Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
Why come back to pay for a game that was so terrible at its launch, its original design team had to be stepped down, the head CEO apologized for it, and its free subscription was expanded indefinitely to use anyone willing to play it for free as Beta testers?
Because it's a different game. The gameplay is completely different to what it used to be. As I said, it will come down to reviews, news and feedback that arises at the point that FFXIV state "the game is now good enough for us to charge you."

Unless they start implementing designs and elements that could give WoW a run for its money,
I hate this, seriously. No MMO will give WoW a run for it's money. It is so insanely far ahead of the pack in profit that if you get 1% of the profit that WoW makes, you're doing well. The rest of the world's MMOs should not be compared to WoW. WoW is a different thing, and until a Pokémon MMO comes out I honestly can not see what MMO will challenge WoW. It's like saying that a new mp3 player is an "iPod beater". No mp3 player will ever be an iPod beater - and this is in no way down to the lack of quality of a product. It's simply because the market is already 90% iPod, and you would have to get far too many people to give up their iPod to get an iPod beater and they simply won't do that. To get a WoW challenger, you would have to get over 5m subscribers at least, let alone 16m. To be a successful MMO, you do not have to give WoW a run for it's money. You simply have to make a decent profit.

They lost the chance to capitalize on name brand recognition, now its going to have to survive on its merits. At this point I would say that XIV might at best become a modest success but I'm already going to bet that it won't be as successful as FFXI mainly because it has too many factors going against it.
I totally agree that it will not be as successful as FFXI. But I do think it will be profitable, and I do think that the brand recognition factor still applies, even after it's been so bad for so long. If this was not an FF game, the game would be dead. I think that almost everyone can agree on that. It's because of the brand name that SE will not let it die, and that the fans are still pushing for it to become a success. Those fans, like myself, will allow this game to become a success because we'll be patient enough and hopeful enough to come back when SE says the game is ready to play.

I know I'm an optimist, you're definitely right about that, but it's easy to be an optimist if you don't allow yourself to get too down when things don't go as you'd hope. Better to be in a positive mood over something for a long time than not, I say!

Lionx: What do you mean by the camera zooming behind your character as you dash into battle? Just curious.

As for patch 1.19, I'd not logged in for over a month prior to this patch but since it came out, both Danielle and myself have barely been away from the game. If this patch is the one which Yoshi-P says gets FFXIV 'half way' to where he wants it to be, then we can look forward to a lot more. I hope!