Um.. summer release?

[ArkhamNative]

Every news outlet has been under a contract to not give honest feedback about FFXIV [....].

No. Every news outlet knows they're looking at a game in its "Core Systems Rebalancing" phase, with the majority of the game and story and classes/jobs withheld to focus the testing. Who in their right mind would write a critical review of that? Each of them wrote a preview, and most stated that what they saw was much better than 1.0. They said they were optimistic and wanted to see more.

Connect the dots to realize that those and other reviewers are in beta and do give honest, critical feedback where it does the most good: In the game's beta feedback forums.

Isn't that better than getting hammered with a rude awakening and hundreds of thousands of lost sales and unrecoverable negative release reviews?

Would you rather it get nearly unanimous "9 out of 10" reviews like SWTOR? Then watch most people bail 2 months after release like every(?) recent MMO?

SE believes it is on track to release the game this summer. They're using a design they decided on that was meant to correct the faults of 1.0, as well as making the learning curve more inclusive for gamers unfamiliar with MMOs, such as console users. You (or I) may not like some of the decisions they made, but there are literally hundreds of thousands of other design decisions that we don't dislike. Even in Phase 3, the game will still be in beta, it's still getting major features added, and SE will still be making changes based on feedback.

Ultimately it's their game. It's impossible to please every gamer or reviewer, and they have to release it eventually. It will get what it deserves. On forums, it will get everything else. ("Giant chicken mounts? OMG FAIL!")