Randomly Ridiculous FFXI to FFXIV

[miokomioko]

I bet 99% of the people who always bitched about SE's public relations practices would/will play XIV completely regardless. There will probably be a half dozen butt-hurt chumps who refuse to play XIV simply because of how they managed XI even when it looks/sounds extremely promising.

[Cureslime]

I bet 99% of the people who always bitched about SE's public relations practices would/will play XIV completely regardless. There will probably be a half dozen butt-hurt chumps who refuse to play XIV simply because of how they managed XI even when it looks/sounds extremely promising.

Yeah they'll play XIV for a month and then drop it like a rock. If you're not fixing problems with your game and people don't think you're working on fixing problems with your game they will just quit and do something else. The fickleness of MMO gamers is not to be underestimated.

[Hyan]

Let me point the biggest flaw in your argument

More profit = bigger investment = more content

Why do you think blizzard can give us huge update every 3 months? Because they make a shitload of money and can afford it. Keeping their playerbase happy allow them to make more money, and reinvest more money to make even more money.


Beside, do you think having a few developpers communicate with people change nothing to the game? They often give people technical details about the gameplay that player alone couldnt figure out. For example, it took Squarenix 3 years to realize it wasnt freaking possible to craft the goblin drink without any hint. Does it really add up to the atmosphere of the game to not know anything? No, not really.

And it's true the other way around as well. If the developper really listen to what the players want, do you think we would end up with garbage like "CREATE YOUR OWN EVENTS" system, or similar bullshit? You want them to spend less money on communication and more on content...fine...but the content they are adding rarely make sense, because no one wanted it in the first place.

What you're saying is basically what I'm saying, but you have slightly missed the point I am trying to make here.

Blizzard can do so big updates because they invest a shitload of money because it always gives them more profit to do so. If they did not, the playerbase would start to decline because they would finish the content faster and get bored. Because content in WoW is often short lasting, they pretty much have to do as many updates as possible because most people are done with content once the next update comes out.

FFXI's playerbase will not quit if the updates aren't as frequent because the content is often long lasting and carries over many updates worth of time. Both companies do what is necessary, but they rarely do more than that. As long as the playerbase is stable or even increasing, there's not even a need to do more than that. But if by implementing even more content gives more profit in the long run, of course the companies will do it. WoW's playerbase increased for a long time, so it was worth it to do bigger updates. FFXI's playerbase was stable or declining, so making more content than now would not be good thing to do business wise. More money used for the game, but it would make no more profit? Good luck trying to convince Wada that it's a good idea.

Your example kinda misses it's point, because you can do similar kind of thing- in-game. Toss an NPC somewhere that gives you hints about the drink or change the recipe some way- either way there's no need to communicate with anything but updates. SE can be isolated and still provide the same kind of service as Blizzard (and I'm not saying that they are right now, I'm just saying that they don't need to "communicate more" or post on the forums to do so).

Doing what players want is not always the best option. As long as the content is generally in line with players' desires, it's actually better to be surprised and do something new than "the same old content but bigger and better that everyone wanted". MMM is not "bullshit" by default because you can get as much exp as in the better merit parties, decide what you want to fight, and for how long and with what difficulty, without competition around. Although the implementation could have been better, I would say it's something that people wanted, and it made sense to implement it.

Yeah they'll play XIV for a month and then drop it like a rock. If you're not fixing problems with your game and people don't think you're working on fixing problems with your game they will just quit and do something else. The fickleness of MMO gamers is not to be underestimated.

"Gee, I really like playing this game, and I've only touched the surface of the content it offers.... but the developers aren't telling me why they did something "bad" in an update although I can't even do that content yet... Guess I'll quit the game, although I really like it so far!"

Yes, public relations are always more important than the game itself. Dear god if I have to put up with incompetent GM once a year, my whole gaming experience is ruined!

[miokomioko]

Blizzard got lucky with World of Warcraft just like Bungie got lucky with Halo. Neither products were anything remarkably special when compared to preexisting and under-advertised games in the same genre. But, their shit just went straight to the general public who isn't aware anything better exists, and thus, their player-base is mostly an unwavering pool of stupid who will never realize Blizzard isn't doing any better than the next MMORPG developer because they've never touched anything else and probably never will. Blizzard couldn't lose their player base if they tried.

[Lucavi]

Its like going around in a circle. I'll do it in bullets.

1.)I like hearing from developers and those in the company because I pay each month to play this.
2) Playing a MMO shouldn't be 15 bucks a month to play a single player game online.
3) Word-of-mouth comes not only from someone enjoying a service, but also the service on said service. If I like a cheeseburger from a joint as well as the staff that served me that cheeseburger, I'm going to tell more people about it than if it I just had a good bite to eat.
4) Blizzard got those megabucks from not only making an accessible game, but showing that they're willing to try to keep those players on the fringe, instead of just being comfortable making money off of the addicts that will never leave. It's going the extra mile, something you admitted that SE does not do.

I want SE to take the next step - to go the extra mile and talk to the playerbase and release content at a decent clip. If you don't, Hyan, so be it, but I'm not alone in my thoughts, just as you aren't.

That's about all I have to say about it, because others are probably saying it better.

[Vacht]

We will never stop mentioning asses and cocks. NOT AS LONG AS I AM HERE!

winnar!

Do realize that what I'm talking about has nothing to do with SE not keeping things fresh, people interested, and entertained.

I would find it good if SE spent more money on XIV as opposed to XI (call it "being lazy" or "incompetent" or whatever, but to me not getting enough funds and having too little manpower is the apparent reason for not doing "enough", not the "laziness") but that has nothing to do with SE's isolationist dev policy. That doesn't affect how much and how good content is being made. Isolationist or open, as long as the feedback goes to SE and they take it into consideration, there is no need for them to answer back with anything else but actions; updates, and the like.

SE's problem is that they'll do just enough to keep most of the people playing, but they never do more than that. That's how most companies work, max profit for minimum effort, and while it would be nice for them to just throw money at the game for no sign of extra profit, I don't see it happening. Blizzard's way of business is keeping players happy through other means, and part of it is just fluff (like devs posting on the forums) that doesn't really affect anything, but still makes people "happy" (= more profit). SE could take the same approach, but when they could instead use those resources to make the in-game content better, I don't see why exactly would we want to sacrifice that for more out of the game content. To me, the game itself is the most important thing, not what happens out of the game. Maybe that's not the case for some, I don't understand why though.

You think SE is being cheap with the game that they're making, when theyre making the first next gen MMO?

Blizzard got lucky with World of Warcraft just like Bungie got lucky with Halo. Neither products were anything remarkably special when compared to preexisting and under-advertised games in the same genre. But, their shit just went straight to the general public who isn't aware anything better exists, and thus, their player-base is mostly an unwavering pool of stupid who will never realize Blizzard isn't doing any better than the next MMORPG developer because they've never touched anything else and probably never will. Blizzard couldn't lose their player base if they tried.

Hit it right on the head.

[miokomioko]

3) Word-of-mouth comes not only from someone enjoying a service, but also the service on said service. If I like a cheeseburger from a joint as well as the staff that served me that cheeseburger, I'm going to tell more people about it than if it I just had a good bite to eat.
4) Blizzard got those megabucks from not only making an accessible game, but showing that they're willing to try to keep those players on the fringe, instead of just being comfortable making money off of the addicts that will never leave. It's going the extra mile, something you admitted that SE does not do.

Ultimately, my word of mouth might reach one extra person if the staff of said cheeseburger joint were friendly on top of having a great cheeseburger, which is the usually the primary reason to even speak of a cheeseburger joint. No one asks you "hey do you know of a place to eat where the people are friendly?"

I think it's extremely naive to think Blizzard maintains a massive player base simply because they communicate with their players in the development process. They fucking advertise on Adult Swim and MTV whatever other shit channels with Verne Troyer, Ozzy Osbourne, and Mr. T. That's why they maintain a huge pool of idiots paying for their service completely regardless if they fuck shit up in their game or not. They may have a pretty direct line with informing their customers of what's going on in the development side of things... but for a player, that's icing on the cake if you already liked playing their game. It's almost never a deciding factor.

Square-Enix may have had robotic, script-reading GMs and never liked to give hints and tidbits in interviews as well as being extremely vague in update notes, but how often does this directly affect your playing experience? Never? Sounds about right as the situations regarding unjustified bannings and suspensions were honestly few and far between (just blown out of proportion). I am convinced that Square-Enix wanted to keep everything vague and secretive regarding details of FFXI because they assumed it would create a closer and tighter-knit community that researched and discovered and communicated with each other instead of how Blizzard just fork-fed everyone with the details of each update, mechanic, item, etc. We had items that had hidden effects and undisclosed triggers that we had to test and discover and possibly feel some sort of accomplishment upon discovering. If they handed over every piece of data about how everything worked, there would probably have never been discussions or suggestions for anything, just recipes for what to wear and do in any situation. Cookie-fucking-cutter right off the bat.

[Kaylia]

Your example kinda misses it's point, because you can do similar kind of thing- in-game. Toss an NPC somewhere that gives you hints about the drink or change the recipe some way- either way there's no need to communicate with anything but updates. SE can be isolated and still provide the same kind of service as Blizzard (and I'm not saying that they are right now, I'm just saying that they don't need to "communicate more" or post on the forums to do so).

The solution can be in game, but SquareEnix need to know the issue before addressing it. Do you think they should let a 500 pages thread on AV, goblin drink, or almighty apkallu alone?

SquareEnix isnt entirely oblivious, but their method to gather information are lacking, and it's easy to see. They don't have a good grasp of the the issue in this game, and the solution are often weak. A better relation between the development team and their playerbase would undoubtedly help. Can it be done in game only? I doubt so.

Doing what players want is not always the best option. As long as the content is generally in line with players' desires, it's actually better to be surprised and do something new than "the same old content but bigger and better that everyone wanted". MMM is not "bullshit" by default because you can get as much exp as in the better merit parties, decide what you want to fight, and for how long and with what difficulty, without competition around. Although the implementation could have been better, I would say it's something that people wanted, and it made sense to implement it.

Of course not, but I don't think any companies gives players what they want, it's just that some can accurately pinpoint what their playerbase should get and they do it properly. I gave you an example earlier where Blizzard employee tell people why they couldn't get what they wanted, and the argument was logically sound.

SquareEnix logic make absolutely no sense, their answers are evasive at best, and they fail at convincing us that we have to accept this. Even worse, they often try to give player "what they want", except they picked some retarded request.

"We would like to have monster pet" ---> Pankration

Did they really listen? The request in the first place was retarded and couldn't work, so why did they made some half assed content to give people what they want? Why bother with a system like pankration if your game can't support it? I enjoyed pankration for what it was, but was it a good time investment? I doubt so.

Yes, public relations are always more important than the game itself. Dear god if I have to put up with incompetent GM once a year, my whole gaming experience is ruined!

I will take WoW's Santa Claus GM over FFXI's one.

GM not having the power to do anything isn't a game ruining experience, but it definitively make me want to invest my money somewher where people actually solve my issue.

You can downplay every single factor one by one if you want, but in the end, when you compare both package and one has a much better overall quality, the choice is obvious.

[willriker]

the game can do with more of a "give people what they want atitude" than was in FFXI. Where SE failed with FFXI was the assumption that there should not be more than X number of an item allowed to be created in Y time. Yes, that is a fundimental equation that developers must consider. But, this was taken to an extreme

An example of this would be salvage. SE has stated that they did not intend for more than a few completed sets of gear to result from the event a year. That is just not enough to satisfy the player base. It resulted in a lot of duping within the event, along with many other cheeting. Another example, though not as extreme would be kings. I would argue, that when Kings were implemented, the number of drops was fine. But, word of the drops spread, and soon the areas were flooded with players. SE increased the drop rates of a few items, but left the event unchanged. This was not enough to satisfy the playerbase. And more cheeting, of various types, resulted. Yet another example would be Sky, prepatch this was rediculous as well. You had choke points, two really. The classic choke point was the god damn golem. You know the one. one random pop NM, that would not show its head for up to 8 hours. SE did adjust this to an acceptable method to pop the NM. But, this wasnt until years later. In that time, it just was not enough to satify players. It resulted in all kinds of cheets being used.

SE has proven time, and time again, that it listens to what types of events players want to do. Even with MMM and Chocobo Raising, it listened to what types of events players wanted implemented. (even though the later werent wanted by the NA populous) I would argue that SE has, and will always, screw the pooch when it comes to implementation.

Its like they see the forest, but dont look at the trees.

And each time, it results in RMT/cheeting which in turn leads to suspensions/bannings. Would there be cheeting in any system, of course. But, i would argue that designing systems which limit the number of items with the intention of only seeing 1-2 of them appear per year is needlessly excessive. There is a middle ground between easy drops, and 1-2 items appearing per year. But, SE fails to find that middle ground every time.

Sadly, SE has shown almost no evidence which can be construed as recognition of this flaw in game design. So i would not expect this to be continued into FFXIV. I can hope that it wont, I can hope that it will be a perfect eutopia. But, it wont be. FFXIV will have its flaws, and looking at SE's past behavior will give you a definate idea of what those flaws will be.

[Lucavi]

Ultimately, my word of mouth might reach one extra person if the staff of said cheeseburger joint were friendly on top of having a great cheeseburger, which is the usually the primary reason to even speak of a cheeseburger joint. No one asks you "hey do you know of a place to eat where the people are friendly?"

I think it's extremely naive to think Blizzard maintains a massive player base simply because they communicate with their players in the development process. They fucking advertise on Adult Swim and MTV whatever other shit channels with Verne Troyer, Ozzy Osbourne, and Mr. T. That's why they maintain a huge pool of idiots paying for their service completely regardless if they fuck shit up in their game or not. They may have a pretty direct line with informing their customers of what's going on in the development side of things... but for a player, that's icing on the cake if you already liked playing their game. It's almost never a deciding factor.

Square-Enix may have had robotic, script-reading GMs and never liked to give hints and tidbits in interviews as well as being extremely vague in update notes, but how often does this directly affect your playing experience? Never? Sounds about right as the situations regarding unjustified bannings and suspensions were honestly few and far between (just blown out of proportion). I am convinced that Square-Enix wanted to keep everything vague and secretive regarding details of FFXI because they assumed it would create a closer and tighter-knit community that researched and discovered and communicated with each other instead of how Blizzard just fork-fed everyone with the details of each update, mechanic, item, etc. We had items that had hidden effects and undisclosed triggers that we had to test and discover and possibly feel some sort of accomplishment upon discovering. If they handed over every piece of data about how everything worked, there would probably have never been discussions or suggestions for anything, just recipes for what to wear and do in any situation. Cookie-fucking-cutter right off the bat.

I never said Blizzard's sole reason for success is their service. I said that I prefer their method of service, and if I had to pick between the two, I'd pick Blizzards. I also said earlier that I'd really like a mix of the two, but absolutely more than SE's current policy of bi-annual stagnant communication for a game that I pay for each month.

How often does their lack of communication affect my gameplay? Simple. Every time there is a bug and it goes reported and un-commented on, or hell, even unacknowledged.

You say that you felt that they kept things tight-lipped to bolster the community? How is that possible outside of bolstering botting and cheating? The community feels that the claim system is flawed in the early days. Okay, they band together by botting and MPKing one another. The community feels that the crafting system is a bit too wonky and unreliable. Alright, they responded by botting the hell out of it for skillups. The community felt that salvage drops were far too low. They responded by cheating and abusing glitches, trying to cover it up, and then complaining when they got banned.

There is nothing wrong in wanting a company to say a little diddy like: "We recognize that people feel that the droprates are too low here. We disagree because of XXX." That's it. I never wanted or needed SE to come by and give a 25% drop rate on anything. Just let me know that you are paying attention to the same things that I/we are.

You talk about cookie-cutter gear choices. FFXI was cookie-cutter. You got ridill, adaberk, and sky gear and you rolled for 4-5 years until SE brought in ToAU gear. If you couldn't use an adaberk, you used Scorp Harness. If you were talking about crafted gear, you wore dragon helms for the str, and used hellfire+1's for the damage. If you were a drg, you used the GKL when you hit 60, and using anything else was stupid. If you were a war, you went /nin and used axes and spammed rampage.

Cookie-cutter was cookie-cutter because it was the best. The only difference is that in WoW, you upgraded to the new best instead of sitting on the FFXI's best for years. Joytoy was the best for years. Adaberk was the best for years. SH was the best for years. Juggernaut/Maneater was the best for years. Cookie-cutter because it worked: just like any other game. It didn't take some in-game togetherness to figure these out: it only took in-game togetherness to figure out how to monopolize acquiring them.

FFXI was plenty cookie cutter even with SE's silence, or did you forget about the days of roaming sky parties featuring nothing but rng/nins, war/nins and a bard?

Your arguments are just like mine, but from a different side: full of truths and exemptions. Your opinion is that you love silence, and mine is that I don't love it. Simple as that.

[miokomioko]

GM not having the power to do anything isn't a game ruining experience, but it definitively make me want to invest my money somewher where people actually solve my issue.

This is what I think everyone likes to say but is always complete bullshit. How many people switched MMORPGs they have had years of progress/fun/etc with just because some GM couldn't restore some item/gil they irresponsibly gave to a scam, or a BS60 orb got lost in some glitch? I'd most likely be able to count them on my hand. It's just a lot of bitching, moaning, and trying to make a scene to get justice for themselves only. You don't play an online game for the customer service and leave when it's not up to par to serve your specific need at the time. You play it for the friends, the quests, the fights, the gaming experience, etc. Customer service is usually there to solve the problems you most likely got yourself into. And boy, all the Japanese, American, and European little brats sure got into a lot of trouble when they butt heads. Square-Enix GMs pretty much just represented an adult putting kids in time-outs and occasionally taking a toy out of a thief's hands and putting it back into the owner's. That's about it. The only thing I could ask more of them is to be a little more harsh in their punishments against douchebags/cheaters.

[Vacht]

Ultimately, my word of mouth might reach one extra person if the staff of said cheeseburger joint were friendly on top of having a great cheeseburger, which is the usually the primary reason to even speak of a cheeseburger joint. No one asks you "hey do you know of a place to eat where the people are friendly?"

I think it's extremely naive to think Blizzard maintains a massive player base simply because they communicate with their players in the development process. They fucking advertise on Adult Swim and MTV whatever other shit channels with Verne Troyer, Ozzy Osbourne, and Mr. T. That's why they maintain a huge pool of idiots paying for their service completely regardless if they fuck shit up in their game or not. They may have a pretty direct line with informing their customers of what's going on in the development side of things... but for a player, that's icing on the cake if you already liked playing their game. It's almost never a deciding factor.

Square-Enix may have had robotic, script-reading GMs and never liked to give hints and tidbits in interviews as well as being extremely vague in update notes, but how often does this directly affect your playing experience? Never? Sounds about right as the situations regarding unjustified bannings and suspensions were honestly few and far between (just blown out of proportion). I am convinced that Square-Enix wanted to keep everything vague and secretive regarding details of FFXI because they assumed it would create a closer and tighter-knit community that researched and discovered and communicated with each other instead of how Blizzard just fork-fed everyone with the details of each update, mechanic, item, etc. We had items that had hidden effects and undisclosed triggers that we had to test and discover and possibly feel some sort of accomplishment upon discovering. If they handed over every piece of data about how everything worked, there would probably have never been discussions or suggestions for anything, just recipes for what to wear and do in any situation. Cookie-fucking-cutter right off the bat.

Exactly.. hell im surprised youre needing to go this in depth with this. It should be pretty easy to recognize pop culture, advertisement and how capitalism works - living in america, and all. Im with you.

[Lucavi]

This is what I think everyone likes to say but is always complete bullshit. How many people switched MMORPGs they have had years of progress/fun/etc with just because some GM couldn't restore some item/gil they irresponsibly gave to a scam, or a BS60 orb got lost in some glitch? I'd most likely be able to count them on my hand. It's just a lot of bitching, moaning, and trying to make a scene to get justice for themselves only. You don't play an online game for the customer service and leave when it's not up to par to serve your specific need at the time. You play it for the friends, the quests, the fights, the gaming experience, etc. Customer service is usually there to solve the problems you most likely got yourself into. And boy, all the Japanese, American, and European little brats sure got into a lot of trouble when they butt heads. Square-Enix GMs pretty much just represented an adult putting kids in time-outs and occasionally taking a toy out of a thief's hands and putting it back into the owner's. That's about it. The only thing I could ask more of them is to be a little more harsh in their punishments against douchebags/cheaters.

Half the time they couldn't even reset your character's positions if you got stuck somewhere, like in a loading screen. There's a lot of bitching in moaning in any game, anywhere. Even if FFXI didn't have bitching and moaning about GMs or customer service, there sure was a bunch of bitching and moaning about other people, other Linkshells, monopolization, cheating, hacking, gil-selling, MPKing, and job inequality.

So much for the amazing community. I saw plenty of community togetherness in the Aery in 05.

[Kaylia]

This is what I think everyone likes to say but is always complete bullshit. How many people switched MMORPGs they have had years of progress/fun/etc with just because some GM couldn't restore some item/gil they irresponsibly gave to a scam, or a BS60 orb got lost in some glitch? I'd most likely be able to count them on my hand. It's just a lot of bitching, moaning, and trying to make a scene to get justice for themselves only. You don't play an online game for the customer service and leave when it's not up to par to serve your specific need at the time. You play it for the friends, the quests, the fights, the gaming experience, etc. Customer service is usually there to solve the problems you most likely got yourself into. And boy, all the Japanese, American, and European little brats sure got into a lot of trouble when they butt heads. Square-Enix GMs pretty much just represented an adult putting kids in time-outs and occasionally taking a toy out of a thief's hands and putting it back into the owner's. That's about it. The only thing I could ask more of them is to be a little more harsh in their punishments against douchebags/cheaters.

Like I said, the "right" and "wrong" stacks. You don't leave/join a mmo for a single thing, but when there is too many annoyances, I'm just going to quit, and never look back. People didn't leave because they couldnt get their ridill, people didn't leave because pankration wasnt what thye wanted, people didn't leave because of drama, or fail service, but if you combine everything, it's eventually enough to make one person fed up with the game.

Between a blizzard's mmo and a SquareEnix's mmo, the chance that I go to a blizzard mmo in the future is much higher than another SquareEnix's mmo, because their service are much better. Dealing with SquareEnix was nothing but frustration, and if possible, I would rather avoid this again.

[Lucavi]

I'd go with both because they are both great companies, but both need improvements, something that which some people around here seem to not understand.

[miokomioko]

My question is: How does one person end up dealing with enough repeat situations of needing customer service to really have an affect on their online experience? You say that "dealing with Square-Enix was nothing but frustration." That may be, but how often would ever have to deal with said frustration? I just don't understand how people end up frequently calling GMs enough to care about their service without honestly doing it to themselves. I'm convinced that most people's severely negative opinion of Square-Enix's customer service is 99% based on the experiences/screenshots/whatever that someone else has posted on BlueGartr.

[arus2001]

How about their support number not being toll free? Even if only 1/1000 may have to use it, watching your long distance charges rack up while you sit on hold for a while isn't exactly what I call customer friendly. Then you get to enjoy months of waiting if your account got jacked as you go through their red tape.

As for advertising, I'd say WoW has been targeting the teen and college student demographic because they're often the ones with oodles of time on their hands and a monthly fee may very well be something they can manage with an allowance or even a part-time job. I don't give a shit who's peddling the commercial, but when's the last time we even saw one for XI? Last I can recall was shortly after NA release on USA (Or maybe it was Spike then...) during wrestling shortly after release. I dunno, wrestling may be popular, but I'm not quite sure it's the right demographic, either. SE tried to ride the FF name with XI, and I think it backfired on 'em. Sure, ~500k may be respectable for a MMO for a few years, but there's no mistaking they could've done better, regardless of prattle about how X game is better because it did(n't) do Y.

[Kaylia]

My question is: How does one person end up dealing with enough repeat situations of needing customer service to really have an affect on their online experience? You say that "dealing with Square-Enix was nothing but frustration." That may be, but how often would ever have to deal with said frustration? I just don't understand how people end up frequently calling GMs enough to care about their service without honestly doing it to themselves. I'm convinced that most people's severely negative opinion of Square-Enix's customer service is 99% based on the experiences/screenshots/whatever that someone else has posted on BlueGartr.

It's not just convo with GM and and phone call (even if I had bad experience with both), it's also how they deal with answer in interview and other shit like this.

[Kaluuki]

My question is: How does one person end up dealing with enough repeat situations of needing customer service to really have an affect on their online experience?..etc.

Agreed. I don't think I've ever had to deal with GMs/whatever more than three times, and all of the times they were pretty friendly. That, or I don't remember it.

[Yeargdribble]

But beyond the GM bullshit, the pure ease of use is a problem. You might say it's a non-issue with GMs, but just regular usage issues suck in FFXI. If you want to take a break and come back, god does it suck to be you. Setting up POL and all of your account stuff is nearly impossible. Plenty of people have been confused and basically erased their account for all time because they didn't know the far reaching consequences while just trying to deactivate their account.

Billing is fucking stupid and if you started up on the 29th, you're billed a whole month for a precious few hours of play. If you need to reinstall and update, that's a chore as well.

Blizzard got this shit right. You wanna reactivate, no fucking problem. It takes all of 1 minute to do so... seriously. When you wanna play, you click one icon and you play the goddamned game. You don't go through 3 passwords screens, tons of other shit and get told about your mail or your fees and navigate through crap to play.

SE has made access to their game a hassle and people don't wanna deal with that. Just from a business standpoint you want to make it easy to make snap judgments and buy spontaneously without thinking about it. Impulse reactivation for a tiny craving of WoW probably gets plenty of people back all the time.

This type of thing is all but impossible in FFXI. If you had a sudden urge to try it out again, you'd be over halfway through all of the horseshit of trying to get your shit running again.