FFXIV Launch Issues

FFXIV Queue for Lord of the Inferno

Well, this has been one absolutely awful launch.  Only WoW’s launch was worse, but at this rate FFXIV may take the crown if circumstances do not change soon.

Despite some problems with the instance server, stability has been remarkably good.  What hasn’t been good – at all – are the restrictions placed on the server by Square Enix.  There’s no queue.  Instead, players have to hammer the servers non-stop until they randomly, by pure luck, get a spot.  There are scripts already available to automatically retry for you.  It’s pathetic.

Maelstrom Grand CompanyThat’s assuming you already made a character.  Not lucky enough to make one early (as in the first day) of Beta 4?  Square hasn’t allowed players to make new characters on most if not all of the NA/EU servers.  We have slightly less than half our guild unable to make characters, stranding them to either not play at all or join a Japanese server.  These are people who paid good money to legitimately pre-order the game.  That’s not right.  Some sort of queuing system should be implemented to allow them to make a character.  Even if the list is 10,000 people long, they would know when they can make one.

I’m one of the lucky ones.  Even though I have to spam the login server for 30 minutes to 3 hours, I still get in and I can still level up.  I got our Free Company (guild) formed this evening, and I’ve been able to progress a decent way into the main story.  I have my Chocobo, I joined a Grand Company, and I’m continuing to form my opinion of FFXIV

FFXIV ARR Ifrit

The main story has been really good.  There are a few filler quests in each of the areas as the story is slowly introduced, but for the most part there’s this overarching story that has finally been made clear.

The sidequests, however, remainare really bad.   I was hoping they got better, but they’ve actually grown worse. We just finished this area in the level 23ish Gridania zone that literally sent us to an area six times.  “Go grab this item.”  “Okay, now go back.”  “Good job, go back again.”  “Now again.”  Thankfully the sidequests are only a very small part of progressing, and definitely the slowest form of leveling.

Despite the launch issues and horrible quests, there’s so much more to the game than I even knew.  Chocobos, the mounts, can actually join your party as a healer, tank, or dps.  The UI has so many subtle nuances that give members of a group tons of information about aggro.

I continue to find new things to love, and feel confident that FFXIV will be a game to play for quite some time.  If only Square can turn things around in time to avoid a meltdown, there’s a great future ahead of FFXIV.

  • Despite all these launch issues, and being one of the people locked out of the server, I still really do love the game and think it’s going to be something I will play for at least a year. Hopefully once these launch issues get sorted (soon, hopefully!) it’ll be smooth sailing from here on out. They’re promising to do big content patches ever 3-months, and if they can deliver on that then there will always be something new to do.

  • Is it just me or is the combat really slow and stale?

    My maurader has about 3 attacks she uses 90% of the time and there are no off CD skills. Unless its a combo ability they all do relatively the same damage. Whippy do.

    Gladiator and lancer were the same.

    I think this is going to get boring quick.

  • Eastern mmorpg’s imho are like going to a market and having to eat centipedes instead of corn dogs.

    Both are equally gross but some things in life you simply have to grow up on to appreciate.

  • I find myself in a relatively fortunate but slightly strange position. I was able both to make a character on the server I wanted in Beta4 and another on the same server on the first day of Early Access. The fact that the servers came up at 10am my time but 2am to 5am across the US helped there. Mrs Bhagpuss didn’t get a character made in Beta4 but even though she was working on the Saturday and didn’t get back until mid-afternoon she was still able to create two characters on our server of choice. The friend we’ll also be playing with is safely on the same server so that’s all set up and ready to go.

    We played until first server maintenance on Saturday. I got to level 6. It would have been higher but I spent an hour or more trying to find some way of getting that vile giant targeting arrow to go away. Is there any way to do that? because if there’s not chances are I won’t be playing much longer even if I could get in.

    UI abominations aside, since Saturday afternoon I’ve been blissfully unaware of FFXIV’s problems because I’ve been playing GW2 non-stop. Mrs Bhagpuss tried to log in a couple of times and couldn’t so she’s been in GW2 as well and we’ve both been having a high old time with the Clockwork Chaos events.

    I do want to play FFXIV but the combination of other MMOs offering new content that interests me more and Square putting ridiculous barriers in my way could mean putting FFXIV on the back-burner for now and coming back to it when I have a bit of a lull elsewhere and things have quietened down.

    As for where it stands in the hierarchy of terrible MMO launches, I find it hard to believe anything will ever be worse than Anarchy Online.

  • How was the performance on the ps3? I have a pc that can run it near maxed but there is a certain allure to playing a console mmo.

  • Agreed with everything you wrote. I really get the Vanilla WoW feel to this game. The questing is awful but I knew that going in via Beta so I’m just baring through it. The Dungeons are beautifully done and while they don’t really start to ramp up difficuly until Level 30 their environments are enough to encourage me to run them multiple times.

    As for the launch issues. I can mostly forgive the server stability issues (although they got pretty bad). But as I mentioned of the forums the fact that character creation is locked on servers is almost unforgivable. An MMO prevent people from playing with each other? Are you for real?

    In fact, it has hit my small group of friends pretty hard. There was only 8-10 of us playing and 6 have not been able to make characters on Leviathan. Those of us that had (who are all level 25+) have to make the choice now to re roll or not. It is just a bad situation all around. Enough that some of us might just quit. It is a terrible shame for a game that has a solid chance to be a solid game.

  • Actually for me this was the best MMO launch and I played all MMOs from Vanilla wow until now…Beside the fact that some servers got locked (it was obvious, everyone and their grandmothers was going to play on leviathan), the game was pretty smooth. No lag issues, no bugs on quests, just some 2 hour maintenances.

    Granted wasn’t perfect, but at least when I was inside the world to play, I was playing smoothly. The game is surprisingly polished.

  • Sure would have liked to been there for the FC creation, so far I’m having a great time in game (when I can get online, West Coast time zone). I’ve already submitted my 90 day sub!

  • Is there any chance of the guild re-rolling, at least temporarily on an alternate server?
    We have a forums thread up about it in the FFXIV members section.

  • I’m really enjoy the game itself and am stubborn enough to sit there and spam the login until I eventually get in, but yeah this has been an abysmal launch.

  • I bought the original collector’s edition. Since then I have thrown away the entire box and all contents (including the security token, because let’s be honest the game was horrible and I never wanted to play it again). So upon this re-release I have read that I’ll be able to play for 14 days on launch, to see what is what.

    The problem is that in the 3 or 4 SEPARATE account management sites that are all apparently important in some way, I cannot find a single thing regarding downloading the damn client. Why in the hell would you ever make it this difficult to access your game? I cannot find a download link on the main website, on my na.square-enix.com account, on my secure.square-enix.com account, or the na.finalfantasyxiv.com “lodestone”.

    Why not put a big goddamn button on the main site like everyone else to “Download Now”? Why am I logging into my Square Enix account in three different places?

    I honestly dread actually finding the client, because at that point I will probably just throw the game in the recycle bin when I cannot log on to even create a character or join a server (or so I’ve heard).

    Good lord… after typing all of this out I realize I must truly be desperate to play anything even remotely decent if I’ll jump through these kinds of burning hoops just to give it a shot.

  • The dreaded login issues really are quite annoying. Working all day and wanting to come home and play, I get to play the game of login/fail..

    With no correct working que system in place and no afk kick system either, I’m at a loss for words.

    Has anyone seen the JP forums, there’s like zero threads over there. The US ones are flooded like mad. There is zero responses to anything at all, where’s the “blue” help from games like WOW to at least calm people down with some kind of answers. Just sick of the copy paste thank you for your patience in this time, sorry you can not make a character better luck next time responses…

    I even have a ticket open now for 6 days with the stupid mouse cursor missing in fullscreen issue. I’ve had that in every beta test and posted multiple times on forums, in game bug report, and now a ticket to zero acknowledgement. At least from the community we have nailed it down to OS’s before Win 7-8, but still I hate borderless window mode, I want full screen vsync goodness 🙂

    SE really needs to hire a lot more help or something…

  • I feel like I’m living in an alternate universe on Faerie. Some friends and I compromised and ended up rolling there instead (sorry Leviathan!).

    The only issue I had was during the head start Emergency Maintenance. After that, it’s been smooth sailing! I rolled my character fine, and I’ve never encountered the game just outright saying I can’t log in. It -will- give me a queue! The most I’ve waited in queue was 30 people, and it took about 2 minutes.

    As for gameplay itself, I -really- enjoy it. It’s all the parts of Final Fantasy XI that I loved, plus the conveniences of newer-generation MMOs. Being able to change jobs or professions on the fly is absolutely amazing! Also, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone gush about their “Armory” System yet! Basically, you have an entirely separate inventory specifically for your armor and weapons. You can then make profiles for each class or profession, and simply double click on them to change equipment and class. Add a new piece of gear to your Arcanist set? Simply hit “refresh” and your new set is saved over the old one.

    I think this is a game I’ll be playing for a while, but this is all coming from someone who has just wanted a more updated version of FFXI for many years.

    (Also, I have the mouse cursor issue as well. Here’s a quick workaround that has been just fine for me: While still in “Windowed Mode” set your resolution manually. Then, click “Borderless Windowed Mode.” It will freeze the resolution, and the cursor will still be visible. I’m not sure if this affects frame rates or the like, but this fix has worked just fine for me until they fix the real issue.)

  • Please tell me that top picture isn’t a player made line to get a quest item lol, because that’s the first thing that came to mind when I saw it.

    • That’s a player-made line to enter an instance. The instance server was being crashed by so many people entering instances that the players tried to alleviate the burden by forming a queue.

  • Top 5 worst MMO launches (my experience):

    1) WW II Online
    2) Anarchy Online
    3) World of Warcraft
    4) Aion
    5) FF XIV: A world stillborn

    While character creation is still locked across almost all NA servers, the actual login of existing characters has become much more bearable, though still unpleasant.

    PAndy and Rawblin sum up my perspective wuite well as they posted:

    “But as I mentioned of the forums the fact that character creation is locked on servers is almost unforgivable. An MMO prevent people from playing with each other? Are you for real?

    In fact, it has hit my small group of friends pretty hard. There was only 8-10 of us playing and 6 have not been able to make characters on Leviathan. Those of us that had (who are all level 25+) have to make the choice now to re roll or not. It is just a bad situation all around. Enough that some of us might just quit. It is a terrible shame for a game that has a solid chance to be a solid game.” – Pandy

    and..

    “The problem is that in the 3 or 4 SEPARATE account management sites that are all apparently important in some way, I cannot find a single thing regarding downloading the damn client. Why in the hell would you ever make it this difficult to access your game? I cannot find a download link on the main website, on my na.square-enix.com account, on my secure.square-enix.com account, or the na.finalfantasyxiv.com “lodestone”.

    Why not put a big goddamn button on the main site like everyone else to “Download Now”? Why am I logging into my Square Enix account in three different places?” – Rawblin

  • Finally got the client installed (found a link to the client on some random site by some random guy, woohoo it wasn’t a virus!).

    Only character I can play on an NA server is my lvl 3 Conjuror that is on Hyperion, the Legacy server. I use the term “play” loosely, as I was only able to log on at 4am this morning to dabble for a bit before bed. As of right now the world is full, try again later.

    Unable to make a character on any other NA server.

    I’m having a really hard time justifying the tedium this game has created for me. I realize most people will say to “wait it out, its a MMO launch”. I only have 14 days to “wait it out” though. I really, really, REALLY cannot see myself wasting more money on this product than I have in the past.

    One thing I am certain of, Square Enix should stick to making single-player games. They seem to do well at that. This? No. This is a continuing* disaster.

    *starting with the original launch