Ah the square website... so useless

[DPZ2]

I know someone who pre-ordered SHB on the SE store, but didn't actually receive their key until after the expansion had already launched..

By "after the expansion already launched" do you mean the "day it launched" or "in time to meet the deadline for the pre-order key to time out"? Because that has been the behavior of pre-order keys since the HW expansion. You either get the actual game key the day of official launch (in this case, 7 December), or within the "you must enter a new key or get locked out" deadline if you already have a pre-order key that you've used.

The "pre-order" key that gets you the earrings, etc. is available with the confirmation sent when you do the pre-order, and gets you early access to an expansion, with a grace period to enter the "real" key after official launch.

From my experience, the only problem I had was when my bank changed hands back in October. I was told that things that were related to the old account's debit card would be honored, but that was not the case yesterday. I logged in to the store, gave the info for both the old card and the new one per instructions, with no issues.

Your mileage may vary, of course. Some players outside North America play on NA servers, and banking is always a gamble when it is across the Atlantic for the EU servers, or the Pacific for the Japanese servers.

[linayar]

Just because you've never personally had a problem doesn't mean problems don't exist.

Look at all the content creators that have recently decided to give FFXIV a try. What's been the most consistent complaint? SE makes it way too hard to for players to give them money. The purchase and installation process is a mess because Mogstation and the SE Store are two separate websites with each handling a different part of the process.

I can remember how confused I ended up when I first tried to buy the game back in 2014 because SE has complicated what should be a simple process. I don't have a problem anymore because I know what to expect when trying to purchase from them but I feel for new players trying to navigate the system for the first time.

I know how especially confusing it can be for players in other regions of the world who must use a specific regional store but then are locked out of being able to purchase most of the items in that store. Some common payment options aren't accepted for whatever reason and they're forced to turn to others.

You're being deliberately blind if you can't see that SE has some serious room for improvement when it comes to making purchases.

I think some of the problems could be mitigated by careful reading of the website/email/instructions.

That said, I am curious what are the actual problems that people/content creators have with the website as I also never had any problem with either the Square Enix store website, the Mog Station website, or the new FFXIV online store website.

Actually, that's not true. I did have an error code at one point trying to use my credit card, which prompted me to use alternative payment method temporarily. But besides that, the actual method of navigating through the website and making a purchase is still simple enough in my experience.

[ICountFrom0]

Whelp, and today it descided to work.

I changed nothing in how I did it, but attempting to login didn't have an error.

"INCIDENT" apparently means "we're broken, try again latter" ... but it would ahve been nice to have a usable error message.

[Kyrj]

Anything involving Square's website is destined to end up as a crap show. They have one of the worst systems I've ever seen right after the microsoft game store.

[Averax]

SE's website needs a massive overhaul. It's broken half the time.

This is especially bad for new players. If the main barrier of entry to a game is the website, people are going to get immediately turned off. On that note, glad i bought the game on steam.

Also on that note, have y'all ever tried to sign up for FF11. It's an actual nightmare.

Try using a different browser.

I haven't been able to use the SE store on Chrome for years, across multiple machines and networks. I have to use Microsoft Edge every time I've mad a purchase from the SE store lmao.

Had to do that for a while myself