Is SE's Marketing / PR department -severely- hurting the games chances of success?

[Jynx]

None, but it doesn't mean it can't happen. No MMO has done things to the extent XIV has even SWG was not this intensive. It's all a matter of if the game is worth playing after it's "Fixed"

SWG wasn't they screwed it up hardcore.

FFXIV is also in a unique situation from the standpoint of Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings are. It has a second release, on a new platform. The media can't ignore one of the few Console MMO's when it returns, hell in those terms SE created the most sucsesfull multi-platform MMO and XIV is it's next game.

You are overly pessimistic, you obviously don't have much hope for the game at all. If your not willing to buy into the fact XIV can dig itself out of it's grave I'm not sure why you are here at all. Beating the proverbial dead horse that you don't think can make a comeback. If they can't engage new players even if they did everything to keep us hardcore fans here it would doom them to shut the game down. A few thousand souls waiting to the bitter end don't make a profitable MMO.

XIV is a special case for faulty start MMO's, if you don't want to accept that then be my guest and leave. Becasuse if the press doesn't give SE another round then it's all for naught anyways.

[Azurymber]

None, but it doesn't mean it can't happen. No MMO has done things to the extent XIV has even SWG was not this intensive. It's all a matter of if the game is worth playing after it's "Fixed"

SWG wasn't they screwed it up hardcore.

FFXIV is also in a unique situation from the standpoint of Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings are. It has a second release, on a new platform. The media can't ignore one of the few Console MMO's when it returns, hell in those terms SE created the most sucsesfull multi-platform MMO and XIV is it's next game.

You are overly pessimistic, you obviously don't have much hope for the game at all. If your not willing to buy into the fact XIV can dig itself out of it's grave I'm not sure why you are here at all. Beating the proverbial dead horse that you don't think can make a comeback. If they can't engage new players even if they did everything to keep us hardcore fans here it would doom them to shut the game down. A few thousand souls waiting to the bitter end don't make a profitable MMO.

XIV is a special case for faulty start MMO's, if you don't want to accept that then be my guest and leave. Becasuse if the press doesn't give SE another round then it's all for naught anyways.

I disagree. you are overly optimistic and I'm a realist.
If no other game has done it, and if all past marketing history would suggest it isn't do-able then the chances of it happening are very low. Thats not pessimism, thats realism.
And what do you mean by "No MMO has done things to the extent XIV has"
XIV hasn't done anything yet but fix a few of the many things that should have been fixed at the start. they -MIGHT- revolutionize things with this summer's patches, but again if you go on history, what have they actually come through with? The market ward fix is probably the biggest "improvement" so far, and thats even incomplete (ex. you cant see a diff between normal+1 +2 +3 and everyone is centered in ul'dah)

All im saying is for the game to be successful improving it is not enough. Improving its image and how people perceive it is. And for an MMO, word of mouth is the best way to do that.

SE could do small things that make huge differences and would please MANY people, but instead they are very good at causing speculation, not communicating, and pissing people off (like with this new patch). After the whole surplus negative-media boom that happen I would have thought they learned their lesson. My point is they are still making the same mistakes with communication that has been hurting this game from the start, and if they don't fix that, this game won't succeed.

A lot of people read player reviews before buying MMOs because they realize that official sites dont play enough of the MMO to get a real feel for it. So when FFXIV comes out on PS3, the PS3 users will go on sites like gamefaqs and check out how OTHERS reviewed the product. So a marketing campaign wont do much.

Word of mouth is the key to MMOs. Almost no one decides to play MMOs alone. The majority join up with friends. Even FFXIV's original playerbase was mostly friends from XI starting together.
When you buy an MMO you aren't just paying for a game, you're expecting to pay for like a years worth of gameplay which is like buying 4 games. And you also expect to invest time. So people do a lot of reasearch and don't impulse buy. And even if there are some good new reviews, the horrible word of mouth and old reviews and the poor reputation can sabotage the improvements.

Its kind of like Toyota having tons of recalls on cars and saying "well we aren't going to really care about looking into these cars or dealing with this issue, we will just build our new cars better and advertise to new people". Obviously did not work very well and they quickly changed their stance.