What is this I don't even...

[Abriael]

Really, we just don't know yet.. This person has actually played?
Is it unthinkable that the game may truly be in a poor state? idk..
FFXI was boring.. These are the devs from FFXI...
If they don't bring anything new to the table, this will just be FFXI part 2...

We need to stop with the "knights of Camelot" feel and get back to what final fantasy is...
Not knights in shining armor..

We shall see.. I hope for the best, really I do.
It will sincerely break my heart if they fail again..

We need to not attack anyone who says something negative..
We need to find out what their reasons are (if warranted) and fix it..
Need to make a winner here people..

There's a difference between writing a negative preview and passing as a preview something that isn't one, focusing on some small nags without even making an effort to give the general picture (which is instead what previews are all about) and doing so showing objective incompetence on several points and a very nasty attitude that uses evident flamebaitish terminology to make things look a lot worse than they are.

There's no "attacking anyone who says something negative", there's criticizing a game journalist that did her job very, very badly, and did a disservice not just to the game and the development team (with which she's been disrespectful and borderline insulting) but first and foremost to her readers.

[Denmo]

I agree with Ben the Editor when he says that if you've not anything positive to say about the game in response to her article, you're just bringing the game down.

Sophie also wrote a second article here, and it's not nearly as scathing.

However,

There’s no getting around it: in its current state, Final Fantasy XIV is a pain in the ass to use. There’s nothing unique that outweighs how utterly not fun it is to navigate the game’s interface. There’s nothing that feels unique at all really, save for the story and the job system, staples of the Final Fantasy franchise.

This statement is appalling to me. It's as if she's playing FFXIV 1.0. To say that UI is "painful", when they were trying to make the UI as friendly as possible, is a slap in the face to the 2 years of engine rebuilding that the programmers were going for. And besides that, she hardly backs it up with convincing evidence at all:

You can click on one of your quests to be shown where you need to go on your map, but each area is displayed separately. Let’s say you’re in Gridania, which is divided into “old” and “new” districts. You pick up a quest in the old district, but you don’t see it on your map, so you click it to be shown exactly where it is. Your map view changes to the new district and marks the location.

OK, what? You're mad because there's separate maps for separate zones? How hard is it to famliarize yourself with how to get from zone to zone? Let alone, say, TELEPORT, to the zone in question. You'd have to be really lazy to be annoyed by this! Besides that, it seems to me to be something easily fixed before launch. Devs could just add an indicator on the map to where zones change out.

However, whereas in most modern games those snow moose pelts would be extracted from your inventory automatically or with a double-click, I had to drag them into a screen and then hit a button to hand them over.

OK, this was actually brought up before by players, and I'm sure it'll be brought up again in Beta, but seriously? She makes it sound like this is agony.

FFXIV‘s problem is in the imperfect, punishing implementation. I solo’d a monster designed for groups, only to have the game inform me once I’d killed it that I had wasted my time. If you’re too high level for a FATE, your contribution is ignored, regardless of how much time and effort you sink in.

"I played the game for 30 minutes. Therefore all the game is bad like this."

To anyone with half a brain and MMO experience, her points don't raise any alarms. One might even wonder if she's even playing ARR. Maybe they slipped her FFXI or FFXIV 1.0?

Thankfully though, her article is the only one that's ridiculous. The rest of the media event participants were hesitantly optimistic. And that's good, all things considered.

[Abriael]

I agree with Ben the Editor when he says that if you've not anything positive to say about the game in response to her article, you're just bringing the game down.

Eh, honestly Kuchera was just in full blown damage control mode. The fact that he attacked the *whole* Final Fantasy XIV community due to the heated responses of a few is honestly appalling and shows a rather silly standpoint that shifts on the reader responsibility for the fact that an article is poorly written and conceived. He also resorted to the usual "you're hardcore fanboys so your opinion doesn't matter!" parlor trick, which is really, really sad.

Ultimately when a seasoned journalist like him, that basically *never* withdraws from debate ('cause he loves it) when he has a speck of hope of coming up on top, withdraws behind "agree to disagree" it shows quite clearly how weak his position is.

Ultimately commenters aren't paid to write. They don't have the responsibility to use their time for a writer's benefit in order to argument or explain their positions, and their comments should be considered as valid criticism whether they do or not.

If someone comments to one of my articles telling me that I'm biased or that the article sucks, I will probably ask him why, but I won't demand it, because ultimately figuring out why people think my article sucks is *my* responsibility. If the reader comes back and explains his standpoint, he's doing me a favor, not something he owes to me. For sure I won't delete the comment to do damage control.

The fact that instead he attacks a whole community because someone dared expressing his discontent and lack of appreciation without explaining (despite the fact that it's not in any way owed) just shows that his ability to take criticism is very weak. As a matter of fact Sophie took the criticism quite a lot better than he did, as a conversation I had with her elsewhere demonstrates.

Ultimately if a writer or a website can't take criticism, even harsh, they shouldn't put a comment form under their article. If they do, then they should be ready to take the bad with the good and learn from it.

[Pebe]

I thought it was an interesting article. I mean its ok to see some negative opinions in with all the positive as long as they are constructive, although she didn't give enough constructive criticism as I would have wanted. Anyway, I don't agree with her about the map thing. We are already being handheld enough with our objectives appearing over npc heads and on the map. I'm fine with us actually having to discover where the zone is by ourselves. This leaves some exploring for us to do when questing. In my honest opinion, I wish questing was more like 11, where you had to read and discover where to go. I hate when I try to read quests and all my friends rush through them.

[Taika]

I didn't find the article to be out-of-line negative or one-sided. It wasn't very well written, but she did make some good points I've been wondering myself.

I believe the article describes fairly well how people who aren't FF fans will feel when they try the game: they will see the some of the current MMO standard features implemented in a bit less user friendly manner. They may enjoy the beautiful world and the ability to play multiple classes on one character for a while, but soon they will begin to wonder what's in there that's worth of the monthly fee. What's the thing that sets ARR apart from other, free-to-play MMOs and WoW?

I can't answer this question. I feel we don't really know anything about what this game will be like, how is the playing experience like. This is not only because it hasn't been released yet and I haven't been able to try the final version, but also because we haven't received any information on the content or mechanics which might set this game apart from its competition. I know I'll be trying this game for sure, and I might even be staying for a while even if I hated it at the start. But that's me, a FF fangirl. Those players who don't have any emotional memories attached to the series might not be as patient.

People are in a full blown fan rage mode over her not knowing what's Bahamut and GW not inventing active time events. But those things don't really matter, as she wrote it just as the wider audience will see it when they'll try ARR for the first time.

Edit: It really comes down to this, as Ben Kuchera wrote:

Also, if you want to represent your game and get people interested, tell us about why you like it. Explain why you find the game special. Counter the arguments of the author of the article with your own experiences, or thoughts. That's the way to win people over, and to be good diplomats for a world you're obviously passionate about.

So, other than being a FF title, why is the game special?

[Mitsuhide]

Lol so funny.
Someone writes something negative about FF and the first thing that people do is attacking another game, in that case GW2.
I wont say anything but that it is just pathetic and on the same niveau as this article.

Some Points are actually not unjustified, however...
They way it is written is just bad.
I played GW2 a short while on an US Server and it had more noticable lag than FFXIV and these server are in Japan.
As i said some points are justified like the F.A.T.E system.
The Idea is really good as i totally love it in GW2, the difference is the way it is handled.
Because GW2 is auto scaling your lvl, you can still have fun in lower lvl maps without getting punished.

Yeah Quests...the only thing i hate about it is the annoying backtracking, which again is not in GW2 however... the only difference about GW and normal quests are that you dont need to talk to every damn npc and "accept" the quests, the rest is the typical kill this do that stuff.

Well and then there is the Jobsystem, one hing i loved about FF is to do any job without starting from scratch.
GW2 on the other hand is very interesting too since you can have the same class but having a totally different playstyle.
Actually i wish to have something similar to that in FF too, i do not mean having a Pala that does damage but in how he can do his job like with different weapons e.t.c.

FFXIV runs butter smooth, crafting actually is fun (more than GW2), combat is fast, those are some of the good points.
Unique things are there too, searching and Fighting Primals and the Free company sounds like it has some really big potential.

And when i saw the Benchmark i really got hyped for the beta which is tomorrow...some good birthday present lol

[Abriael]

I believe the article describes fairly well how people who aren't FF fans will feel when they try the game

Actually most casual gamers can't really care the less about the minutiae the writers complained about.

Contrary to popular belief most people out there don't get all bent out of shape because they have to drag an item from a window to the other, or because the map is split or things like those.

While some streamlining can definitely be done, what makes a game good or bad goes definitely a lot beyond that, which makes this preview simply not a preview, but a long rant over small and mostly irrelevant things, raising the question on why the writer goes so much out of her way (and out of the topic of a preview) to desperately find some stuff to bash.

Edit: It really comes down to this, as Ben Kuchera wrote:

Ben Kuchera simply is quite refractary to criticism. He's always been. He found his site on the receiving end for once and couldn't take it.

The vast majority of comments are well written and well argumented. People responded to his "question" on what they like about the game even before he asked it. But of course he decided to "judge" the whole community over the few that were out of line (after the writer did whatever she could to provoke heated reactions with her hyperbolic and sensationalist wording, mind you), like they somehow had the sacred duty to write ten paragraphs of commentary while expressing their displeasure about an article.

Well. That's not how it works. The readers of a site are basically its customers, and if the customer thinks a product is bad, he's plenty entitled to express it without being held to the responsibility of explaining why. It's better if he does, but it's not his duty.

Ultimately, his message is "don't dare criticize us, and even if you do, you're hardcore fanboys so what you say doesn't matter".

When an article causes severe negative reactions, a good writer (and especially a good editor that greenlighted that article, as the responsibility is mainly his) asks himself what's wrong with the article, not what's wrong with the readers.

Lol so funny.
Someone writes something negative about FF and the first thing that people do is attacking another game, in that case GW2.

The writer's the one that brought up GW2 actually, and in a quite improper way at it.

[lvicious]

Just don't read reviews. Truly interested gamers who make intelligent decisions with their money and time (especially when choosing a mmorpg that can take up years of your life) will not rely on some freakin blog or even a mainstream review.

They ask their friends. They read real players opinions. They visit the official forums where you absolutely get both sides of the coin opinions. Imagine this.. they can even eventually do the trial period to see for themselves or try to get in the beta process. If a game looks horrible to them or just sounds horrible to them right off the bat from trailers, pics, commercials then people will not play.

If it looks interesting they will go that extra step to make an informed and educated decision not .. I think I'll check out ign's or some out of left field blogs review.. oh it's bad.. well screw that since I'm unable to use my brain for myself I'll just keep doing what others think I should or should not do.

Are there people like that well of course there are but you are fooling yourself if you think reviews as a whole make or break a game. Even so there is no way across the board that every reviewer out there will have such negative views on ARR. When FFXIV came out it deserved every bit of bad press it received and players opinions alike but it wouldn't of mattered. Noone was truly going to keep playing that game except for the truly FF fan.

14 ARR will stand on it's own two legs and the players will let it be known how good it is and that is what will bring in new players or get them to at least try it out for themselves. I do not expect a mass exodus of current players once 2.0 begins. The game can only go up from here. That blogger is basically no more than just 1 of us on here posting her early opinion and the positive will outweigh the negative.

Bloggers reviews.. pfft. Glorified online reporters who think their opinion matters cause instead of being posted on here and getting lost in the post count she found a way to get it on a little higher podium for all to read. Whatever.

[Maxwell]

This article is harmless to FFXIV. People who wanted to play will still play. Those who never wanted to play wont. MMOs cant be pictured acurately through any form of review like standard single player games can. Discerning gamers realize that easily. This article is simply a first impressions opinion piece and frankly does not deserve half the attention its getting.

Side notes:

• They were not given much time with the game as part of the media tour. And on an empty dev server most likely. Not much to build an acurate opinion on.
• I'm glad GW2 is used for comparaison. Wow is behind now. New bars have been set. We must criticize XIV for any lacks under new standards and direction.
• No, you do not breach an agreement (NDA) to which you did not expilcitly agree to be bound to. The media was given express permission to report on the current state. That was the whole purpose of the media tour.

[Neoflex]

We will just have to wait until beta starts to get a feel for it ourselves....