FF XIV Reviews

An SGI computer, they went bankrupt 5 years ago, so it's a really old one. 1996, I believe. SGI O2.

lol its so funny how many people think this game is gonna/has alreay bombed. its still in the first few months, and the game is at least successful enough to require an aditional server already. which is way more then you can say for ff11, which was reviewed if not as bad, WORSE in its first month, but it still managed to survive 4 expansions and 6 addons lol. and besides, reviewers are HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE anyway, they are usually just casual gamers that have a sick job working for a company prommoting products, very rarely do they even seem to be as hardcore into online MMO's as the actual populations of these games, so realistically, the only opinions that matter are the ones of players actually considering playing the game long term. and people who honestly think 11 is better O.o it has 8 years more of content, which is now all useless accept abyssea. But is now prolly the easiest MMO to exist. lol@74-85 +capped merits in 8 hrs nice! 14 will decimate it soon enough.

you're so funny LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!

i started month after start and we didnt have ah, airship or chocobo at start either. everyone was low lvl other then a few jp players had lvl 75's

Actually at NA release (with Zilart) FFXI did indeed get favorable reviews with most ranging in the 80%+ range.
Many people who left ffxi have returned already and canceled subscriptions for ffxiv. Most likely till FFXIV improves.
Will FFXIV fail ? I doubt it. I'm sure it'll improve in time, but the mmo market is quite different than 6-8 years ago. There is a bigger likely hood people will move on if its not fixed/improved quickly.
It will most likely have a niche market.

Is that an exaggeration or a fact?

More than likely fact. Abyssea is *** outlandishly ridiculous on the xp. Almost so far as to say nearly in the astral burn cheating range.

I initially had a *** abyssea attitude.. but when you grind out 4 different jobs solo for 6 lvls each in cb, you really just want to get to 85 and don't care how you get there.

People keeps forgetting, FFXI was more playable when it came out in NA because it was already out in Japan, unlike FFXIV. So FFXI wasn't as bad when it was released in NA but it was bad when it was released in JP

Iirc when it hit NA 75 wasn't even the cap. 50 was the first true cap and AH was around then. The cap has been 75 for 4 yrs if i remember.

XI was reviewed at least moderately okay on release, even with all of its problems. Mostly because at the time, there were no other MMO's in that release generation to compare it to.

It certainly wasn't getting thousands of users giving it 1 out of 5 stars, and it certainly wasn't marked 30% off a week after release.

We won't know what the final mainstream press reviews like Famitsu are for awhile. SquareEnix is politely asking them not to review the game for a month after release.

The level cap has been 75 for about 7 years (2003).
NA release was (I think Oct) 2003 for PC.
Mar 2004 for Ps2.
2002 Japan.
AH wasn't around @ Japanese release. (released in a patch not too long after)

GameTrailer review absolutely destroys FFXIV, with a 4.2 out of 10.

"Final Fantasy XIV is in no way, shape, or form ready for commercial release. We suppose there is potential down the line for the experience to improve with patches and tweaks, but that doesn't justify why the game is in such shambles at launch. There are too many good MMO's on the market for you to spend your time and money on this broken, incomplete mess."

I wouldn't say that absolutely destroys it. Hell, even the people around here that like the game are saying the same thing. And yes, there are a lot of complete MMOs out there, but I like my MMOs to have a bit of class. I think everyone can agree with me that if we were already playing FFXI rather than WoW, we'd still play FFXIV rather than WoW.

Gamespot gives FFXIV 4 out of 10, the worst score I've ever seen them give an MMO.

"A misguided effort that uses its atrocious interface and tortuous mechanisms to veil its core simplicity and unending repetition."

lol the ad before i watched that was for free LOTR online

None of this is particularly surprising. While I like the game's core design, I've always said it was apparently rushed to meet that fiscal quarter deadline. I'll be following it up until the PS3 launch (Obviously the intended target date, since FFXIV team has said several times they had planned to release both versions simultaneously until E3...) and see if it's worth adding to the collection.

I just hope they can keep FFXI interesting enough if FFXIV flops into the same pit as Tabula Rasa. The GameTrailer review is pretty spot on, saying that it is not ready for commercial release, and honestly, I think the Dev team knew that as well.

Not saying this applies to FFXIV (It is currently in a really bad state, I'm not defending it), but in a lot of situations, reviewers will review a game based on what they want it to be. For instance, I'll use the recent game Halo: Reach. It was definitely the worst Halo game I've ever played, multiplayer is no fun, and the acting in the campaign just feels like even they are bored. Yet people still gave it 9.5/10 and stuff because it was the last game being made by Bungie and the reviewers WANTED it to be good.

Again, this doesn't necessarily apply, but the people they get to review MMOs are the people that already play other fully formed MMOs. Comparing a game that's been out for two weeks to a game that's been out for four years is like comparing, well, wine just made two weeks ago to wine that's 4 years old. Like comparing a budding rose to a fully bloomed one. It's just not fair to say FFXIV is worse because it's not complete.

Its funny, but I'll be honest and say that I like FFXIV enough to get defensively angry reading these reviews haha. So FFXIV must be doing something right.

In an attempt to justify my defensive anger, I say professional game reviewers != playerbase.

When it comes to MMORPGs especially, MMORPG reviewers != MMORPG players, at all. The biggest glaring problem is that, for actual MMORPG players, a big part if it is the attachment to their characters they get from investing so much time and effort in their development and interaction. Professional reviewers have zero of this attachment since they're only supposed to play the game for a week or so, write a report and be done with it. Expecting to play an MMORPG for 3+ years? Don't be ridiculous! They have other games to review.

You know how its generally true that a resume is judged by its first few lines, or a person is judged by the first few seconds of meeting. If the initial set up, learning curve, and feel of an MMORPG is difficult and frustrating, that's what the reviewers focus on. Because despite their best efforts, unconsciously they've already decided the game sucks, or rocks, or awesome, or whatever in the first few hours of playing (which is a horrible measure of an MMORPGs value).

In the end, whether one likes a game or not is still a subjective experience, which means a professional reviewer is nothing more than one person's opinion (albeit broadcast loudly so all the fanboys of other MMORPGs can read and jeer with a pompous smirk on their faces haha).

This is kind of unrelated to the topic, but I lolled hard at your example. "Everyone was excited about the Wii and it was a huge disappointment. Even the good games were disappointments"

Yes, I agree that FFXIV is highly flawed and broken at the moment. But just in my opinion, I think that incomplete games and bad games should be judged on a different scale.

The game has it flaws

If you saw a FPS/RTS/RPG release with bugs like these... the company would tank, no question.

There is no justification for a game to be released in this state and defending it makes you look like a FF fanboy/HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.
If this game was released with a different name it would have tanked by now. SE is playing the same card like in FF. Pay me now and you will "eventually" get a finished / polish / unbroken game.

Im just being patient that someone Sets up a decent partying guide (camping areas) so I can start to lvl up my Mages. If the game doesn't shape up by PS3 release imma start looking for another game to keep me entertained.

There is a difference between denying the flaws and defending the positives. The former maybe called FF fanboys/HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE/whatever, the latter is an effort to point out that its not all gloom-and-doom as some would have you believe.

It's great players want FFXIV to succeed, but they have to be realistic about reviews.
A game is reviewed in the state it is released not how it will be in 6 months or a year from now. If a normal game was released (fps/platformer what have you) in FFXIVs condition it would similarly get very low scores. They review it for all consumers not only for hardcore mmoers, but for the public in general.
The fact SE has asked reviewers to wait is a sign already. If it's not ready to be released and X company doesnt want a bad review DONT RELEASE IT. Simple as that.
Don't get me wrong I'd like FFXIV to succeed...but they have alot of work cut out for them.
The gametrailers review is pretty spot on for the condition FFXIV is in right now. Hopefully they can fix it, and if not then it should be a big lesson to SE who seems to have forgotten its roots and fanbase for a quick buck instead of looking at long term success.

Yes but the promise of SE saying they learned from other MMOs and their own mistake is pretty much all BS and this is just the start of the game. The time FFXI was released and now is very different. People don't have the same kind of patience the older gen had just on the simple fact that there is better things out on the market now and soon to be released.

I just hate seeing a un-polished / content-less game and SE doing the whole silent treatment about future fix or content release

GameInformer gave Red Steel an 8, that's prety good.
What I was trying to say, is that no matter what MMO it is, it shouldn't be reviewed days after release. It should only be reviewed after you "beat" it, or at least do the vast majority of what's allowed in the game. Regardless of how you want to justify bad reviews for this game, they're all based on just a small glimpse at the game. If someone has one issue with the UI (Which is everyone's complaint anyway), then they write the whole game off as being bad.

Completely ignoring the fact that it's only a matter of time before they fix it, what else is there to complain about? Besides the UI, the graphics are nearly perfect, best I've seen in any game ever. The music trumps all previous Final Fantasy games (In my opinion) which were already top tier for their music. The combat system is fun, albeit currently slow, which, again, goes back to UI issues. There's a lot to do in the game, currently more to do now than FFXI ever had at low levels. Crafting is fun, gathering is fun, both of those were dead ends and complete wastes of time in FFXI. The plot is already looking like it's going to be good (Only done Ul'Dah's missions thus far but it's pretty damn enthralling), and we have expansions, additions, new classes, new mobs, and a hell of a lot more to look forward to in the future.

If reviewers could look beyond the UI for one day, they'd see it's so much better than the reviews they gave it.

Then again, we live in an age where WoW is the standard, and compared to that game, this one almost requires you to do something. And people can't have that nowadays.