Dismay from the Developers.

It's no news that for many many years Square Enix has been terrible with community relations. If you played FFXI more than a year and don't have the wool pulled over your eyes completely you will know this. It has been accepted among the masses and communities of FFXI for a long time and people simply got use to it, however in recent years Square Enix "did" seem to get better and better about community relations, addressing issues and giving players what they want, however even in these days and times they some times tend to fall short. Even so, they've made a lot of progress and over the years regained a lot of trust from the player base of FFXI and MMORPG's in general. Furthermore, through the development up to BETA for FFXIV they've been quite good with telling people what they want to hear and making promises left and right, but are those promises lies and are their words daft? Has the trust Square Enix has spent the last few years regaining being thrown all away? As of lately you would think so, below I will explain why.

It's no news that Square Enix as of late has been reverting to their old ways. Having bad community relations, receiving bad media, responding poorly to questions, addressing foreign media inadequately and even insulting it as such for their very own mistakes. This is definitely dire mistakes you cannot afford to make as a Game Developer who is already quite controversial and under a lot of critique for your decisions. It's not secret either. Even Thayos and Elmer over at Zam have written up their own articles about these issues, you can find them here, here, and here.

It worries me, because this is originally what held FFXI back from being what World of Warcraft is today. To be quite frank, although I've got nothing against WoW or Blizzard (I actually respect them) the Final Fantasy franchise was older, more well known and had a bigger more hardcore following than Blizzard did at the time of FFXI's release. Not only that but FFXI was released a good 6months~1year before World of Warcraft. It had all the potential. Beautiful Graphics, amazing stories, incredible playability, however there were many systems, many issues, many small things that held the game back. FFXI did have a prime but even in it's prime days it was incredibly flawed in many ways. Once people started learning just how critical these flaws were to their gaming experience they began to quit and FFXI began it's decline, a decline it honestly never deserved.

The things holding it back were key issues, systems in the game that needed changing. Players cried out for them for years to no avail. Square Enix would never even answer why or address these issues. The most we ever got was once a year at a fan festival, a short Question & Answer session that ultimately lead to a lot of very point blank "We have no plans to change this right now" answers without explanation. It's as if Square Enix didn't realize how important this was and how important coming down off your high horse and speaking with the community was. Years later though, they began seeing these issues, apologizing for them, making amends and promising for a better tomorrow, they even began giving us reasons to believe this. But lately, it's as if they're reverting to their old ways, their old mistakes, habits and sins. I do not want to see this happen and I do not want to see a game with such potential, such amazing development from the actual developers (the artists, the writers, the CG designers, the developers of the actual game) go to waste because of a few bad producers and directors.

This all began lately with the interview here that shows Square Enix addressing some of the very highly concerned issues from the player base after not responding to them -in a BETA test no less- for a very long time. They basically tell the players everything they don't want to hear and go on to speak about how it's all part of their "vision". If only they knew what this did to the morality of potential subscribers as well as the generated media around it.

Later came discovery of the fatigue system without any proper explanation from the developers. This came at a time where people were already very dissatisfied with the quality of the beta test, lack of responses from the developers, and their response concerning large issues that the majority of the player base were agreeing on. People began wondering how this fatigue system worked or if it was a glitch, so of course people began speculating. Weeks later after much speculation and many upset people we finally hear a response from Square Enix confirming that it is indeed a fatigue system and how it works. This is something people did not want to hear at all. Their response regarding the reason behind it is a complete falsely to anyone who knows the mechanics of MMORPG's and can understand that they are doing it simply to delay people from reaching the level cap too quickly before proper end game is implemented. Yes, in short, they limit how much Experience Points you can get before you stop getting it. Sadly it's limited to a mere one hour a day at that, something that will drive away even some of the most casual people around.

After this upsetting explanation, which at least calmed people a bit by letting them know what was up and how so, we see a tweet from Hiromichi Tanaka, the head honcho behind FFXIV's development bashing the foreign media and websites for their dismay, speculation and confusion regarding the fatigue system, even when they had nothing to tell them otherwise. This obvious bias is not something I want to see at all and is definitely a critical blow to them when they try to convey the message that their "foreign" customers actually mean as much to them as their local ones.

All in All Square Enix and the development crew behind FFXIV better get their act together and quickly, and learn just how important the community is, both local and over seas.