Recollection, Prediction and Hope!

[Terabyt3]

Hey all had an interesting conversation with an LS member today who has just started the came after leaving XI. Now I've followed XIV closely since it's announcement back in '09 and played OB then CE since with multiple characters. So I was discussing some of the things that were supposed to be in-game form the beginning, what could be on the horizon, signs of things to come and why it was released early.

This may be a long post but if you wish to read on feel free! Please don't post "Fanboi" replies etc. I'm not bigging anything up or putting anything down.

First of all was the things that I remember hearing about pre-release:

Enemies fighting each-other and interacting with each other in the world (seems this was simplified to "curious or flee")

Barbershop - As trivial as it was I saw an interview on youtube sayin things like this would be in game to allow players extra customization pre char creation.

A ton of voice acting was promised.

Now I remember playing OB and thinking "Well this needs a whole lotta work!" Then the day came and my game arrived on my doorstep. Looking at the back of the box it said:
Required HDD space: 15gig +space for downloads. (The beta was about 9gig)

After installing I looked and it was only 9gig. That's 6gig of game missing......

The parts missing are obvious to all. There are about 40% of areas not accessable in-game atm.
.dat mining has uncovered more classes were supposed to be there.
Voice acting missing
Airships and other means of transport.
Limited variation of levequests that were supposedly vast and various pre-release press.
WS and spell graphics bland and indifferent.

No doubt there are more, so why did it get released you may ask? Well only they know I guess. As for my speculation:
FFXIV was "promised" to be released on <date> but it was not ready. Problems with coding and balancing had not been fixed during Beta for whatever reason. By that point however the end of the financial year was approaching and the annual business model had been based on this promised date.
So they threw in the hasty algorithms for battle, what stuff they had finished or 99% finished and hastily made the calculations to make them "work"

Continued next post:

[Terabyt3]

So where does this leave us? Well to be perfectly honest I'm enjoying the game. I have made a few new friends and tbh it is not much different from a pretty Maple Story atm. Also it's still free.

"They've alienated the playerbase" scream the thousands though...... Well maybe not, think about it this is quite possibly the extended beta. We are also being drip fed small bit's of improvements so where is all the stuff that the original team was working on? They will have built the foundations and at least gotten most of it worked out I'd hope.

My best guess would be that this drip-feed of updates and feedback is really the open beta without the official title and all we're getting now is something to keep us happy for the time being.

My expectations: Well I HOPE that they're gonna drop a bombshell on us. All the secrecy and forgotten work that was done way back when may well be kept secret for a reason. Perhaps the 1st anniversary or Winter this year will see these things finally see the light of day. I fully expect to see an expansion of around 7gig released by the end of the year containing all the things that were missing, raising the level cap to 60 and a new storyline. No doubt we will have to pay for it but I expect 1st month to be free. Then post balancing a console release in Spring next year with expansion already implimented on the disc.
And quite possibly a re-release!

Again guys it's only my speculation and hope but it seems to make sense to me and the few people I've talked to. If I'm right though I'd like to say this:

I CALLED IT FIRST!

Cheers for ya time!

[Kiroh]

Does it really matter why anymore? I could understand how people would want to know this in the first month or two following release. We didn't know whether it was released that way because they were working on the rest to be released via patches shortly after release, or if they underestimated the amount of work left to be done, or if that was just the way the game was meant to be. We know now that they knew they were releasing the game too early and went ahead with it anyways, we know they know the game is not in a reasonable state, we know they know the game needs major work.

I guess my question is : Now that SE has told us they know the game is screwed up, does it really matter why they released it early? Will knowing (or speculating) about it's early release make the game any better, will it bring back any of the players that have already left?

Anyone around long enough to remember beta has already seen this hashed and re-hashed a thousand times before. SE has never given a clear answer, and even if they did the playerbase would never be satisfied with any explanation SE could offer. There's just no good excuse for the condition of XIV.

[Terabyt3]

Does it really matter why anymore? I could understand how people who want to know this in the first month or two following release. We didn't know whether it was released that way because they were working on the rest to be released via patches shortly after release, or if they underestimated the amount of work left to be done, or if that was just the way the game was meant to be. We know now that they knew they were releasing the game too early and went ahead with it anyways, we know they know the game is not in a reasonable state, we know they know the game needs major work.

I guess my question is : Now that SE has told us they know the game is screwed up, does it really matter why they released it early? Will knowing (or speculating) about it's early release make the game any better, will it bring back any of the players that have already left?

Anyone around long enough to remember beta has already seen this hashed and re-hashed a thousand times before. SE has never given a clear answer, and even if they did the playerbase would never be satisfied with any explanation SE could offer. There's just no good excuse for the condition of XIV.

I was just sticking that in there for the ill-informed A few members of my LS have not known anything about XIV and maybe certain members of forum that are new have the same position.

I agree there is no reasonable excuse for the condition after so much tough talk but like I said if you can accept that at this point it's a Shiny Maple Story with a major overhaul totally possible on the horizon the sting is not as bad.

[Mug]

Well this game was definitely released on false promises. They had so many good and innovative ideas that never came to be. What we ended up with is definitely the biggest WTF moment in SE's history so far.

Then again, as people pointed out before me, it's pointless to dwell on it. We'll just have to wait, pray and hope that they know what they're doing and that the game will be great in the end.