Please tell me how he says a person who purchased XIV and a player who purchased XIV:ARR are the same thing.

FFXIV:ARR includes 30 free days of playtime with purchase for new accounts.

Easy answer: he doesn't.

Betas are not in any shape or form "free". You don't pay with money, but you still pay with volunteer work as a tester, which is why no one in the industry ever refers to betas as "free trials", but they call em "beta testing".

Closed betas? Perhaps. But open betas? You are lucky to find still legitimately assisting with bugfixes. It is effectively the launch game, and save content carries over (at least in p4). A majority of "testing" they get out of this group is high population server stressing. which the player isn't even aware of, assuming general lag issues have been addressed.

<more inflammatory banter>

[Quesse]

This guy references a 14 day free trial for everyone separate from the 30 day one. That would make sense according to the roadmap....

http://www.gamespot.com/final-fantas...unts-66305969/

Not sure what the source is...........

[Duuude007]

Ah, more proof of an alternate free period unrelated to Hvinire's post. Lovely. I couldn't post this detail here until now because of NDA, but I had known about it. Thanks to Reinheart, now we can.

[Abriael]

snippete

There's no release of a MMORPG that doesn't include a considerable amount of fixes and rounds of polish compared to open beta. The only exception to this are MMOS that are simply localized, and not released anew. This isn't the case for ARR.

Considering the average quality of open betas, it's very likely that players *will* run in a lot more issues and problems than at release. That's not exactly the best pitch to do towards customers that are already jaded.

I never said that "approximately 95% of the entire player quit the game, lost faith and never returned to the game?". But yes, I would say it's pretty evident that that kind of percentage did leave. The servers during the last months were a desert, with 100-150 people online during peak hours.

What is the status of the "faith" of those that left, and if they ever intended to come back again, That I can't say, but it's very likely that a very large percentage of them is *very* jaded towards the game and Square Enix. FFXIV wasn't a pretty show, and a lot of people won't forget that easily.

As for the "giving us freebies", let's not be naive here. I'm very supportive of Yoshida, the team, and the awesome job they did so far, but Square Enix didn't remake A Realm Reborn to do us a favor. They remade A Realm Reborn to make money off it, and to revitalize a precious brand that has been hit hard by a series of bad business decisions. Brands are a company's most valuable assets, and a successful A Realm Reborn will be instrumental in restoring the value of the Final Fantasy brand.

Our interests happen to be aligned with SE's, but this doesn't mean that SE is doing this for us. They're doing it for the ultimate goal all corporations have, which is making cash There's nothing wrong with it, mind you. I'm a staunch supporter of companies making cash.

The people "flooding the forums" are still a vast minority compared to the 800,000 that purchased 1.0. SE's hardest task will be to gain the trust of the many that didn't care flooding the forums. It's doable, but they will have to bring their A game. Offering a free month of gameplay after release would simply give them better chances to lure back in more people, and that's what IMHO they should be focusing on.

PS: Thanks for disagreeing in a civil manner and without trying to miscounstrue/Misrepresent (too much) my arguments. Looks like it's become a rare commodity in parts of this forum, besides Nique's

[Duuude007]

Yeah, the welcome back campaign is 2 weeks of free access guranteed and designed specifically for every former 1.0 player.

Completely unrelated to the Hvinire-referenced purchase bonus the OP is trying to reference.

I'm glad we could clear that up without breaching NDA.