Comments from the Devs

[LD]

This confuses me. (from the interview posted earlier).

I was expecting to be playing V2 non-beta by about November. This suggests the game won't be released until around February at the earliest. Surely patch 1.23 isn't meant to keep us going until then? Unless the lettered patches have a lot of content which is doubtful.

When Beta starts, 1.x ends, hard stop. Everyone who's playing will be beta testing 2.0 from lvl 1 and we'll all be getting a 3 month "free trial". All our characters will be put on ice until it's re-released.

[Elcura]

XI and XIV proves they don't know much about the PC and optimizing the engine so it doesn't make our shit blow up, but everything you can visually see is the highest quality and done by the best, there's no doubting that. I haven't seen an MMO that looks better yet which isn't to say I haven't seen more style in the presentation or design, so when Yoshida says that XIV's new engine could be the best, he could be right. If XIV can have good graphics without sacrificing performance it'll be impressive. Because they can get everything technical right and make it look good, so the only question left is whether we can run it?

[Spira]

This confuses me. (from the interview posted earlier).

I was expecting to be playing V2 non-beta by about November. This suggests the game won't be released until around February at the earliest. Surely patch 1.23 isn't meant to keep us going until then? Unless the lettered patches have a lot of content which is doubtful.

it isn't just the China interview that is getting this message.

according to this and a few other recent articles i read, the official word from Yoshi at E3 was Winter 2012, which is anywhere between Dec 2012 and Mar 2013.

also according to here,

we discovered, an alpha stress will happen in September, and that will eventually move into closed and open beta.
That's a lot to cram into the autumn - maybe we're looking at 2013.
The PS3 version is on course for a Q1 2013 launch, we were told.

Q1 2013 is Jan1-Mar31 (unless they mean US fiscal year which means Oct-Dec which doesn't seem likely / or Japan FY2013 which is Apr-Jun. but who uses FY in gaming anyway)

so if it lines up with what is said, and we assume the latest date in Winter 2012 and Q1 2013 to be March, our timeline shd be.

Sept-Oct: closed alpha
Nov-Dec: closed beta / ps3 closed beta
Jan-Feb: open beta / 1.0 service ends to port data over.
March: 2.0 official launch for PC and PS3.

i think if both releases do happen to fall into the same month you can bet on them making it a simultaneous release..

edit: also, what Elcura said.

[Volken]

Sept-Oct: closed alpha
Nov-Dec: closed beta / ps3 closed beta
Jan-Feb: open beta / 1.0 service ends to port data over.
March: 2.0 official launch for PC and PS3.

Wow.. I know this is old news but I feel like I'm hearing it for the first time. Was it my fanboy reality distortion field? What do they expect people who don't get into the closed beta to do for that long? I'm actually not even interested in beta testing FFXIV, (again) I'd rather experience 2.0 with no prior experience in it.

[Alkar]

It's all up in the air for now, Yoshida is tossing out estimates at this point. If Beta goes smoothly they can actually release it earlier but it all depends on how much they get right at first and how much they have to change. They don't wanna risk another disaster by rushing the game out.

[Tomino]

Sept-Oct: closed alpha
Nov-Dec: closed beta / ps3 closed beta
Jan-Feb: open beta / 1.0 service ends to port data over.
March: 2.0 official launch for PC and PS3.

I had imagined them to end 1.0 during October giving 1.23 is the last content patch... Guess every penny counts

[Spira]

with luck they might push open beta forward but still keep live servers open until they absolutely have to close it for data porting, thereby sating public interest in ARR. I won't mind a longer beta period to tweak things if it means the live release remains at its latest expected date

[Lordender]

8+ months out according to that time-line, Wow, lol.

[TacoTaru]

I have a lot of games from the Steam sale to keep me preoccupied until open-Beta/release; time to put them to use!

[Kurokikaze]

The man delivers!

Rukkiri:

Heya guys!

While the details have not yet been decided, we are planning to make it possible to select from 30fps, 60fps and uncapped settings. ^_^

[Thiefami]

I'm eager in seeing how this all pans out, but I also hope for Yoshi and crew to take as long as they possibly need to release a lasting product. The battle revamp was done really well, the new crafting system sounds much improved, and the visual details on the new UI looks pimp. I rather they be open about rerelease timeline and progress than promising something they cannot deliver on. I criticize these guys a lot, but I continue to root for them.

[LD]

At this point I'm becoming less worried about the game itself and more worried about the economics of it all. With SWtOR going FTP, it seems like WoW is the only game "allowed" to be within 10ft of a subscription. People already gave the Secret World shit about "double dipping", but honestly it seems smart to already have that infrastructure up and running. I don't think FFXIV will have to go FTP anytime soon, but if it did what would it sell?

[Alkar]

At this point I'm becoming less worried about the game itself and more worried about the economics of it all. With SWtOR going FTP, it seems like WoW is the only game "allowed" to be within 10ft of a subscription. People already gave the Secret World shit about "double dipping", but honestly it seems smart to already have that infrastructure up and running. I don't think FFXIV will have to go FTP anytime soon, but if it did what would it sell?

Star Wars is going F2P because the updates are slow as hell and nothing of value is being added, the devs are simply giving up and adding a F2P option because they don't wanna put the effort.
Yoshida said that they have no intention of going F2P because in that case most of the Japanese players will simply quit and once again the franchise will be damaged (in Japan F2P= shitty game). They also have a very different release schedule compared to SW and it's supposed to be faster (release stuff as it's ready iirc). If they can keep pumping out content fast enough it'll be fine.
The trick here is to keep people busy with content for as long as possible. Rift is subscription based and it's not going F2P anytime soon.

[LD]

Rift is subscription based and it's not going F2P anytime soon.

I guess that's a good point. I'm mostly just thinking about SE's options rather than saying they'll have to go down that road. SWtOR going free just surprised me, it was hyped by everyone as a potential equal to WoW and for a second I believed it. I'd forgotten that I'd actually PLAYED Rift and never played TOR. As much as I like TSW and see the potential in FFXIV, RIFT did something I didn't think possible: Good world PVE. Even at the bleedin' start.

[Sephiroth]

A lot of people on my server quit XIV for SWtOR back when it was released. Will be interesting to see if they all return when V2 is released.

When Beta starts, 1.x ends, hard stop. Everyone who's playing will be beta testing 2.0 from lvl 1 and we'll all be getting a 3 month "free trial". All our characters will be put on ice until it's re-released.

I was under the impression 1.23 would run until they're forced to shut it down for data transfer and the beta would run alongside it. There's really no reason not to. It won't take them 3 months for data transfer, I think a month is what was mentioned in one of the E3 interviews.

[LD]

The roadmap gave me the impression that the free trial would only be for 2.0 (it says Version 2.0 Free Trial, not just free trial). Since they're shutting down subscriptions at the end of September, I just gathered it would be a hard switch.

[Lucavi]

At this point I'm becoming less worried about the game itself and more worried about the economics of it all. With SWtOR going FTP, it seems like WoW is the only game "allowed" to be within 10ft of a subscription. People already gave the Secret World shit about "double dipping", but honestly it seems smart to already have that infrastructure up and running. I don't think FFXIV will have to go FTP anytime soon, but if it did what would it sell?

WoW is only "allowed" to stay with a subscription model because they still have a product worth paying for for at least 750k people with a development budget that didn't surpass 100 mil. You can't use Star Wars as a reference of doom and gloom for MMOs, because everyone knew that it was going to flop in the end. You can't copy WoW's model 8 years after the fact, add some cutscenes to call it original, push it out the door without modern features, then spend the next 8 months catching the game up feature-wise to the rest of the market while producing jack shit in terms of content, and expect for millions of people to play your game.

Rift still collects monthly subs, and they aren't going anywhere. XI still collects subs, and they can probably keep that game running strong with only 75k subs; those servers can't cost that much, they've long-since made up their initial costs to make the game, and they have a passionate group of players that aren't going anywhere.

2.0 will be fine if the game freakin' delivers. People don't leave a good product until they get bored of it, and more often than not, they'll come back to it if they still want to play something in the genre, but can't find something better. Hell, even before people that love a game think about leaving it, they've played it for a good 1-2 years, which is plenty of subscription fees from a single person to keep a company rolling in the dough.

The only thing you should worry about is whether 2.0 will satisfy, not if it'll be free down the road. There hasn't been a single MMO on the market yet that went F2P for no good reason. Every single one of them had either a single critical flaw, or a slew of niggling ones that overwhelmed the game itself. We can rattle each game off with each flaw, but this isn't the thread for that.

I'm pretty sure that no one wants a game that they paid a box sale price for, to fail. None of us wanted 1.0 to fail, but we smelled it based on what was delivered to us. SW basically mirrored 1.0's launch, with problems being spotted as early as Alpha, but the devs either looking the other way or locking complaint threads. Same deal when the game actually launched. None of us want 2.0 to fail either, so its all up to SE to deliver, and that delivery starts with the practical adjustment of early-spotted glitches or troublesome areas/concepts within the game. Ignoring problems and locking threads leads to dead games.

[LD]

Alkar did a better job of actually discussing the subject with me without making an overly-aggressive wall of text. ~_~

[Lucavi]

I don't view it as aggressive; more of an "it is what it is" statement, but to each their own.

TLDR: Don't worry so much. Good games can charge monthly fees and survive. Bad games cannot.

[Psion]

I didn't see it as overagressive either.

Then again, im with lucavi on this one. subscription model is by no way in hell dead. And a lot of gamers consider F2P games to be shit.