So PS3 only folks, any of you walking away?

[Kaylia]

I think that depends. If there aren't that many people playing at start, I don't think that's a 'bad start' by default. But if the game is glitchy and unstable, people won't get a good first impression.

If it was simply about lack of initial players, I don't think that would be a problem since the game would keep growing over time as long as something better doesn't come along.

If it's getting positive feedback and a lot of visibility, it could happen, but gamers and media both have adhd these days.

[Jinko]

My only option now is to just bite the bullet and spend over $100.00 on World of Warcraft with it's expansion packs that are somehow not bundled together for a cheaper price.. I'll definately play FFXIV when it comes out on the pS3 since i've been waiting for "Square Enix's next gen mmorpg, codenamed: Rapture" ever since 2006.

Or you could find a part time job (maybe extra hours) and save that $100 and put it towards an upgrade/cheap gaming PC, they aren't that more expensive than a PS3.

You don't even need a monitor if you have a decent HDTV.

Really depends how desperate you are to play the game

[BlackheartX]

SE has some serious confidence because if the PC version gets bombed in public opinion when it comes out the PS3 version is going to be hurt badly retail. (If you haven't seen the comments section on gametrailers.com for the Alpha-->Beta comparison video check it out. It's a pretty funny clash of lovers and haters in the war of thumbs.

[BlackheartX]

Or you could find a part time job (maybe extra hours) and save that $100 and put it towards a cheap gaming PC, they aren't that more expensive than a PS3.

You don't even need a monitor if you have a decent HDTV.

Really depends how desperate you are to play the game

Yes HDTV's make good monitors. Also the game is in DX9 a rig for this game won't cost a ton. (don't trust the benchmark unless you get like 2k max)

[Jinko]

Well FF11 has left many MMO players with a bad taste in their mouth, a lot can't get past the "bad controls", but I agree that SE could potentially do more harm than good if the game is released in an unfinished state.

Can't be worse than WotG can it :S

[Hyan]

SE has some serious confidence because if the PC version gets bombed in public opinion when it comes out the PS3 version is going to be hurt badly retail.

Not to mention they already announced release date when they can't get the beta client ready for download 'in time' that only few selected people have gotten to test for 30mins in the first place.

I wish I had that much confidence. Tanaka means business.

[Elrina]

I certainly understand why it would be silly to buy a PS3 solely for XIV, and the variety of potential marketing perks this might allow for (including keeping a potentially fair amount of XI subs more than they would have out of the people going to XIV who now don't have those friends from XI coming with them).

And it's easy to argue that it's relatively inexpensive to go buy a "cheap gaming PC" to play it. But then there's the point that who wants to go out and spend $400~$700 for a rig that will "play" it, but on the lower end of the specs. My situation happens to be that I simply can't afford to. I have a family, including a kid, and one income. PS3 would have gotten me by till next tax season when I actually would have gone out and gotten a PC (and not a cheap gaming rig, but a proper one) for it, which now happens to be not much sooner than the actual PS3 release anyway.

Even if I could somehow manage to scrape together the money for a cheap rig now, at best it would kill any justification I'd have to want to get a new PC at the beginning of next year, that would actually keep up with the game for the years to come instead of just "right now".

It's a game, and it's a choice, and everyone has their circumstances and choices. People saying "be glad the bugs will be worked out" and "that's when the first nice content patches will be getting added" shouldn't waste their breath, because that means nothing to someone who actually wants to play it and not miss out on anything, even if that includes bugs and only basic content to start.

Like someone else mentioned, it didn't even take ~6 months to be done with Aion and WAR, and (heaven forbid) this goes that route, all we get are a lot of secondhand reasons why we should just avoid it instead of getting to find out why for ourselves. And it's really difficult for people to avoid information about the game beyond the kind of stuff we'll get from alpha/beta over the course of six months, unless you completely shut yourself off from your friends playing it and stop reading the forums related to it, which also sucks. You'll always have friends wanting to hold your hand and explain why "you should do this" instead of "that" because "it's already been figured out as better".

And seriously, the people comparing this to XI's release what, 7 years ago here in the states? You should know better. This isn't 2003 anymore, and it's a different market then it was then, with different players. Most people who played XI seriously all this time won't be fumbling around like noobs without any idea of what to do for very long. There will be purpose, tests, goals, from the very beginning to figure out what makes the game tick and how worthwhile it's max levels are with it's initial offering. We may not know everything there is to know in six months, but we'll surely know the vast majority of everything we specifically want to find out about.

And while it may be argued that "six months" out of a potential 6+ year lifespan is not very long, it's probably the most pivotal six months of the game's life, and who wants to miss that?

I wish I could just buy the PC version, run it, be happy and merry and no worries. I wish that were an option that wouldn't require sacrificing aspects of my real life for the next several months to only just manage it, and that even if I did it wouldn't cripple my play experience for years.

Ultimately it's just a lot of QQing, and we have to live with what we've got. But it's easy for people with the means to talk down to the people without. I have at least one friend not talking to me because I suggested I may not want to bother getting on six months in (gg @ that), since that would make playing the game more like jumping immediately into a serious grind to catch up, while trying my best to avoid too much information I don't want to know, while hating myself for wanting to just conform to what's already been figured out, all the while not having any of the actual -fun- that would be involved in all of it if I was in from release.

Maybe a year in, or two, apathy will set in and it'll be easier to join it as an actual game-in-progress, rather than something anticipated for over a year, then being forced to wait around watching other people play in the pool for six months while you're forced to stand at the fence and see all the fun they're having, till you're finally allowed in to join them after they've gotten settled in and/or bored of just splashing around. And I'm sure the game won't miss me if that's what I end up deciding to do six months in, I just think that it really sucks that this is the way they decided it has to be.

They may be able to slip by with it all on a "technicality" of speech, as some people put it, but they knew how everyone took it. They deliberately allowed the world to believe there would be a simultaneous worldwide launch on both PS3 and PC, knowing that we all believed it.

Deliberate deception, even if they didn't technically say something untrue, is still lying.

Meh, tl;dr.
/emo

[Kaylia]

SE has some serious confidence because if the PC version gets bombed in public opinion when it comes out the PS3 version is going to be hurt badly retail. (If you haven't seen the comments section on gametrailers.com for the Alpha-->Beta comparison video check it out. It's a pretty funny clash of lovers and haters in the war of thumbs.

SE is one of the few companies that can count on a solid fanbase of hardcore gamers. I don't think their confidence is entirely misplaced in a way.

That said I agree with you. It's kinda risky bet they made.

Not to mention they already announced release date when they can't get the beta client ready for download 'in time' that only few selected people have gotten to test for 30mins in the first place.

The entire team is slaving in the development room to meet the deadline, leaving no one avaible to upload the beta.

[BlackheartX]

I certainly understand why it would be silly to buy a PS3 solely for XIV, and the variety of potential marketing perks this might allow for (including keeping a potentially fair amount of XI subs more than they would have out of the people going to XIV who now don't have those friends from XI coming with them).

And it's easy to argue that it's relatively inexpensive to go buy a "cheap gaming PC" to play it. But then there's the point that who wants to go out and spend $400~$700 for a rig that will "play" it, but on the lower end of the specs. My situation happens to be that I simply can't afford to. I have a family, including a kid, and one income. PS3 would have gotten me by till next tax season when I actually would have gone out and gotten a PC (and not a cheap gaming rig, but a proper one) for it, which now happens to be not much sooner than the actual PS3 release anyway.

Even if I could somehow manage to scrape together the money for a cheap rig now, at best it would kill any justification I'd have to want to get a new PC at the beginning of next year, that would actually keep up with the game for the years to come instead of just "right now".

It's a game, and it's a choice, and everyone has their circumstances and choices. People saying "be glad the bugs will be worked out" and "that's when the first nice content patches will be getting added" shouldn't waste their breath, because that means nothing to someone who actually wants to play it and not miss out on anything, even if that includes bugs and only basic content to start.

Like someone else mentioned, it didn't even take ~6 months to be done with Aion and WAR, and (heaven forbid) this goes that route, all we get are a lot of secondhand reasons why we should just avoid it instead of getting to find out why for ourselves. And it's really difficult for people to avoid information about the game beyond the kind of stuff we'll get from alpha/beta over the course of six months, unless you completely shut yourself off from your friends playing it and stop reading the forums related to it, which also sucks. You'll always have friends wanting to hold your hand and explain why "you should do this" instead of "that" because "it's already been figured out as better".

And seriously, the people comparing this to XI's release what, 7 years ago here in the states? You should know better. This isn't 2003 anymore, and it's a different market then it was then, with different players. Most people who played XI seriously all this time won't be fumbling around like noobs without any idea of what to do for very long. There will be purpose, tests, goals, from the very beginning to figure out what makes the game tick and how worthwhile it's max levels are with it's initial offering. We may not know everything there is to know in six months, but we'll surely know the vast majority of everything we specifically want to find out about.

And while it may be argued that "six months" out of a potential 6+ year lifespan is not very long, it's probably the most pivotal six months of the game's life, and who wants to miss that?

I wish I could just buy the PC version, run it, be happy and merry and no worries. I wish that were an option that wouldn't require sacrificing aspects of my real life for the next several months to only just manage it, and that even if I did it wouldn't cripple my play experience for years.

Ultimately it's just a lot of QQing, and we have to live with what we've got. But it's easy for people with the means to talk down to the people without. I have at least one friend not talking to me because I suggested I may not want to bother getting on six months in (gg @ that), since that would make playing the game more like jumping immediately into a serious grind to catch up, while trying my best to avoid too much information I don't want to know, while hating myself for wanting to just conform to what's already been figured out, all the while not having any of the actual -fun- that would be involved in all of it if I was in from release.

Maybe a year in, or two, apathy will set in and it'll be easier to join it as an actual game-in-progress, rather than something anticipated for over a year, then being forced to wait around watching other people play in the pool for six months while you're forced to stand at the fence and see all the fun they're having, till you're finally allowed in to join them after they've gotten settled in and/or bored of just splashing around. And I'm sure the game won't miss me if that's what I end up deciding to do six months in, I just think that it really sucks that this is the way they decided it has to be.

They may be able to slip by with it all on a "technicality" of speech, as some people put it, but they knew how everyone took it. They deliberately allowed the world to believe there would be a simultaneous worldwide launch on both PS3 and PC, knowing that we all believed it.

Deliberate deception, even if they didn't technically say something untrue, is still lying.

Meh, tl;dr.
/emo

That was understandably emo it does suck that PS3 verison got pushed back and building a rig for a game is a cash sink (probably stupid even unless you really want it). Dev team dropped the ball and market forces are saying put up or shut up and they jumped.

[BlackheartX]

SE is one of the few companies that can count on a solid fanbase of hardcore gamers. I don't think their confidence is entirely misplaced in a way.

That said I agree with you. It's kinda risky bet they made.


The entire team is slaving in the development room to meet the deadline, leaving no one avaible to upload the beta.

Yeah they do have a solid fan base but I don't think 500k subscribers is gonna cut it this time.

[Hyan]

Yeah they do have a solid fan base but I don't think 500k subscribers is gonna cut it this time.

How 'bout the 5,5mil peeps who bought XIII? ;o

[Jinko]

I don't think you can can rely on Final Fantasy fans to buy this game either tbh, did you forget what most of them were saying when they saw the words MMO and online .. lol

[Kaylia]

And seriously, the people comparing this to XI's release what, 7 years ago here in the states? You should know better. This isn't 2003 anymore, and it's a different market then it was then, with different players. Most people who played XI seriously all this time won't be fumbling around like noobs without any idea of what to do for very long. There will be purpose, tests, goals, from the very beginning to figure out what makes the game tick and how worthwhile it's max levels are with it's initial offering. We may not know everything there is to know in six months, but we'll surely know the vast majority of everything we specifically want to find out about.

Level 1 endgame.

It's a good point you bring up, because MMO "veteran" definitively won't approach the game the same way they did with FFXI. People will build parser right from the start, they are going to hunt down equations, they will figure out strategy much quicker...etc That crowd will need more than a bare bone tossed at them, they will want meat right away.

[Hyan]

Well I'm sure a lot more people tried XI than the 500k 'dedicated' subscribers but got turned off by the excessive casual aspects.

And I'm sure a lot more will try it now when it's easier to set up, EU users will actually get the PS3 version and MMO's have become more 'mainstream', removing some of the skepticism.

The most vocal minority won't touch the game for sure though, but if at least half of those 5~million peeps try it out and like it, thats already many times more subscriptions than mere 500k.

They will also be more forgiving than the MMO "vets" when it comes down to it, although I'm sure a lot of FF fans already play WoW or something similar.

[GavinBandura]

Just wait...... is that too much?

[Dense]

I had intended to be PS3 only, and now am considering building a PC for it.

[person2007]

I'm slightly annoyed about the PS3 date, but i've had to buy a new rig for a while since this one is 5 years old so i doesn't really affect me.

6 Months is a long time and people could(will be) already probably at Endgame, while the PS3 guys are having to start in the shadow of the higher players. Doesn't apply to casuals but obviously does for Vets. Also i don't expect this game to sell more than 500k but we'll see.

[Gilanth]

I'll try a slight PC upgrade if that don't hit the benchmarks i'll just play Catalysm until march , Us poor old EU were 2 years behind last time and it did'nt make much difference.

[Mizango]

But its the greatest console on earth. Glad I wont have to hear about the PS3 limitations for a few months, mega consolers are a retarded bunch.

[Hyan]

But its the greatest console on earth. Glad I wont have to hear about the PS3 limitations for a few months, mega consolers are a retarded bunch.

Christ you are butthurt lol