Quote Originally Posted by MilkieTea View Post
There wouldn't have been a core playerbase without trust in the devs, though. My friend who's been playing since 1.0 Launch has shared with me some interesting things, such as PDFs of the timelines they shared with their playerbase etc etc.

There was a loss of trust but some of that had been regained from the devs showing that they honestly wanted the game to at least *work*. There's absolutely none of that with NW. No openness, no trust at all. It's a dumpsterfire that looks pretty (like 1.0) without the new team involved to toss the dumpsterfire out and make a garden instead.
Yeah but I think most people who play now never knew about any of this. 2.0 was successful because they made a different game and it was good. All I knew about 1.0 was what youtubers and people who ripped it to shreds said. It was one of those games people loved to hate.
What Square did do well though was communicate how different 2.0 was going to be. They even made A Realm Reborn the prominent title on the box, Final Fantasy was only underneath. This trend actually continued. You see ENDWALKER and then FFXIV online underneath.
A lot of the playerbase now aren't even Final Fantasy fans, a lot of people I've talked to don't know the Crystal Tower is a big FF3 reference. The success just seems to be plain old buzz and word of mouth about the game.