Dear Square Enix...

[Mychael]

I'm sorry you had to face the same lame problem as many of us, my friend. Right now players from: "Middle East, South America, East Asia and a few more counties.." cannot find a way to pay other than C&B, which has it's own problems.

It's been 2 weeks since they announced that they're working on a new payment method. And I doubt it will come any time sooner.

I'm not trying to discourage you, but this is what I, my friends and so many people ended up with, here's the cold hard truth:

SE won't care that you cannot play, and they won't add a new payment method either way. They'd rather work on some huge retarded mount for the time being.

Do you want to play? Forget about your current account, buy a US FFXIV CD Key from any online store, and start a new US account..

Yeah I know it sucks, but it's the only way.

And don't worry, you'll get all classes to 50, finish all fights and complete all achievements before this problem is solved.

Um. From what source did you learn/decide that the same team that models NPCs (here referring to the addition of a carpet to the head of a monster that hasn't changed much since XI), or animates (here referring to adding a character sitting on top of the already-existing goobbue running motions) would be the ones working out the contracts or legalities of payment systems?

Some people amaze me.
A: "What do you do?"
B: "I am a graphic designer who also negotiates contracts for a huge company's billing options."
A: "Wow."
B: "Yeah. I have an MBA, a international law degree with extensive experience in Japanese, KSA, USA, UK, and several other countries' systems, a graphics design degree, and I learned 3D animation in my spare time."

Because all of Square Enix's employees are like that, I'm sure.

Why should we even do that? changing our addresses in our SE account or even getting a new one just to play, buy another game for that? SE should just add at least one god damn payment option, that's all what we ask for...

^What Sigul said. This isn't an issue where work-arounds are appropriate. Having to forge an address shouldn't even come to mind. A fix is needed. At the same time, a huge deal like this consists of a LOT more than Squeenix registering a PayPal account. There are a lot of steps in the process and I can assume that there was a d@mned good reason they chose C&B over collecting their own money or a more popular company. I'm guessing they regret that decision now, but it's not something they can fix over the phone.

[ShellQ8]

Why should we even do that? changing our addresses in our SE account or even getting a new one just to play, buy another game for that? SE should just add at least one god damn payment option, that's all what we ask for...

I know how you feel, I'm just telling you what everyone ended up telling me. And what most people did, I didn't actually make a new account myself and I don't intend to, even though my friends started forming 1~50 PL parties for the people who were forced to start over.
And I'm sorry that you got stuck in the same frustrating situation.

Um. From what source did you learn/decide that the same team that models NPCs (here referring to the addition of a carpet to the head of a monster that hasn't changed much since XI), or animates (here referring to adding a character sitting on top of the already-existing goobbue running motions) would be the ones working out the contracts or legalities of payment systems?

Some people amaze me.
A: "What do you do?"
B: "I am a graphic designer who also negotiates contracts for a huge company's billing options."
A: "Wow."
B: "Yeah. I have an MBA, a international law degree with extensive experience in Japanese, KSA, USA, UK, and several other countries' systems, a graphics design degree, and I learned 3D animation in my spare time."

Because all of Square Enix's employees are like that, I'm sure.

I'll admit that what I said was out of anger from checking lodestone everyday for 2 weeks waiting for a new post regarding something as serious as "Allowing players to PAY" yet ending up finding a new post about some temprary mount that I probably won't have the chance to see for myself.

But my point is valid. Shouldn't they focus on payment first? On the first step of getting players into the game. How the hell are we supposed to enjoy the mount if we can't even log in!

Obviously it's not a priority, and don't tell me "It's only been 2 weeks." It's been over a year.

We all thought that one of the main reasons for the "Free Trial" was to give SE the time to bring us new payment methods, to make this problem disappear. Yet..
(Payment issues)--------------FREE TRIAL------------>(Back to the same Payment issues)

Now I don't really see a point of the free trial. If I had known, I wouldn't have wasted my time, what's the point of playing all these months if my account is going to be closed without giving me a choice?

So, tell me, which "team" should I blame? And do they work for SE?
Keep getting "amazed" my friend, I wouldn't be surprised.

[Mychael]

I didn't mean to flame quite as much as I did. >.> Sorry.

Nonetheless, I don't know who's doing what at SE--no one outside their company really could tell you that. My point was just that the in-game changes we're seeing shouldn't be considered the problem; they're not what's holding up the payment changes. To be honest, considering some of the other developments someone could have been working on, I think a goobbue mount was kind of...uncalled for in any sense. There are more important things they could have done. But also, as I alluded to earlier, they really didn't have to make anything new--just tweak some already-existing animations and models. But when I first saw that post, I was also thinking, "...This is what you do with my money?" Lol.

That said, I think this really gives you guys more of a right to be upset. Because there should be a separate group of people working on billing/account issues, and they should have made this a priority.

As for the having a year, that's debatable. While we could complain about C&B, I don't think Squeenix realized just how much of a problem it would be until they started the billed period. I didn't follow the forums too closely, but I think most of these problems surfaced (or at least re-surfaced) only after the p2p started. I hadn't realized KSA would be an issue (though I'm in America, anyway), for example. That C&B requires a mailing address seems very... stupid. On the other hand, when Square signed up, they probably didn't test it from every possible country, which they should have. So there was no way for them to notice this until people started having issues.

I don't know what they've done (or not done) about this internally, but I think it would be fair to ask them to do something. I would say extend the trial period for those who cannot pay, but that would just anger all of the people who did pay--especially the lucky few from KSA (and other countries with similar issues) who did manage to pay.

I really don't mean to defend them in this. It's an issue that they should have had fixed long ago. I was just trying to debunk the popular myth that, if you talk to the right person or the right person reads your e-mail, things would change. Whatever has to happen now is much higher up than a support rep can handle. All we can do is make sure they remember that it's an issue, and hope they fix it soon enough. After all, they're the ones using money.