Big changes (and one bighorn beast) afoot in Final Fantasy XIV

Looking forward to it. The new team is really doing a good job.

So i wonder if they will give any word on the PS3 port after they put out the update or if they will just wait and see how it is recieved first.

Wow I didn't realize this game was still playable for free. I wonder how much money Square has lost out on from not charging and poor sales. Monthly fees are the biggest thing that has held me back from trying MMOs but I feel like if I bought this one it would go pay to play the minute I do.

I'm not a player, but I am an industry watcher. I have to say that after an already 8 month free play system, with what would likely be nearly a year post-launch before a pay system moving to a straight pay system sounds disasterous. They should seriously consider some sort of freemium model a this point. The 'free-play' cat is out of the bag, and they're going to have a very hard time convincing players who have stuck with them through the dregs of an 8 month open Beta launch that they should start paying now. It's a competitive market, there are other games, and people on the Internet generally don't like paying for things they used to get free. New players who somehow make it past the disaster of a launch with some interest may balk at paying if the older crowd didn't. Perhaps a freemium expansion?

Have they patched in fun yet?

Looking forward to the PS3 release

They should just release FF14 - X2: Revision and market the thing as amazing.

No way are they going recover from that terrible launch.

This game is not fixable. I played all through the beta and it was horrible. It deserved the bad reviews it got. I cancelled my final order of that game and let all the fanboys have at it. It's still free to play so if you like sucky games, have fun.

I...kinda wanna play Monster Hunter for some reason.

Im still enjoying it being free, we'll see how these updates go to consider if it'll be worth the money

I've seen it before - With Vanguard specifically, but APB and Star Wars Galaxies as well. If you screw up the launch of an MMO, the game can never recover from it regardless of how good you make it.

Don't have FFXIV, but im loving what they're doing with it.
They realised it sucked, booted the original team and are actually bothering to make it work, nice.

Amazing. They really are re-building the game. The "wheel of weapons" theme (present in the logo) is even being removed in lieu of a proper job system. Maybe it was for the best, but I don't think the idea was bad rather than execution.

A complete disaster the FFXIV launch was, and this is the only way to handle fixing it. It still takes guts, however, as each major revision posted, planned, and implemented is an admission of that failure.

My idea? Make all the changes necessary until the feedback is good enough and they are comfortable enough to charge monthly. Get rid of the stupid currency system, be honest and just charge people's credit cards. Then, get the PS3 port ready, and re-launch the game with new box art, anything they can to distance it from the original (it's pretty much a different game after all).

Then when they have made a release we're all happy with, release the full damn soundtrack.

I play this game a lot. I thought it was just okay when I played the beta, but it's changed a lot since then and I feel like it's way better. I don't like most Final Fantasy games, but I do like this one.

I'm still playing, and I think it's getting much more fun. With the addition of quests, it feels a lot more meaty, and that probably wasn't TOO hard to implement. Once they've added the grand companies and the new job system, all the existing content should feel much better because it's not the only thing there. I'll keep playing this game until the end, I think, mainly because of my stupid fanboyism but also because I love what the newer dev team are doing.

I like DenebSwift's idea of a freemium expansion. Or maybe just do what Anarchy Online did after a few years, have the original game free, and charge a NOT MASSIVE amount a month for the first expansion (shadowlands). The only problem is, once you have the expansion, it's probably impossible to go back to completely free, but having a switch to turn the expansion on and off would be great in more ways than one.

I mean, if you'd quit the game and wanted to log in to see if you still liked it, you could, and then if you did still like it you could turn on your expansions again. That's the idea that's got my vote.

I'll give it another go, but each time I've tried playing again - I simply don't know what to do. The cities seem a little bland compared to say, the gorgeousness of Age of Conan cities.

I'm not a fan of flat maps - and that is all FFXIV seems to have.

The new Director Naoki Yoshida releases update/future plan letters fairly often. He's gotten the game into playable shape as of now, and you can tell from what he says that he has a good sense of what makes an mmo fun. The game is far from perfect, and with the new battle system revamp upcoming, only time will tell if he can fully turn the game around, but if you're curious, the game can be bought for about 20-30 dollars and is still has no monthly fee. Take the dive, it's worth the price of admission at least.

Once they charge a subscription how many of the current subs will disappear? 30%? 50%?

No matter how much they improve the game, once they charge for it, people wont be paying for it after all this. :-/

@James Ransom-Wiley: what's pictured is not an early concept of the ifrit's fight. It's just part of a main story cutscene that's already in the game and has been in it since launch.

Dunno where you got the notion that it's be an "early concept" of anything, but i can most assure you that it's not.

Maybe it's time to give it another go....the price per month is certainly right for the previous experience.