Ignoring that someone (I'm looking at you Kahri) will come and lecture me for not posting this in general but alas I can't as there are level restrictions there.

So with that said...

As a Legacy player and stout supporter of Square Enix (or at least I was) I'm beginning to lose what faith I had left in that there might be a recovery. With a laundry list of issues from Legacy players not being invited to the Beta phases (as you admitted that emails were not going out properly) to the major changes that rendered some players characters unplayable, to the countless errors that are rendering the entire game unplayable. Needless to say the launch of this is going abysmally at best.

For those of you who are reading this and unsure what issues I speak of I shall clarify at length.

Firstly, to the remark about players 1.0 characters being rendered unplayable, this is an issue I encountered personally. If you are unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV, in 1.0 you could equip items that were higher level than yourself but it came with a penalty which would gradually disappear as you reached the suggested level meaning that a character could wear higher level equipment if they so desired and which was the case with myself. Upon my return as I was not able to join in the Beta as stated earlier due to an issue with emails not being sent out, I was unaware of the fact that these items would now have set level restrictions and came to find that my character when I logged in was stripped of his equipment and left without a reasonable source of Gil to replenish my gear with as anything from an NPC is drastically overpriced and few players had gear in the level range I would have required.

This left me with two options as I had no jobs lower than level 25, make a new character and use them to gear my character or change servers and start fresh. Needless to say I found out quickly that option one was off the table as unbeknownst to myself (and everyone else I'm sure) Square Enix had instituted a character creation restriction. So I found myself with two characters unable to use their equipment and unable to create new. This in itself was highly disappointing as it meant that to play in any reasonable fashion I'd have to delete one of my characters (I had two, both were level 25+ on all jobs) but then I'd have to use any funds from said new character to replenish my other. Needless to say as friends were wishing to play I opted to remove both and change to their server.

However before I could even attempt this feat I was met with the dreaded Error 90000 and left unable to even login to delete them for multiple hours. Once that had finally been dealt with I got a chance to create my characters anew only to find that to my less than gleeful amazement I was restricted from creating on the world where those I knew were as it was deemed full. There went another seven hours of refreshing to merely create my character. If this hadn't been enough frustration my login was met with a substantial queue time and finally once able to play I did, and I dare say I enjoyed the game at least until another error struck and game sound ceased which left me forced to relog in an attempt to correct the issue and submit a report. A mistake that was, upon logging back in I was met with the now infamous Error 1017, the world is full.

Now generally, I would let things like this go as I've always had a deep affinity for Square Enix and would normally brush it aside as launch issues but this was not the case. I've played since the Beta of 1.0 and before that I played Final Fantasy XI for many years so I'd seen every bit of what occurred throughout the life of Final Fantasy XIV and at this point I must say I'm sorely disappointed. For other Legacy players like myself, this is a troubling omen as many of us (in good faith) had purchased long term subscriptions during the first release so our money has been tied up for ages and we've yet to see anything come of it. And I'm sure many of you will come to their defense and say "Well they made it free to play for a while" and while this may indeed be the case if you remember why that was done then it hardly works as an excuse.

So to Square Enix I say this, I hope you attempt to restore the faith in those who've stood beside you since the beginning. We were the ones who refused to abandon Final Fantasy XIV even despite all the trials and tribulations that had occurred and even when you had admitted that the game would need to start anew and would need funding to do so, we agreed to pay for a subscription again until you took the servers down for the End of an Era. This is our dedication, this is our faith. Show us it is well deserved and show all those who are for the first time seeing your work that you indeed deserve such a loyal following.

Or not, you can choose to continue to allow these falters as well but be forewarned that faith is like yew, it will bend only so far before it breaks and can never be repaired.