Shiet I'll take it! :D
Really surprised with their reasoning cause it makes so much sense lol: "People should be able to try the updates before they decide whether or not to stick around."
Shiet I'll take it! :D
Really surprised with their reasoning cause it makes so much sense lol: "People should be able to try the updates before they decide whether or not to stick around."
game is in a dismal state for them to keep doing this. Only thing they accomplished by releasing the game in September was horrible horrible reviews, players who couldn't stand the game for more then a few days to a few weeks, ect... they gained absolutely nothing from releasing the game when they did and lost so much.
No complaints here about another free month!
While it's been mentioned before that you really only get one shot at an MMO launch, in my opinion, SE has a chance to recover some with the PS3 release. I have a couple friends that aren't even paying attention to all this going on right now waiting for the PS3 release.
Soooo, log in the 26th and get update/check if the game is even playable yet, sounds like a plan.
I can give SE atleast that, after how awesome abyssea is. Gonna be tough though, because the next abyssea expansion hits in december, and abyssea is fun as shit
Seriously, looking forward to a 10$ expansion to an almost 8 year old game, MORE than an expansion that might make the future of my next potential MMO, says something.... what that something is I don't know, but its something
Not being excited about a MMO's first expansion when its first content update hasn't even occurred yet makes sense. It says nothing.
Finally a date to play 14 again lol. The free month is very welcome too :D
I lol'ed hard when I saw this.
First the email warning of the free trial ending than this. I love it. Another free month is exactly what it needs after the 2 huge updates/patches. Now, players will be able to see the changes before deciding on staying or filing for an annulment.
It took some balls to offer the first 3 months free like this. It even took more balls(or bigger), to actually list a date when the patch/update is coming this month(tentative of course).
I guess I will remain logged out until after I gorge myself next Thursday. Mmmm, more fatness and a huge update. Good times. IMO there is little to no reason to torture myself with the games current state when the changes are a scant 9 days away(tentative). Plenty of time to play New Vegas, more Borderlands, P3/4, you get the idea.
Damn SE, could you be...learning and listening finally? Just a tiny bit?
This is.. amazing. Really didn't see this coming.
It seems like they're really confident in the November and December updates. It seems like they've also weighed the opportunity cost and know that most people who hit the cancel button are not coming back. Some people may think that's obvious, but I doubt most people here realize how expensive it is to run a massive server farm like what they've got going for 14 right now. It's really quite telling that they value the dollars lost as a result of losing players for the first time higher than the cost of running the servers free for 2 entire months (which I can tell you first-hand is fucking expensive).
Even if none of us know just how much sheer cash it takes to keep something like this running, we all know that you don't release a product 6 months too early either, in some lame-duck attempt to get the product on the market ahead of potential rivals. The decision-makers at SE must have been the last to figure this out, but at least someone there understands how to rectify the situation.
I still won't be playing during this free month because these updates mean little to me, and do little to address the problems that I personally had with the game. The updates, come March, are the ones that handle my problems. This is still a good idea, though, but I wonder how some people are going to feel when they finally have to start paying for the game. Will they keep complaining just to get free months? Will SE keep pumping out free months until both the Nov and Dec patches are here?
It's clear you don't work on the business side of things. Because that's exactly what most companies do There's a lot of things us regular people can never understand. Why, for example, when a company buys / merges with another company do they lay off everyone there, lose all the domain specific knowledge those people had about the internal processes / products, and then just re-hire all new people 6 months later? Because someone crunched the numbers, and somehow they saved a few dollars that way. Or so they thought anyway.Originally Posted by Lucavi
In this particular case we can see it's not working out that well, but this same strategy works for companies all the time. And in fact, if they end up regaining the trust of the playerbase after this whole ordeal, they will end up with a better game than they would have otherwise, and might end up coming out ahead specifically because of this early release. Now wouldn't that be ironic?
I just think it's funny when anonymous internet people think they understand the business of games and deadlines better than the people who have an actual vested financial interest in succeeding. And hindsight is always 20/20.
The just-announced free month will last until both the Novemeber and December patches are here. Recall that the December one is in MID december. Updates are always on Thursdays, that puts the December update on the 16th, which is before the additional month expires.
Sounds like SE is turning this ship around.
I think right now there's a specific player base that's honestly happy about the game, and it's more than willing to endure the UI lag and such to reach craft classes cap before March "true release".
From an hardcore gamer point of view, that's a gold, you're free to sprint ahead with little to no competition and the more fixes SE puts to the game, the better it will be in the long run.
I fear this might become a collateral damage that will weight a lot once (or *if) players will start coming back to FF14 around Ps3 release. There's a reason why you usually wipe characters after a Beta.
Does it? Hmm, I may try out one of the last days of the second freebie, then.
@Bruiser: I said you don't do things like that if you want to be successful. Companies can do anything they want; companies also fold every day. Its not a smart business decision, and that's the point. Perhaps they do this in other markets, but I have yet to see it work in the MMO market. Perhaps you have an example of the opposite. I'd love to see it.
Has all of this been "good" for SE? Was doing this "good" for Funcom?