The ups and downs

[protonstorm]

Since beta phase 4, there have been server issues, and I wanted to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly (on a scale of 1-10) so here I go.

1. Support

Good god, the support sucks. This is probably one of the worst parts. Not only is support unreachable via email (I have received my emails back a week after I sent them saying that they can't respond because there are too many) But the phone support puts you on hold for a long time only to get brushed off 75% of the time by hurried support technicians trying to get through the call volumes. Now, this isn't entirely their fault, but it still earns a 3.

2. The Game

Everyone knows this game is amazing. If you get in, then it is SO much fun. While some commentators on sites like Kotaku aren't always too kind to it, anyone saying its a World of Warcraft clone hasn't played it, or hasn't gotten past level 15. So it gets a 10 in my books.

3. The Community

Well, this one is a bit tricky. While in the game, people are in general very nice, and help each other out through chat as well as work together to clear FATEs. On multiple occasions I have witnessed a player about to die aided by someone else that was just passing. However, The forums have been a bit unpleasant. I don't know about you guys, but its tough to say whether the whiners or the fanboys are more annoying. 90% of the posts in tech support are threatening to quit or telling the whiners to stfu. Additionally, people lack the common courtesy to log off when they're done playing. The servers were bad before, but over the past few days its been degenerating due to more and more people not logging out, so the community, overall, gets a 6.

4. Keeping us posted

Square Enix has done an excellent job of keeping players up to date with what is going on, with around 5 posts a day giving us information on what they are currently doing. For those of you that don't know, we are all going to receive a free week of membership for our "hardship" which is also a very nice thing of them to do.
EDIT: removed last sentence, replaced with:
However, many of the posts are redundant and forum support is minimal, so I change my score in this section to 5.

These are the 4 main categories I thought of, I may edit some more in if I think about them. If you guys agree or disagree with me, I'll be glad to hear what you say. Stick with the game, its going to be a blast.

[Arriverderci]

1. Support: 0 - Closes tickets, takes too long to respond, when you do it's a week later and told it was closed, Rude chat support.
2. Game: 8/10 - Very Fun but has some meh parts.
3.Community: 8/10. In-game and on forums because they are both funny as hell, then you got The White Knight Drone Forces...
4. Posted: 5/10. - Mostly Japanese servers being looked into.
As it stands anyway.

[Malzian]

4. Keeping us posted

Square Enix has done an excellent job of keeping players up to date with what is going on, with around 5 posts a day giving us information on what they are currently doing.

I find that you think 5 posts a day from support is an 'excellent job of keeping players up to date' actually rather humorous. Every other MMO I've ever played through Launch on (SWtOR, LotRO, GW1, GW2, Tera, and Rift to name a few...) there were at least 20-30 responses from almost every community support member on a daily basis. The fact of the matter is, SE is only giving out the minimal, broad-spectrum responses. I'm sure if you saw more community mods posting responses to forum posts there would be a lot less raging going on.

[protonstorm]

@Malzian: While they could be responding to more people in the forums, I do not believe they would get a positive response from it. The more likely outcome would be that everyone would just start arguing over the latest post.

[Solarbear]

1. Support: N/A As i haven't had to ask anything other than buying crystal for game time (heard on the forums it's not convertable yet?)
2. Game: 9/10 -Love the game it's near perfect.
3.Community: 8/10. Nice and reasonable people everywhere except for the White Knights and arrogant AFKers who post on the forums.
4. Posted: 4/10. - Reporting errors is sub standard, addressing said errors is another thing.

[Malzian]

@Malzian: While they could be responding to more people in the forums, I do not believe they would get a positive response from it. The more likely outcome would be that everyone would just start arguing over the latest post.

Outcome might be less threads complaining about the same issues...? Still doesn't change the fact that no response is much worse than those that are negatively received.

[protonstorm]

@Malzian- I completely agree that there would be less threads about the same issues. However, there would continue to be the same amount of threads complaining, just some of them would be about different things. I do get that the keeping posted argument of mine was flawed though, so I'm going to edit it.

[VeriferVenti]

4. Posted: 5/10. - Mostly Japanese servers being looked into.

Great point. The quality of #4 is impacted by where you live. If you live in Japan, then the communication has been great. In any other country though, well, SE has left something to be desired.

[protonstorm]

Great point. The quality of #4 is impacted by where you live. If you live in Japan, then the communication has been great. In any other country though, well, SE has left something to be desired.

Agreed. What I'm curious about is what the difference is in amount of players from Japan and players from Europe and North America. Some say Sqaure Enix is focusing more on Japan, I guess we will know based on how many more servers NA/EU gets after this next update, since its clear that there are more players in our group.

[VeriferVenti]

Agreed. What I'm curious about is what the difference is in amount of players from Japan and players from Europe and North America. Some say Sqaure Enix is focusing more on Japan, I guess we will know based on how many more servers NA/EU gets after this next update, since its clear that there are more players in our group.

I'm not so sure about that. I mean, given the pre-order volumes, not to mention the data that was gathered from both FFXI and FFXIV, this should have been clear from the start. I'm just surprised that they are adding servers for Japan at all. I think the bulk of their issues will be resolved once people who fled to those servers are able to go back to a server for their own region.