Final Fantasy XIV still playable for free, monthly fee 'still out in the open'

by JC Fletcher on Apr 2nd 2011 3:10AM

When Square Enix restarted the Final Fantasy XI and XIV servers after the Tohoku earthquake, it offered free play through the month of April. However, Square Enix has actually been offering Final Fantasy XIV play for free since launch -- its free trial period kept being extended and has never stopped. It was extended indefinitely when Square Enix restructured the team and announced plans to overhaul the game.

New producer Naoki Yoshida told Gamasutra that the end of the free trial is "still out in the open," and that the team will only begin accepting payments once a solid plan for improving the game is in place. "Without that, me, personally, as a player wouldn't feel good about asking the player to pay money," he said. The prolonged free trial is "one of the ways that we can show players that we are serious and we are taking it seriously."

It's a bit of a Catch-22 -- as soon as the game stops being free, it'll start being worth the time.

Source: Gamasutra

Tags: final-fantasy-xiv, free, free-to-play, mmo, naoki-yoshida, pc, square-enix

Reader Comments (47)

Well not to sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Though I'm sure players of it will love to take advantage while Square is getting their ducks in a row.

Hoping they get it up to par and release it on the PS3.

@NinjaJesus

Agreed...that plus no monthly fee and I'll join in. Doubtful though.

@NinjaJesus I hope so. I want to play it so bad, even if I keep hearing all these bad things about it. I was so excited for it but my laptop wont run it :\

@DanteSparda504

You're not missing anything.

@NinjaJesus

Hmm, im sure it was supposed to be coming out on PS3 in March...

@LEONLEONLEON

it got indefinetly postponed months ago.

@NinjaJesus
I've been waiting for this on the PS3 for AGES. auuugh it hurts my soul that PC players get it for FREEEEEEEEE *enviousrage*

I just wanted a nice head start on my character this time around as I was rather late to the FFXI party.

Well hopefully DCUO will continue to tide me over :D

They should have been serious before they put it out the door.

You still have to enter your credit card information with a 3rd party in order to play the game, and I disagreed with that and cancelled everything. There's no reason for 3rd party billing when FFXI didn't use it.

Also, having to read a FAQ someone posted on the forums in order to cancel your account is absurd. You need a manual just to navigate their horrible website.

I think more MMO's should stick/switch to the free-to-play model. Didn't Turbine's LOTRO revenue triple after it switched to F2P?

and obviously the real reason I'm saying this is because I don't want to pay money

(after I buy the game of course)

@FuriousMailman

LOTRO is actually a semi decent game.

FF14 is just bad. As they themselves have said, it would be a crime of nature to charge for it.

Yeah, Squeenix already knows the FFXIV is that bad. Hence, the reason of the proposed overhaul plan for the game and I hope it'll be soon or just scrap the game while they haven't ripped anyone yet. Nobody paid for pre-order or something for this game right? I feel sorry for those who bought it. I just hope Squeenix can make this game better and redeem it.

It's hard to compete in the MMO world since there are lots of them plus more are coming. It's really a tough competition out there unless there's something new to offer in this genre that's unique among others.

@isotrex

I bought it. It really is a pretty game and then you went to play it. No content :(

I am going to try going back into the game now. I've seen it pop up enough I am curious and free is easy to get back into. I stopped playing month two so I'll see how things have progressed. And by progressed I mean having a structured game.

If all else fails they should just model their more popular FF11 MMO.

@Misfit Toy

Hey, the content still isn't really there. They've started adding side quests and said they will continue to for each major update. Also, the April patch (1.17&1.17a) will lay the ground work for the mid to high level PvE content.

I guess I'm trying to say that if you're basing your future with this game on the next time you log in I'd hold out for a little while longer unless you want to work on getting the head start with your character advancement like I am.

I honestly enjoy playing this game but I never really got in to WoW-like MMO's and really played the crap out of FFXI. Part of what makes me enjoy playing right now is I know that the new Director (Yoshida) is the right man at the helm and is determined to make this game worthy of the Final Fantasy name.

Can someone please explain whats so bad about it? I have been looking forward to it, But all ive heard is "this game sucks".

@LEONLEONLEON

It'd be much easier to explain what's good about it.

And that's umm... well.. er... it.. looks nice?

What they should do... is make a single player version to the story.. same for 11

@Mazrael

*This*.

@ShadowXIII

Also *This*.

And also to the F2P model. I would totally get up in some FFXI if I didn't feel I HAD to meet a quota of playtime per month to make the investment worth it.

@TJF588 For 15 that quota would be a few hours. F2p games suck. All of them.

@Jack Kevorkian

Hooray for generalizations!

So how exactly can we play it for free? Can we download the game from their site and make an account with an indefinitely long trial period? Or do I have do buy the actual game first?

Are they limited to one person per disc (e.g. some kind of DRM)?

Can you even have a full account at the moment, or are all the accounts "trial" accounts since Square Enix aren't charging money?

Sorry for all the questions, but the only MMO I have any clue about is WoW, and I haven't really kept up with news of XIV. I tried to get a trial for XI but they no longer have them, so... Yes, single-player ones that just give us the damn story without being an adventure in corporate greed land would be nice.

@TCJJ

I'm pretty sure its only 'free' in the monthly fee sense. You likely still have to buy a box copy or pay for a digital download of the client like I did. Going rate is $38 on Amazon.

@TCJJ

Yes, you still need to buy the box but the monthly fee is waved until the game gets to a point where they feel like it can stand on its own, I'd imagine this will be when they do the PS3 launch.

Each box comes with one guest pass that you can give to a friend, it says it gives them 30 days for free but my friend who uses my guest pass is still playing for free 5 months later.

Each account is able to make the maximum amount of characters allowed for the account for free and as of right now, each character is allowed two retainers (mules) free of charge. Be warned that unless they change this, each additional character made will cost extra once the game goes back to the monthly fee like how it is in FFXI. If you haven't played FFXI or FFXIV the reason for this is because each character is able to take up all the classes to level cap so you don't need to have a dozen characters to play every class like you do in other MMO's.

Accounts made with the games registration code are considered full accounts while the guest pass codes remain a trial account but still have full access to the game.

FFXI was PAINFUL to play. The endgame was based on how fast your connection speed is and thus you could never outclaim Japanese botters for HNM spawns (the servers were in Japan). Plus the Japanese had the game for years before US people had it and thus amassed insurmountable quantities of wealth and controlled the game's market with an iron first. What a joke.

@TheRedComet
And it's changed a lot since then.

@TheRedComet awwww! A game that doesn't revolve around american players! What a joke!

lol Free. You would have to pay me to play this crappy game. FF XIV is the worst MMO ever made bar none. They have to let people play it for free just to get anyone to play it. Take my word for it, this game blows. The Japanese idea of gaming is to subject you to as much pain as you can bare. The simplest things in this game, like checking your inventory can take upwards of 5 minutes. I repeat this game blows.

@maxxgold ain't it lucky that quite a lot lately seem not to be taking your word for it?

They would do well to just announce that the game is permanently free to play.

You made total asses of yourselves Square, man up and accept the fact that you'll never regain credibility with FF XIV.

Accept that and just go with the wildly successful model for MMOs being free to play subsidized by pay for items. And sure, keep the initial price tag for the game like Guild Wars did if you must. Just remember that Guild Wars was worth paying for.

How you could do EVERYTHING wrong with a game, let alone a fragile MMO game, is beyond me. Thank your lucky stars you have the name Final Fantasy, otherwise you'd be dead in the water.

@Mmmmz said the one with the crystal ball.

Too bad their website is down and I can't even subscribe.

i hope they get the game up and running to what it was suppose to be on launch day. it is crazy to me that they didn't listen to the beta testers at all and now that the game finally got released, NOW they decided to start fixing it. I was in the beta all through since alpha went live but no improvements and lack of communication between players and testers made me cancel my CE 1 week before release day. what was the point for us testers still bothers me, lol. but i have a feeling they won't start charging monthly fees until the ps3 version is released, whenever that may be.

That's not a Catch-22 :(

@daftsquare I know, right?

There is no monthly fee? I should give it a try... did they improve it any since launch?

@phinn

They made the monsters bigger.

@phinn plenty, actually. The UI and the markets have been overhauled, NM monsters added, quests added, leveling is much smoother and streamlined, more quests and quite a lot of other things.

of course the haters will deny the importance of any improvement, for obvious reasons.

Once the montly fee starts kicking in they will all leave. Only reason why people play this game is because it is free.

I'd try it if they would offer me some compensation for my time...

"...as soon as the game stops being free, it'll start being worth the time."
+
....fletcher must still dream about when his rainbow unicorn will ever come home again~

If any developers read this, heed my words, "You do not need to have a persistent world, or a sandbox mmo. You do -not- need to look polished. You need to deliver an experience that can literally beat -free-. In order to do that, you must develop new games, and when I say new, I dont mean a variation of something popular. There is nothing wrong with linear games, or instanced games. There is nothing wrong with the tank/healer/dps system. Innovative features do not constitute for actual innovative games. You must either develop a non mmo game into an MMO, and I mean literally transfer the gameplay into that mmo, not just the storyline and content. Or you must create a new form of gameplay. Noone wants the next 10 Dynasty Warriors to be exactly the same plus a couple features, and yet, they produced another one, except that its an mmo. People may buy an mmo because of an IP, but they will enjoy it if its a new kind of gameplay."

Another Final Fantasy MMO? Do something different Square, you disappointed all of us who loved the J-RPG genre over the last few years.

FFXIV is definitely worth my time right now. There's plenty of room for improvement, but the innovative mechanics it brought to the table are a treat after 10 years of samey samey.

Has the game been optimised any better, or does it still run like shit unless you have a very powerful rig?

Does anybody have a guest pass available? I would like to try this out. Thanks in advance.

Final Fantasy 14

Final Fantasy XIV still playable for free, monthly fee 'still out in the open'

Reader Comments (47)

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 3:12AM Stevetrop Man of Mystery said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 3:12AM NinjaJesus said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 4:00AM ShadowXIII said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 4:37AM DanteSparda504 said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 4:57AM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 6:30AM LEONLEONLEON said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 7:26AM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Apr 4th 2011 9:37AM Spookimitsu said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 3:29AM KingBroly said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 3:56AM VIVIsectVI said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 4:14AM FuriousMailman said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 4:17AM FuriousMailman said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 4:58AM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 6:25AM isotrex said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 9:46AM Misfit Toy said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 11:11AM Mevan said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 6:32AM LEONLEONLEON said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 7:28AM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 6:43AM Mazrael said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 7:00AM ShadowXIII said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 7:11AM TJF588 said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 12:54PM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 9:07PM Colin said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 9:07AM TCJJ said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 9:50AM Misfit Toy said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 11:23AM Mevan said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 9:10AM TheRedComet said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 10:49AM myr said

Posted: Apr 3rd 2011 8:56AM Abriael said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 9:44AM maxxgold said

Posted: Apr 3rd 2011 8:57AM Abriael said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 10:14AM Mmmmz said

Posted: Apr 3rd 2011 8:55AM Abriael said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 10:30AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 11:26AM DeadlySwordz said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 1:12PM daftsquare said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 5:53PM Flapjackal said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 2:28PM phinn said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 10:50PM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Apr 3rd 2011 8:54AM Abriael said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 6:18PM SaintV said

Posted: Apr 2nd 2011 8:44PM hiruuamon said

Posted: Apr 3rd 2011 12:27AM EEdocSnitthu said

Posted: Apr 3rd 2011 2:26AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 3rd 2011 8:52AM Abriael said

Posted: Apr 3rd 2011 1:19PM Railgun said

Posted: Apr 21st 2011 11:59PM (Unverified) said

Final Fantasy 14 Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW