Final Fantasy XIV Subscriptions Returning, PS3 Version In 2012 96
Just over a year ago, Square Enix released Final Fantasy XIV. It was not well received, and to atone for their mistake, the company removed the game's subscription fee, replaced a bunch of the developers, and delayed the PS3 version. Now, they are confident enough in the updates they've brought to the game that they are re-instituting the subscription plan and working again on the PS3 version, though it's still about a year away. They've also explained their roadmap for version 2.0 of the game, which will include a new UI, a new graphics engine, and a redesign of all current maps.
Let it die... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not let it die,
They are replacing everything about the game - hell the feel is likely to change too, especially with new devs....
So let it die, leave it free
Let players import into this "new" game, released as a new game.
Happyness!
of course, lots of people will flame this idea for being "cheap".
Should be interesting to watch (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure anybody has ever successfully resurrected a MMO after a launch as bad as this one. I'll be interested to see if they can actually keep many players or recruit new ones once the subscription fee returns, particularly with competition like The Old Republic showing up. Word of mouth as bad as this game got (deservedly so) is really hard to overcome even when you do make improvements.
I am glad to see they're going to do something about the UI, though. Man that was terrible. It was unacceptably bad for a modern MMO.
Luckily for them the PS3 MMO competition is far weaker then the PC competition, so it'll probably do better there.
The big prob with ffmmo's is (Score:3, Interesting)
The final fantasy series has all this content that people know and love but they always try something different.
If they, for example recreated the world of final fantasy 6, people would eat it up. 6, 7, 8, 11, classics. But since final fantasy's are always a "new game", in the world of mmo's its just another mmo, and you need more than cute graphics to keep people playing.
For example... world of warcraft! you have a world that was created across 3 games, and people were chomping at the bit to get into it.
However with ffmmo's all you have is the label... final fantasy.
Numbered Final Fantasies as MMOs (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure I'm not the only person irritated by Squenix' decision to seemingly at random make numbered Final Fantasy games MMORPGs. What sort of branding moron over there decided that consumers wouldn't find it confusing that FFI through FFX are linear stories while FFXI is an MMORPG, but oh wait FFXII and FFXIII are back to linear, but oh wait FFXIV is back to MMORPG... Seriously WTF? I'm a fan and I have a hard time keeping this crap straight sometimes.