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[FraterOrmus]

It happens. The point is...every major publisher or game has had issues.

When will this fallacy ever die? In the history of MMOs, you are correct that there have been plenty of bad launches with buggy content that should have never made it past final Beta, or platform compatibility issues, or even unfinished content. However, since the launch of the very first MMO, Meridian 59, in 1995 there have been only 4 (count 'em 4!) MMOs prior to the Final Fantasy XIV:ARR Launch that have been inaccessible or unplayable to the majority of their players at launch time.

1. Anarchy Online (Funcom) 2001
2. Star Wars Galaxies (SOE) 2003
3. World of Warcraft (Blizzard) 2004
4. Aion (NCSoft) 2009

There certainly have been numerous MMOs that have launched flawlessly, without any major problems, many of which still number in the Top 10 MMOs. For example, EVE Online (CCP) 2003, City of Heroes (NCSoft) 2004, Everquest II (SOE) 2004, Guild Wars (NCSoft) 2005, Dungeons and Dragons Online (Turbine) 2006, and The Lord of the Rings Online (Turbine) 2007, just to name a few. It is especially important to note that this list of flawless MMO launches is by no means complete. Almost all MMOs launch with no significant game-stoppers. Perhaps the problem might be that you don't hear about the good launches, you only hear about the epic bad ones.

The reason why the vast majority of MMOs launch with no game-stoppers is because the MMO market is so overly saturated with fierce competition there no longer remains room for Amateur-hour sloppiness as there once was in the mid to late 1990's. In the second decade of the 21st century an MMO is expected to have worked out all of these game-stoppers prior to the end of Closed Beta, and Open Beta is for final Stress Testing of your Hardware Infrastructure to ensure that it will be able to handle the increased load of "Land-Rush" at Official Launch. If there is a problem you delay your Launch (which can be financially disastrous to a game publisher, but not as disastrous if you go ahead with release with game-stopping issues). The professionals plan ahead of time and do what is called Capacity Planning (taking anticipated Subscribers based upon projections, Open Beta participation, and actual pre-order sales to determine Peak Load, and then plan your infrastructure to handle capacity for 2-3x that Peak).

There should never be surprises or major game-stoppers at Launch, such as the inability to login to the game, because it is bad for customer satisfaction, loyalty, and publicity (all of which are critical as those first 90 days is paramount to the financial success or failure of an MMO...especially when you consider that the average lifespan of a MMO subscription is only six months). That is how the professional Top-Tier AAA MMOs do business, knowing that in this day you have one shot with your MMO to make it, and there are dozens upon dozens of alternatives players can flock to if you fail.

In every MMO I have been involved with over the past 18 years when there has been *ANY* problem that prevents a significant number of players from actually playing the game it is given top priority (as in all departments drop what they are doing and "All hands on deck") and is fixed within 24 hours, whereas the "little things" such as bugs with a particular quest, or an item, or an animation will be prioritized in a Triage manner, according to severity vs how easily fixed, and are scheduled to be quashed in the next Bug Release or Content Update (sometimes a week or a month, or even a quarter of a year later, depending on Dev availability). If the standard has been 24 hours to resolve a game-stopper affecting a significant number of players, then where does that leave SE which is going on how many days since these problems first started showing in P4 Open Beta (or to be nice, you can count just since Early Access)? This is both unacceptable for an MMO to not remedy this problem within a day, let alone 5+ days, and easily puts FFXIV:ARR towards the top of the list of the Top 5 (now) Worst MMO Launches of all time.

(Granted, to be fair, Blizzard took almost two months after WoW's launch to fix their Login Capacity problems, but WoW is an industry fluke that defies the standard rules and who's irrational success has never been duplicated in the industry since. However, SE would be beyond foolish to think that they can still remain successful while handling FFXIV:ARR's launch woes the same inept way Blizzard handled WoW's launch woes.)