FINAL FANTASY XIV for PC Confirmed for 30th SEPTEMBER 2010 Release

[Shuichi]

Pre-order in for two. Building new PCs in two weeks. Ready to go! Time to cut up horribly in Aion.

[Fanfon]

No UK/EU orders avaliable yet?

[Gryffes]

No UK/EU orders avaliable yet?

Regular non CE can be ordered from amazon uk, but not the CE.

[Freelancer]

So the goggles will come with regular but not CE? if that's the case that kinda blows.

[Unleaded]

lol lucavi what makes you think they are releasing it early? when has SE ever released something early? lol its always late

I'll answer not for him but for my opinion because I totally agree. I am very very skeptical of this game now. I've beta tested many many mmorpg's in my day, and I've never seen one go from alpha > beta > release as fast as this. Cataclysm alpha started around same time, and will probably be released after FFXIV, and that's an expansion, and Blizzard is putting more testing time into an expansion, than Square is for a fully fledged game. WoW Closed BETA lasted 7 months, then had a stress test and open beta. So here we are 3 months from launch, all we've seen is like 1 zone, no endgame content, and 10 missing jobs that have yet to even be announced.

In 3 months, they have to test pretty much the whole damn game, make sure it's polished, make sure there is enough content, make sure it's not buggy, and make sure it's balanced. Call me a skeptic call me what you will, but I don't think this is a good sign in the least.

As for your question when has SE released something early? Last Remnant got destroyed in reviews because of how buggy it was. Or how they are getting sued for Final Fantasy 13 because of a saving bug that would make ps3's inoperable.

[DeathbySnoosnoo]

I'll answer not for him but for my opinion because I totally agree. I am very very skeptical of this game now. I've beta tested many many mmorpg's in my day, and I've never seen one go from alpha > beta > release as fast as this. Cataclysm alpha started around same time, and will probably be released after FFXIV, and that's an expansion, and Blizzard is putting more testing time into an expansion, than Square is for a fully fledged game. WoW Closed BETA lasted 7 months, then had a stress test and open beta. So here we are 3 months from launch, all we've seen is like 1 zone, no endgame content, and 10 missing jobs that have yet to even be announced.

In 3 months, they have to test pretty much the whole damn game, make sure it's polished, make sure there is enough content, make sure it's not buggy, and make sure it's balanced. Call me a skeptic call me what you will, but I don't think this is a good sign in the least.

Did you play wow when it was released lol, all of the beta servers that they kept collapsed for about 3 weeks lol. SE is always secretive, but 1 thing they do well is make sure the game is well done. yes occasionally their games have glitches but compare their track record to just about any other game company and you'll see how fucking awesome they are as far as game quality goes. now their PR team on the other hand lol is terribad

[Katlan]

In 3 months, they have to test pretty much the whole damn game, make sure it's polished, make sure there is enough content, make sure it's not buggy, and make sure it's balanced. Call me a skeptic call me what you will, but I don't think this is a good sign in the least.

It's highly likely that 9/22 & 9/30 may be pushed back because the game has not gone gold. This is just the date they expect the game to be ready by. And I'm sure SE knows more about how far into development the game is then we do. So its hard to be all like "It's too early. 3 months isnt enough time!" when, for all we know, the game could be damn near complete. Keep in mind they hadn't updated the alpha for over a month, and that the alpha is very far behind the beta client. So the alpha was mainly for stability and those things

[Yoli]

Yoli has a new game!~

I'm sure it will be buggy when it's released, because it does seem rushed through a bit for whatever reason, but I honestly can say I'm willing to live with that. As long as they work on fixing the bugs from the get-go and don't ignore them, I don't mind paying for a month or two of basically playing a beta quality game.

It'll annoy you if you expect it to come out seemlessly, I'm sure.

So just don't, and be happy you get to start toying around early.

[zeu]

While I agree their release date is rather sudden, I have faith in them still. Though I have been proven wrong before..

It seems to me that they are either keeping what they have completed a very tight secret, to keep certain individuals from digging up data, or until the PS3 version comes out it will basically be us paying to test and give feedback.

[mintyice]

I'll answer not for him but for my opinion because I totally agree. I am very very skeptical of this game now. I've beta tested many many mmorpg's in my day, and I've never seen one go from alpha > beta > release as fast as this. Cataclysm alpha started around same time, and will probably be released after FFXIV, and that's an expansion, and Blizzard is putting more testing time into an expansion, than Square is for a fully fledged game. WoW Closed BETA lasted 7 months, then had a stress test and open beta. So here we are 3 months from launch, all we've seen is like 1 zone, no endgame content, and 10 missing jobs that have yet to even be announced.

In 3 months, they have to test pretty much the whole damn game, make sure it's polished, make sure there is enough content, make sure it's not buggy, and make sure it's balanced. Call me a skeptic call me what you will, but I don't think this is a good sign in the least.

As for your question when has SE released something early? Last Remnant got destroyed in reviews because of how buggy it was. Or how they are getting sued for Final Fantasy 13 because of a saving bug that would make ps3's inoperable.

good point

[Zeh]

Why does it come out so soon after school starts? My grades are gonna be fucked

[Creeps]

I start two jobs and graduate school right when this shit comes out, fuck me

[Eticket]

Good to know SE is continuing the trend of letting their paying customers be their beta testers.

[Fawkes]

So the goggles will come with regular but not CE? if that's the case that kinda blows.

It sounds like they come with every preorder.

We don't get a tumbler or music cd though.

[Destinye]

I'll answer not for him but for my opinion because I totally agree. I am very very skeptical of this game now. I've beta tested many many mmorpg's in my day, and I've never seen one go from alpha > beta > release as fast as this.

What is there to be skeptical about? There won't be 820 hours worth of content upon release? The game is fine. People are trying to compare it to other MMOs which is the first mistake, because if it's built differently there's "obviously problems" because it's not exactly like X MMO.

FFXIV also been in the works for 5 years, granted most isn't physical production, but 5 years is more than enough time. in terms of development it actually went VERY slow from Alpha/Dev Build > Beta. Not to mention the only thing they have to test is the core systems because everything else is just fluff.

Since you're not on the dev team you can't realistically think the public testing is the only testing that's been going on? This is why Alphas are internal because people get confused (as seen here) as to the progression and quality of the game and why the first build you'll see of any game playable is indeed a beta.

In 3 months they have to test server stability and that's it. If you've played the alpha you'll know the game mostly had server issues more than anything (outside of usual alpha fare) and everything else will obviously be changed. They can't crank out a beta version RIGHT after an alpha version like they're doing now without obviously having other versions prebuilt (like all good game studios) so comparing dev time between an expansion to a full on game is kinda silly..especially when a full on game (MMORPG) is released in chunks to begin with.

Also as for the FFXIII issue? I've never heard of anything outside of rare freezing on either console, only time I heard of a save issue is people who are trying to mod said save files. 5 years of development time with public testing the last 5 months (barring it goes into august) of testing with a release of Sept 2010? That's not quick at all. That's very long compared to most games which are developed for only 2 years. Also..WoW is the last game to be exampled when comparing production quality >.>

[Thiefami]

The game only seems rushed because there hasn't been an official beta yet. The game has been in production for years already. I do not forsee it being pushed back honestly. I speculate retail to be complete. As for the rest (beta test) is just continued stress testing and tweaks in mission, quest, and battle operations for first day patch.

I think with this game a lot of privatized paid professional testing has been done, and the "public"(volunteer closed alpha/beta) ones are just party favors to the crowd.

[Mayareira]

Allright, I won't be able to graduate this semester.

[ufo]

I'll answer not for him but for my opinion because I totally agree. I am very very skeptical of this game now. I've beta tested many many mmorpg's in my day, and I've never seen one go from alpha > beta > release as fast as this. Cataclysm alpha started around same time, and will probably be released after FFXIV, and that's an expansion, and Blizzard is putting more testing time into an expansion, than Square is for a fully fledged game. WoW Closed BETA lasted 7 months, then had a stress test and open beta. So here we are 3 months from launch, all we've seen is like 1 zone, no endgame content, and 10 missing jobs that have yet to even be announced.

In 3 months, they have to test pretty much the whole damn game, make sure it's polished, make sure there is enough content, make sure it's not buggy, and make sure it's balanced. Call me a skeptic call me what you will, but I don't think this is a good sign in the least.

As for your question when has SE released something early? Last Remnant got destroyed in reviews because of how buggy it was. Or how they are getting sued for Final Fantasy 13 because of a saving bug that would make ps3's inoperable.

They don't plan on player testing every zone in the game, in fact most of the game will probably be closed off to players until retail. Plus who said anything about "missing jobs". Those are probably placeholders for future expansions.

[brand]

AOC did it; Warhammer did it; so many fall into that trap of releasing before "that MMO" to collect what money they can before the big one ships, but honestly, this has implications that are far worse than others.

AOC and Warhammer were PC-only: they didn't have an established fanbase that played the earlier game and were looking to play together. SE stands to lose a lot of subs from people that aren't going to want to play catch-up after filling their heads with the (reasonable) assumption that they'd all be able to launch together.

Not that this is entirely on topic, but FFXI rarely reported its subscription count. People largely assumed that the count was somewhere around 500k after the NA release. Let's assume it's 300k because that seems like a reasonable average. Consider that it's also been reported that at max, FFXI's original production costed somewhere near $25m. They also probably spent something like $10-15m for infrastructure, sustaining it, and advertisement in the first year, bringing out-of-the-box costs near $40m.

300k users in buying the software alone is $15m at $50 a box. At $13 a month per user, 300k users brings in $3.9m a month. Since the first month is free, the remaining $25m in costs will be recompensed with 300k users over a period of 8 full months.

But wait, production for an expansion begins right after release. These tend to average $5-10m in costs, another 2 months of 300k users. In one year's time (if we pretend that the NA release was the first release), Final Fantasy XI took a total of 11 months before turning a profit. Which is basically right on the expansion point of a MMO, compounding the cost-cycle again.

All of this is to point out that unless the game is seriously failing IN production (see Warhammer), there is no logical reason to just "ship out" your 5 year project to cut losses because it takes too long to earn it back if your subscriptions fall. FFXIV is going to have a much higher production cost on the simple terms that it is not a regional release. I wouldn't call this a rushed release just yet.

Anyhow, a delayed PS3 release could have dozens of reasons behind it from technical crossover or hardware issues, to something as practical as maintaining publicity a few months after release. Either way, why do people seem to be taking it so personally?

[Freelancer]

It sounds like they come with every preorder.

We don't get a tumbler or music cd though.

Just incase I'll get a CE for myself and regular for my little brother and then hijack his goggles if mine didn't come with any.

/genius.