Dear Square Enix,
You have an obvious problem. I am talking about good ol' error 1017. "The world is full." This makes me worry about my character while I am not logged in. What is going on in there that the "World is full?" What kind of baby boom has happened? Can the economy support all those people? Is there enough food? Is my toon being overworked and underfed? Can the people in Eorzea only produce 1 baby?
The NA/EU servers are in an obvious crisis. There are far too many players during business hours. I am sure that SE is working furiously to fix this. In the mean time, players everywhere are crying out in anger over not being able to play a game they have paid for. The subscription time works as soon as you input that large number the game case / email gave you into the system. Tick... Tick... Tick...Tick...Tick... mind you this is not the sound of a clock, its the sound of the mouse button clicking furiously on the character login button.
I have been a beta tester since phase 3. I was able to try a small amount of the game and was actually able to get to lvl 12 (Granted thats not an achievement. Let's get serious, I work and go to school full time.) Then, came phase 4. This was the mother. Open beta. I logged probably at most 3 hours into open beta (and not for lack of trying.) My friends joined onto Diabolos, but that server was locked to character creation. Then we went to Cactuar... That was then locked too when my friend Matt tried to join us. All said in done, 3 hours and 4 servers with characters. I tried to get on that Sunday night but all day Sunday the NA/EU servers were shut down due to maintenance. I was hoping to have a character with a strong economic standing by release. Nope.
Early Release. NA Servers still down. Whoop whoop.
Release day. All my friends joined Behemoth in hopes it wouldn't be shut down. I log in late (around 9pm) because I have school and work... Denied. I had to eventually make a character on the JP servers just to play. Needless to say I understand you have problems SE, but this is ridiculous. I am now down 2 days on my subscription time. I always get home at 5pm EST and that is the time all the servers are full. I can just play on my JP server... that no one will ever join.
TL;DR. This is my proposal. Feel free to mix and match.
1.) Free Character Transfer from any server whether JP/EU/NA when toon transfer begins in Sept for the early adopters. That will give me time to work on my character (alone, mind you) so I can catch up to my friends who play in the AM (and are already level 20).
2.) Free subscription time. You have to admit this is super frustrating. I am thinking 15 days, but I think I would be happy with just 5. Enough time for kinks to be worked out so this time doesn't go to waste. I really don't want to play on another server then have to pay $15 to transfer. I go to school... I got debts... I got to feed my kids eventually.
3.) Account Freeze/Suspending. Granted I haven't looked for this option, but I would be ok with being able to freeze my account until the bugs were fixed. I am not made of money (even though you know you will always get it.) Also, this would help quell the sheer amount of players trying to login over and over and over and over... It's really a win/win.
Just think it over. I really want to love FF14. I am 20x more interested in this than I ever was into WoW. I will gladly give you my money... just work with me :P
Love,
Alucard971