Three weeks, 8 friends, 5 of whom were Legacy or early purchase, 2 being husband and wife, still not on the same server, still no date on the elusive server transfer promised for mid-September (*does hard Maths and figures 15 is half of 30*). Maybe it's NEXT September! I have a wagon load of stuff/jobs on my main from Legacy and I'm aware that in 3 weeks of playing these friends all have invested significant time, so they won't want to wipe and recreate, so we're hanging waiting on a promise which has not even been given a date, and even then, won't give us any certainty. Then there's the 719+ page thread by people who have code allocation issues, so I don't for one moment want to suggest we're the only players who have issues.

I like FF. I don't like the fact that years of FF1 and then FF14 1.0 plus ARR has made me feel neurotic about the high degree of difficulty involved in playing with friends and family, for which I pay, monthly. I don't like that I'm asking my friends to get up at weird hours to check character creation restrictions, when they have jobs and study comittments. I play GW2, for which I don't pay. I can guest as many times to any 2 worlds in 48hrs, and play with friends. I can transfer worlds, once a week if I feel nomadic, for a small fee, if guesting doesn't quite fill the bill. And yes, GW2, like most MMOs had some lobby server issues at startup, but they addressed those very smartly. Three weeks isn't smartly, but I was very smartly emailed today by SE about the commencement of billing.

It bothers me that I'm paying to be frustrated. I like the game, I like my friends, but a game is supposed to be for enjoyment, relaxation, and there are a lot of people who are getting neither, but being asked shortly to start paying, and for whom the only thing that commenced early was frustration. Paying and staying indefinitely, with no sign of world transfer or promise of success, and the increasing likelihood that to play with even one friend means dumping my main (which I've been told for a year I could keep), is stupid, being stressed about which friendships get sacrificed is stupid. None of us can spend our day playing 3 MMOs to keep in contact, the reality is our lives.

SE's current silence about world transfer and the realisation of an MMO experience you can enjoy with your friends is a big black hole. I see plenty in the forums from devs about fixing other issues, but I don't want to be able to ring a retainer bell in a dozen more places, I'd just like to be ringing it, like all the previous posters would, in the same place as my friends.

Please give us something concrete regarding server transfer, SE, because with every passing day, the only reality is that some of us will stop playing completely, some of us will have to start new characters and lose progress (if character creation opens up), and some of us who played FF together for many years will simply never do so again.

Not quite what we were promised.