Peer pressure, FFXIV's reputation, & subscribing

[Atoli]

Well, I don't really have a story of my own to tell, because..seriously, if you are too ashamed to tell your gamer friends which game you play just because you could be harrassed for it, you either need to man up or just find real friends o,O

But I really noticed how bad reviews influenced the reputation of FFXIV, even a year after release (and after all those great changes we got).
A little while ago I was talking to a friend about it, tryin to convince her to try it out.
I was all hyped up about all the great stuff we got with patch 1.18 and 1.19 and I told her about all the fun things and awesome stuff she could do if she joined us (me and another friend who are playing FFXIV) and somewhere in between, I guess the sentence "Oh, and the graphics are way more beautiful than in WoW." slipped out.
As if she had waited for me to say that, suddenly she started talking about how she would never try such a bad game of which the only good aspect is the graphics, that she is not playing a game to look at pretty scenery but to DO stuff and that's impossible in FFXIV, bla bla bla.
I went like: "Erm..okay, I just told you about all the stuff you can do, it's not like it's just beautiful and nothing else. Why do you think so?"
So she told me how she read reviews about it saying SE only concentrated on graphics when they made it and everything else is just horrible.
She didn't care that those reviews were outdated, about all the stuff I explained to her, FFXIV was just a really bad game to her for no other reason but some old reviews.
It even went es far as to her calling me a "graphics whore" so..we kind of had a fight about it x)
Needless to say, she refused to at least try it out.

Haha, I told a story of my own after all
But I wouldn't call it "pressure".
But I really hate the stubborness of many people.
If you look at comments on youtube or websites about gaming, everyone has a mindset along the lines of "Even if FFXIV becomes the best MMO one day, I'm still not gonna try it."

[viion]

when I moved to Italy all my coworkers said they quit XIV right away n binned it, they really dont like me talking about it anymore, even tried to show them v2 but they said they've been let down once so they dont have any faith, just "i'll believe it when i see it".

[Tenshi]

I work in the game industry and yeah, just about everyone around me has heard grim things about FFXIV. Instead of being rude or dismissive, though, when they find out I'm playing they're honestly curious about it and ask why.

Usually what I do at that stage is to boot the game up on my work laptop, explaining a little about the history of the game as I do so. I then log in and let them wander around a bit.

Almost unanimously at that point they are blown away by the visuals and questions change from "why do you play" to "when do you play and what class should I focus on."

[Medura]

I work in the game industry and yeah, just about everyone around me has heard grim things about FFXIV. Instead of being rude or dismissive, though, when they find out I'm playing they're honestly curious about it and ask why.

Usually what I do at that stage is to boot the game up on my work laptop, explaining a little about the history of the game as I do so. I then log in and let them wander around a bit.

Almost unanimously at that point they are blown away by the visuals and questions change from "why do you play" to "when do you play and what class should I focus on."

Pretty much the same, ive gotten quite a few people into the game this way :P

[Antanias]

I just tell people to go f*** themselves when they mock me for playing ff14. I make my own decisions about which games I play and I do my best to enjoy those experiences

[Synfrag]

I just tell people to go f*** themselves when they mock me for playing ff14. I make my own decisions about which games I play and I do my best to enjoy those experiences

^ This

Seriously, I realize a lot of people who play are teens but come on. Is peer pressure over MMOs really happening to that extent?

I get co workers bugging me to Join WoW because they are losing players and all I can say to them is "Why? So I can do what 15 million people have already done before me?"

I mean it's not like no other person could solo "Operation Desert Swarm" or NW Apollyon in XI but at least it wasn't possible for your average casual player. I want to play challenging MMOs, as soon as it becomes easy and repetitive I'm gone.

[Gramul]

At this point, it dosn't even really matter so much. Square is committed to this game and they won't just stop production midway through, even with one subscriber. They'll keep working on it to the relaunch, which I can assure you will receive better reviews and more subscribers simply on the princible of improving the main complaints people had for the game in the first place.

The only thing that could kill the game at this point would be if Square itself went under.

[Platinumstorm]

It also works the other way too.

[mysterytaru]

Are people actually taking this topic seriously? Another work of fiction by Neptune hoping for sympathy and for his concerns to be taken to the dev team.

[Atoli]

Are people actually taking this topic seriously?

Why not?
It's nice to hear about what kind of reactions people face when their friends find out they play FFXIV
And it's also funny to read the fictional stories people think of who don't take this topic seriously