Why is race and nationality ignored so much in the lore? (why does the lore fail)

[Cutriss]

I love the inpatience most players are reflecting against XIV because its unfounded. The amount of updates and dev interaction we've had in XIV has been more frequent then WoW, Rift, Aion, AoC, and many others. Most of them don't do updates except every 3 months.

Can't speak for the others, but WOW's 3-month content updates are significantly larger than XI's are and definitely larger than XIV. They also do a lot more balancing than SE ever did. If a job in XI falls out of favor and it's not SAM, you have to offer up a sacrifice to the gods and hope that maybe you get a boost in two years.

Here's a fun data point. SOE deployed NGE six months after the previous combat update. They scrambled, tested, and implemented a combat update that is even more significant in scope than the one that SE is working on in six months. I don't know how long SE has actually been "working" on this patch, but considering how many things seem to still be in flux, it seems like it's been less time than we'd expect.

For reference, here's how the first year of FFXI went - note that chocobos, the auction house, delivery systems, and all missions through 5-2 were in the game fairly early on, before the NA launch even.

http://www.jpbutton.com/?p=157

Seeing what was ready for the JP launch of FFXI and shortly thereafter, one has to ask how XIV came to market with *less*, and how six months later, we've fallen even further behind. And don't tell me "It's because they have to fix the battle system". These are things that should already have been in the works and were close to completion. That they weren't even close to being ready makes you ask yourself just what they were working on for the past 5 years.

I think those of us that come across impatient are more concerned than anything. SE is *lucky* to have unintentionally gotten a second chance to do this right via the PS3 release. Other MMOs don't get that opportunity - if you don't hit critical mass right away, you wither into obscurity within a year and hope to break-even. I see a lack of urgency on the part of the developers. It's like they're expecting it to fail anyway and so they're doing this to save face but their hearts aren't really in it.

On topic...

The lore's there, it's just kinda light right now and not really implemented. I mean, have you been to any of the towns in the starter regions (Wineport, Aleport, Silver Bazaar, Golden Bazaar, Quarrymill, Hyrstmill, Owl's Watch, Falcon's Watch)? They're ghost-towns but it's clearly not designed to be like that. The NPCs at various camps have things to say about the world as well, so they are aware of their surroundings. We just don't have the interconnects yet, and that should be coming in time.