The whale mount is up on Mogstation

[Hazmick]

I think the whale is really cute ^_^

[Theodric]

The Mog Station is actually pretty reasonable when you look at the sort of tactics and products deployed by rival MMO's and other multiplayer games. At the end of the day, the offerings are largely limited to luxury products and are marketed as such. There's also no shortage of people willing to throw money at a game that they enjoy - shaming those individuals is foolish given that they are free to do whatever they like with their cash. It also reeks of jealousy.

[Kirbfucius]

My biggest issue with the whale is that it seems pretty clearly designed to be a 4- or even 8-person mount. It is remarkably huge. Devs have even stated that they could create a 4-person mount. But it seems somewhere along the way someone axed that idea and knocked it back down to 2-person.

If this could carry 8 people it would be an instant-buy from me. I'd love something big to carry folks around on while doing maps or other random content.

Yes, I'm sad it doesn't incentivize submarines or fishing or any actual in-game content, but coming from the Chinese/Korean servers I didn't really expect it to. Maybe one day submarines will have a purpose, but today is not that day.

[Alleo]

*looks at the useless achievement points*....*sighs* Why cant we have something like that there?

But sure lets have no new costume for the halloween like event and lets not give any compensation for all the time that the servers were down the last few weeks...just put another expensive mount behind the cash shop. (And some housing walls, that people could lose if they take a long break..) People want more to do but lets put mounts behind a paywall instead as a incentive in the game..

[Wanzer]

The Mog Station is actually pretty reasonable when you look at the sort of tactics and products deployed by rival MMO's and other multiplayer games. At the end of the day, the offerings are largely limited to luxury products and are marketed as such.

Alright, but what rival MMOs are you talking about? And to be more specific : what rival MMOs with a monthly subscription?
If I look at the other MMOs with a sub, I'm not quite sure we can describe FFXIV as reasonable.

[Alestorm]

One could argue the Star Wars mmo, since they have a sub option and still encurage you to buy things from the cash shop. Heck, it's the only way to get a mount that I could ever find.

[DeaconMoore]

Hmm, is it just me or is the whales blowhole covered up? Poor whale can't even breathe properly, shame on all you being mean to that poor creature like that.

One could argue the Star Wars mmo, since they have a sub option and still encurage you to buy things from the cash shop. Heck, it's the only way to get a mount that I could ever find.

Umm they have speeder vendors all over the place in the game that sell'em for in-game currency...

[Theodric]

Alright, but what rival MMOs are you talking about? And to be more specific : what rival MMOs with a monthly subscription?
If I look at the other MMOs with a sub, I'm not quite sure we can describe FFXIV as reasonable.

WoW charges a much higher price for basic services such as name changes and race changes than FFXIV does. You also can't play every class on a single character like you can in FFXIV so if you have multiple characters that you wish to shift over to a different faction/server then you're set back by quite a bit.

Other MMO's launched with a subscription fee initially but then dropped it in favour of being F2P - but typically made it appealing to subscribe to an optional fee in exchange for advantageous in-game bonuses. I believe ESO does that? I haven't played that since launch, admittedly.

You'd have to make that info public which most don't. No need to be a condescending jerk.

It's public by default. Nor is it being a 'condescending jerk' to make an observation.

[Areic]

WoW charges a much higher price for basic services such as name changes and race changes than FFXIV does. You also can't play every class on a single character like you can in FFXIV so if you have multiple characters that you wish to shift over to a different faction/server then you're set back by quite a bit.

Other MMO's launched with a subscription fee initially but then dropped it in favour of being F2P - but typically made it appealing to subscribe to an optional fee in exchange for advantageous in-game bonuses. I believe ESO does that? I haven't played that since launch, admittedly.



It's public by default. Nor is it being a 'condescending jerk' to make an observation.

WoW doesn't make you go through the most mind numbing gate to entry into their game that is the MSQ either. You just hop on a character and level it, which is especially nice when you want to try different race/class combos. For FF14, if you wanna try other race/class combos you have to pay 10 dollars every time, or go through the mind numbing grind that is MSQ all over again, or pay 60 dollars to dodge the grind/get a char up. Not to mention, gearing an alt class very high is nigh impossible on the same character due to weekly restrictions. If you want to gear alts in WoW you just do it, your tank, your healer, your dps can all be around the same item level.

Mind you, not calling WoW better, it's even mildly a dumpster fire right now, but both games have their pros/cons to look at

Other games moved to the F2P model because they know they can't make it on a sub model. Terrible games cannot last on a traditional sub model, which is why so few games attempt it anymore. Whereas a free to play model allows them to milk those few whales willing to spend and get little bits and pieces here from the cheaper players.

Squeenix knows they can milk the players, they won't get it from everyone, but each player who buys this mount is effectively two months of sub per player. Why add interesting content and reward players for playing the game when you can get that kind of dough? Instead, lets focus on pushing out stuff like eureka , possibly one of the most boring, grindy and annoying pieces of content that probably took one of their developers a whole 30 minutes to think up.

( Keep in mind, the MSQ isn't /bad/, but so much of it is obnoxiously dull running halfway across the world over and over to speak to someone for two minutes, just to run back. Rinse and repeat for a huge chunk of ARR It's killed the game for a lot of my friends trying to get up to play with friends )

[InkstainedGwyn]

For FF14, if you wanna try other race/class combos you have to pay 10 dollars every time

I do understand where most of your comment is coming from but I have to say that I feel like this is actually one of the few things that's less a problem in XIV than other places - given that you can play all classes on one character, needing to make a new character to get "different classes and race combos" is purely for folks who want alts. There's nothing wrong with alts - I have a handful here and I won't talk about the 66 alts I had in SWtOR - but you're not being deprived of the chance to play new classes "unless you make a new char", which is the issue everywhere else. And as for the race comment, I do know that a lot of games have finally started allowing race/gender changes, but that's still a relatively new thing. Even in SWtOR (at the time of my leaving), you had to unlock the race you wanted to go before you could change to it, and it would still cost every time. And some races you had to buy on the Cartel store (or with obscene game currency based off the market price), you couldn't unlock them through play.

So, I get a lot of what you're saying, but I feel like this is less a problem here than it is elsewhere. Especially since a lot of games (SWtOR, LotRO, etc - I can't speak for WoW because it's been a thousand years) still require you to get through certain main story points before you can progress into other content.