Can You Imagine How Successful This Could Have Been?

[Kort]

This was a critical time for SE. I can only imagine the amount of people who stopped in at the local game store to pick up a game for this holiday weekend and saw the big displays for this game and bought it. Only to get home and not be able to use it. All of those players were potential long term customers and because of all this hassle will never pick it up to try it again. I was one of those people for FFXIV 1.0. I bought the CE and never made it past the trial period even after they sent me about a million e-mails trying to entice me back.
I said it in another post but this effects everyone, because less players means less people to buy content later.

[Ekahal]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05...s-of-all-time/

[Hibashira]

If the people in charge of the servers / networking / whatever had even a single clue what they were doing, can you imagine how wildly popular this game might have been? Clearly the demand was there, since this MMO released with 0 competition in a huge time window and the game itself is quite good.

I'm a developer by background. It isn't really fair to just blame it on servers/networking because the entire stack works together. Software builds on top of shared services, on top of operating system, on top of servers, on top of network, on top of the entire physical infrastructure. Bad design at the software architecture level can just be easily the problem.

I always tell my own team, before blaming hardware, server, networking, always be sure the code actually runs well in its intended environment. Just because it compiles doesn't mean it runs. Just because it runs doesn't mean it works. Just because it works on your computer doesn't mean it runs on the server. Just because it runs on the server doesn't mean it runs well. Just because it runs well on the server when you are the only one running it doesn't mean it runs well under load. All these can easily be software problems.

None of us really have a clue what's going on. Our only hope is that Square/Sony actually does. The worst case scenario is that they still don't know, and are guessing and blaming each others.

[Matrinka]

I honestly don't want this game to fail, I want to to succeed, as when I was able to play it, I had a ton of fun. My main issue with the game is that all the external bits and pieces away from gameplay seem obtuse and convoluted. I trust that they'll get the servers up and running smoothly in the next moth. Customer service, on the other hand, seems like its being run by two monkeys manically pushing buttons while a talented child-artist with no understanding of English writes all the text for their website. Seriously, customers who had issues registering their copies of the game seem like they're ignored. Staffers are putting in standard hours instead of working during the most critical time - launch week. As a customer, I feel frustrated by how many hoops I have to jump through to fix something that shouldn't have happened in the first place - a second service account being made. I am not an MMO player, this is the first one I've tried since back in the mid-90's. Nothing seemed clear and trying to get answers feels even less clear. Its a shame that all the programmers efforts at making a FUN game are being tossed aside by tech and support issues. Hopefully, SE will pull their heads out of their asses and fix what is broken sooner rather than later. Sure, there is the offer of 7 free days, but reading in between the lines shows that anyone with the 2-service accounts will be hosed, as our main characters are deemed inactive and therefore, ineligible for the time.

[Kort]

Customer service, on the other hand, seems like its being run by two monkeys manically pushing buttons while a talented child-artist with no understanding of English writes all the text for their website.

This has always been SE's biggest problem. They have never cared what anyone outside of the JP base wanted or needed. That is why Yoshi did all the live letter stuff. He was trying to show that SE cared what we thought. They just don't understand that saying sorry or pretending to care don't work. the old adage is correct " action speaks louder than words" and they are saying a lot of things but we don't see much action.

[Nuseream]

I would suggest free initial server transfers so that friends can play with friends as intended. Charging them after their infrastructure and planning caused this to be the case for so many would be tacky and in poor taste.

I think the above should be the minimum that Enix offers its customers that it poorly provided product for. If the do give them for free they will still likely gain comparable money due to people playing together for longer and being able to get into the game more effectively with less poor experience had on average.