Technical Difficulties

Warning: This post contains a lot of incoherent ranting.

Ok, so I've spent the last four hours trying to set up FFXIV, and fighting with Square the entire way. I'm a little frustrated, and I need a place to vent.

Square Enix has, without a doubt, one of the worst web systems I've dealt with in almost ten years.

Who designed their website? Who thought making people have three different accounts was a good idea? Who thought forcing people to register games twice, after playing email tag several times was a good idea?

Why is there no link to the downloader on their website? Why is their no link to any of the code redemption pages that you need in order to play the game? Why are none of your various accounts able to communicate with each other to tell the system that you have access? Who thought having no indicator as to your Square Enix ID anywhere (including any of your account pages after you log in, or any of the pages that it sends you if you tell it "I've forgotten my ID") was a good idea?

I have been so frustrated. What, in other system, is a simple, logical process has been turned into a massive wild goose chase through several different web site systems, through five emails, and to three Google searches just to install the frelling game.

I did finally get it working but, seriously Square, what the hell is up with your website?

Yeah their account management system and website design is attrocious. We've really been spoilt by the likes of Steam and Battle.net.

apparently were getting a new page called mog net to handle our accounts.

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Originally Posted by Bierhumpen_Kukki

apparently were getting a new page called mog net to handle our accounts.

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Yes, because that's what's needed. Another new site. Seriously?

I think that's how this started. Square never learned to rebuild a site, they just tack on a new one whenever they find something their current site can't handle.

I've only ever needed one account on one Square Enix website to play this game... Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never had any trouble since they introduced the Square Enix Account Management System. Isn't there only two separate account management sites? One is for FFXI and FFXIV services, the other is to just buy from their online store and register games you've bought.

However, if they can just combine all of that into one easy-to-access account management system (I'm assuming this is what Mog Net will be?) similar to Battle.net or Steam, then I'm all for it!

P.S. Not sure why people had trouble, but Square just emailed me the PSN pre-order code to input into my PS3 and I had no issues at all.

Once you get your SE account set up it's pretty easy, but until that point navigating their site is a chore.

Currently my wife is completely unable to register.

It took her pre-order code, but we were getting Error 3 (apparently a region problem) even though at that point you've already told the site you're in the US. So reddits had a fix... you log into your profile and change your language to US English and try again.

Well, we managed to try that, but it was giving her fits saving the profile saying that now her real name was required... fine. Then it said her user name... the user name to the profile she is currently logged in on and editing the profile for, is invalid. It won't save the language option.

So try again and it shows her having the game registered in her account, which means it apparently took her 18 digit pre-order code (though we don't know if it counted as EU or US), but never forwarded her to the page with the 20 digit RAAU code.

She has no way to access it and hasn't gotten the e-mail either.

So we just don't know what to do. I really thought SE was getting better about this. I mean... it's still way better than POL... but after this cluster****... not by much.

If it was successful with the 18 digit code, then it would have loaded the RAAU code page next telling you to copy it and that there would be an e-mail sent with it as well as instructions on how to register it. Also, make sure that the URL is the NA one since even the EU one will show the USA Flag for the English language option (weird, I know), or at least it did.

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Originally Posted by Yeargdribble

Currently my wife is completely unable to register.

It took her pre-order code, but we were getting Error 3 (apparently a region problem) even though at that point you've already told the site you're in the US. So reddits had a fix... you log into your profile and change your language to US English and try again.

Well, we managed to try that, but it was giving her fits saving the profile saying that now her real name was required... fine. Then it said her user name... the user name to the profile she is currently logged in on and editing the profile for, is invalid. It won't save the language option.

So try again and it shows her having the game registered in her account, which means it apparently took her 18 digit pre-order code (though we don't know if it counted as EU or US), but never forwarded her to the page with the 20 digit RAAU code.

She has no way to access it and hasn't gotten the e-mail either.

So we just don't know what to do. I really thought SE was getting better about this. I mean... it's still way better than POL... but after this cluster****... not by much.

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Raise a ticket or post about it in the official XIV forums (which are back up now, no more beta forums). *nods* A few people have posted in there with issues, not sure how much success they've had but I know the dev tracker includes devs replying about the issue somewhere...

Well, we gave up and since I was busy all Saturday with gigs, it ultimately didn't matter. I was only able to get the site to respond to my 18 digit code again Saturday morning and it went straight to my RAAU code... never got a email confirmation.

So luckily that got sorted out, but like I said, I had gigs all day Saturday, so after getting home at around midnight and getting some sleep... I wake up to us both dealing with 10102 or 90000 errors upon attempted to log on. We've got a busy week of gigs coming up and we're not sure when we'll have time to play next. Today was sort of our window.

I guess we'll make the best of it and do some prep work while we wait and hopefully that can afford us a tiny sliver of time to play during the week. As frustrating as it is, we were never planning to play hardcore so we're trying to just roll with it and not be too frustrated. So long as we know both of our accounts work, that's good enough for now.

I just hope SE gets their stuff together so they don't sink this ship again. I'd hate for the first days of release access to be like this, so I hope they get it all worked out during early access.

To be fair, downtimes in the opening week are something you kind of expect. As you say - so long as your accounts are alright, the rest should sort itself out within a week or two. The game itself, when playable, seems to be excellent... which means 1-2 weeks shouldn't be a dealbreaker when you deal with years of MMO time.

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

To be fair, downtimes in the opening week are something you kind of expect. As you say - so long as your accounts are alright, the rest should sort itself out within a week or two. The game itself, when playable, seems to be excellent... which means 1-2 weeks shouldn't be a dealbreaker when you deal with years of MMO time.

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I certainly agree. Sadly, the younger, more entitled generation views even downtime in a beta as a sign that the game isn't worth their time. I only recently started noticing just how strong the anti-sub model contingent has grown. It seems a large number of people think it's an archaic model doomed to failure and they are too indignant to consider paying for such an MMO.

If you take that attitude coupled with downtimes at launch, I'm afraid the less objective and experience players are going to balk at the game. We live in a time where if the first few pages of a book, minutes of a show, or hours of a game are instantly ultra gratifying, people don't care enough to see it through.

That said, I think that this is a game that's going to cater to a very specific crowd and that crowd will stick it out even in an unhealthy Stockholm syndrome way. And hopefully, being a bit more modern and way more polished than most, it'll pull in some of the less die hard FF types. I just would hate for word of mouth to be so bad at the beginning that nobody wants to give it a try. And right now, there are plenty of people not even willing to try due to the checkered past of this game's launch and the way FFXI was.

I think (perhaps wishfully) that SE will stick to their guns on the sub model and not cave like so many other MMOs. As I turn into a grump(ier) old man, I like to think of the sub model as potentially culling and curating the userbase into a place less inhabited by annoying twats.

No downtime is acceptable when you're paying monthly for something. I wonder if this continues they will make the game free for the first few months like they did with v1.

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Originally Posted by Del Murder

No downtime is acceptable

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What!? Even FFXI had maintenance times.

EDIT: And yeah, I'm sure the sub will stick. I think they said before that for many MMOs, there is a more urgent need for results and they go F2P because they were always designed with F2P as a backup in mind. With SE, they don't have to worry about the third party investors wanting instant results and they have a "subscription or death" perspective.

Oh, is that what we're talking about? Those were during the wee hours of the night and lased only a couple hours. I thought we were talking about days and weeks here.