"Oh btw, FFXIV Online in 2010"

[Cadaverine]

Vanguard Syndrome, that is.  Back in beta, you couldn't turn on General chat.  Wall to wall fanboys screaming at anyone that dared suggest the game was anything less than a gift from god itself to go back to WoW.  It's not as bad in EQ2, but there's still plenty of it.  It's either the "The playerbase in EQ2 is soo much more mature than in WoW, which is all kids.", or "WoW is so easy my 5 year old could solo it, this game is way better because it's harder."

[Chimpy]

And those people who say things are "harder" are people who equate time spent doing "menial thing X, kill mob Y, and travel to point Z" with 'difficulty'.

Basically, MMO general chat is a bunch of assclowns of one sort or another.

[Samprimary]

Yeah, a quick way to show this:
Log in to WoW, go to a city and ask /trade about other_mmo.
Log in to other_mmo, ask whatever the general chat channel is about WoW.

It's hilarious.

Man, most of the WoW crowd (the coherent set, anyway) just sort of feel like their continued adherence to WoW is merely because nothing else shows up that can keep them. It's all it would take, but there they are, just sitting, waiting for something new.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Yeah, a quick way to show this:
Log in to WoW, go to a city and ask /trade about other_mmo.
Log in to other_mmo, ask whatever the general chat channel is about WoW.

It's hilarious.

Man, most of the WoW crowd (the coherent set, anyway) just sort of feel like their continued adherence to WoW is merely because nothing else shows up that can keep them. It's all it would take, but there they are, just sitting, waiting for something new.

A thousand times this. Wow players just want something halfway decent, I mean look at WAR it had a million box sales. Sure it couldn't keep them but the desire is there.

[01101010]

I still think WoW has become MMO canon now, and we all learned from Dogma, it's damn near impossible to change a belief.  There will always be a missing piece to any game that comes out no matter if it improves WoW or not. People will always gravitate to a weakness of a game and expose it. Unfortunately, every game since WoW seems to have one HUGE hole somewhere.

[DLRiley]

I still think WoW has become MMO canon now, and we all learned from Dogma, it's damn near impossible to change a belief.  There will always be a missing piece to any game that comes out no matter if it improves WoW or not. People will always gravitate to a weakness of a game and expose it. Unfortunately, every game since WoW seems to have one HUGE hole somewhere.

This will be the case except those HUGE holes are actually real and not hyper inflated by gamers more familiar with WoW. There are two general assumptions concerning WoW

1. WoW is better than sliced bread in the eyes of its playerbase. So inherently any game released post WoW will instantly be compared and discarded by said playerbase due to either not being WoW enough or not being inherently better/different than WoW. This assumption assumes that the gamer as a consumer is irrational don't really know what they want.
 
2. WoW dominance is due to all its competitors incompetence. WAR, AoC, Aion are inherently flawed games that would have started bleeding players with or without WoW being the 800 pound gorrila in the room. The assumption here is that gamers do want to play other games and have a rational method of doing so.

[Draegan]

Vanguard Syndrome, that is.  Back in beta, you couldn't turn on General chat.  Wall to wall fanboys screaming at anyone that dared suggest the game was anything less than a gift from god itself to go back to WoW.  It's not as bad in EQ2, but there's still plenty of it.  It's either the "The playerbase in EQ2 is soo much more mature than in WoW, which is all kids.", or "WoW is so easy my 5 year old could solo it, this game is way better because it's harder."

Vanguard people are a special breed of fools.

[Samprimary]

So, is this game ever going to let the free subscription period end? The game's become inadvertently f2p due to them realizing that making people pay to play this game anymore will shove their peak hours playercount down below 10k.

[01101010]

So, is this game ever going to let the free subscription period end? The game's become inadvertently f2p due to them realizing that making people pay to play this game anymore will shove their peak hours playercount down below 10k.

Can't honestly think they would charge for this beta, can you?

But who knows, PS3 release is right around the corner so maybe then...

[Samprimary]

Can't honestly think they would charge for this beta, can you?

You'd have to have no idea what the hell you were doing. But they've demonstrated that they seriously, seriously didn't. I really seriously think they did, in fact, think they were going to charge people for the game.

[Velorath]

You can read the very long list of patch notes for the big November update that went up a couple days ago here, and for the most part it looks pretty positive.  They've still got a long, long way to go, but at least they aren't going the WAR route and trying to solve problems by adding more XP bars or something.  One notable thing I saw pointed out on some forums though was "World population and nearby player counts are no longer displayed.".  Looks like they don't want players trying to extrapolate how many people are currently still playing.

[Samprimary]

the latest patch even left the dieXhards bawling. someone is trying to explain to me how it is now mathematically impossible to gain more experience in a group than if you solo, and that's okay because now either 'groups' or 'guilds' are kind of broken right now. It's kind of hard to figure out because square uses more fancy codewords than Scientology when it comes to the renaming of very universal MMO phenomena.

[Velorath]

Yeah, I've seen people saying that xp'ing in groups is kinda borked right now, but it at least sounds somewhat better than it was before now that they've just made mobs worth a set amount of sp rather than randomly giving you sp when you use your skills in combat.

[Samprimary]

I'm left wondering: Have the people waiting for The Miracle Patch  — invariably promised upon borked release — ever, ever, found it delivered in any notable MMO?

[Draegan]

AOC had a miracle patch.

The only saving grace for FFXIV is that they haven't charged anyone a sub fee yet.   

[Chimpy]

AOC had a miracle patch.

But did it save the game for the people waiting for it was his question. AKA was it actually a "miracle"?

[Draegan]

Well considering the game didn't work at all before the patch, and afterwards it did; is a miracle.  But you're write, I suppose it's a different set of circumstances.

[palmer_eldritch]

AOC had a miracle patch.

But did it save the game for the people waiting for it was his question. AKA was it actually a "miracle"?

AOC suffered from massive lag in beta, and one group of players said "it's because we are running beta clients, don't worry a patch will get rid of that at launch" while another group of players said "haha you are retarded".

Then there was a patch before launch and the lag went away. So it depends how you define miracle patch, but I think it counts.

[Paelos]

We discussed the miracle patch question in July

[Samprimary]

Ah, lots of ways to term a miracle patch, I see.

I guess I should say the Miracle Fun Salvation Patch. You have a game which is really just not a fun product on release. You can hunt down the bugs — it's easy enough to frantically work on making a laggy piece of shit ui a much more responsive piece of shit ui and all that — but they can't really fix this game. It's a cracked vessel both for developers and players.

Yet always (and particularly much in the case of such awesome legacies as the FF series) you will have the people who will, in public discussion about the game, talk about how you just need to have faith, 'cause all it takes is for some problems to be patched and people will start coming back to the game! Horray!

[Mrbloodworth]

This title is already past the time frame where any "miracle patch" could be called such. They are now simply good, or bad patches. Miracle time has passed. After all, all miracle are about timing.

A miracle is often considered a fortuitous event: compare with an Act of God.

[Shatter]

This title is already past the time frame where any "miracle patch" could be called such. They are now simply good, or bad patches. Miracle time has passed. After all, all miracle are about timing.

A miracle is often considered a fortuitous event: compare with an Act of God.

Well if a company keeps extending the free month out like they did then its like "hey here comes the miracle patch 12 weeks later" and people say "no its too late for miracles" so they reply "here is another free month" and to that we reply "ITS A MIRACLE!!"

[Samprimary]

Being beyond the sane timeframe for a miracle patch (which I don't necessarily doubt) doesn't stop the devs from promising improvements in the form of one or multiple patches which will save the game, so ... I mean, right now I seriously think from listening to them that the majority of people still playing the game are seriously holding out hope that a patch will come out that Changes Everything and being very butthurt snipey about anyone who disagrees with the 'give them time!' line.

Myself, I'm pretty sure the game is beyond a critical threshold and is effectively doomed. I want to start taking bets on announcement date of server merges, and bets on Game Over Day.

[Reg]

I think EVE had a comparably rocky start but I can't see Square Enix having the patience to slowly build their playerbase the way CCP did.

[Goreschach]

Has there been any MMO besides EVE that followed said trend of starting off as basically nothing and growing into success? A few MMO's managed to grow significantly over time, but they were pretty much success stories right from the start.

Personally, I think the fact of EVE's growth has more to do with the setting more than anything else. The fact that EVE's world is 99% empty and basically just a set of tunneled instances, that most of the content comes from the players themselves, and that it's basically a spreadsheet game with only the vaguest requirements for graphics and UI is what allowed it to do what it did. Most mmo's are built around more traditional settings. These settings are vastly more expensive to produce, will suffer much more adverse effects from aging and technological progress, will require a lot more manpower to refresh with content, and require a built in playerbase to populate them and make the gameplay work. I think EVE's growth is something that most MMO designs can't count on. Your typical land/combat based MMO needs to collect a certain critical mass at launch or inevitably fail.

[Paelos]

Puzzle Pirates

[Samprimary]

I think EVE had a comparably rocky start but I can't see Square Enix having the patience to slowly build their playerbase the way CCP did.

I don't even think it comes down to whether they have the 'patience' for it; it's that the game itself is at its core effectively unsalvageable. It's like toxic assets; the entire world is designed horribly and copy-pasted endlessly and can't be made into something fun to traverse and really designed competently around user experience; the quest systems and user interfaces are worthless, the combat system is worthless, end-user performance is hampered significantly, and the title is already persona non grata amongst all but about 15,000-10,000 diehards who could be expected to stick around after cataclysm and/or having to pay to play.

[Goreschach]

Puzzle Pirates

Maybe so, I'm not familiar with it at all. But I'm going to go ahead and assume Puzzle Pirates doesn't exactly fall under the umbrella of the traditional MMO.

[Paelos]

Maybe so, I'm not familiar with it at all. But I'm going to go ahead and assume Puzzle Pirates doesn't exactly fall under the umbrella of the traditional MMO.

It's a smaller MMO, but it's been around for 7 years and has had moderate success for it's business model / expenses.

[WindupAtheist]

Won't this be at least the second time some hyped-up hunk of shit has beat the looming WoW expansion to market, only to crash and burn so that said WoW expansion can come along and deliver the deathblow a couple months later?

[Margalis]

someone is trying to explain to me how it is now mathematically impossible to gain more experience in a group than if you solo, and that's okay because now either 'groups' or 'guilds' are kind of broken right now.

Is your (or "someone's") complaint that groups get too much XP relative to solo or not enough?

[Shatter]

Won't this be at least the second time some hyped-up hunk of shit has beat the looming WoW expansion to market, only to crash and burn so that said WoW expansion can come along and deliver the deathblow a couple months later?

At this stage of the game I would think most MMO's avoid WOW launch dates like it's herpes

[stu]

Or the hot chick no one has the balls to approach.

[fuser]

Thank you for your continued support of the Square Enix account.

As a result of an investigation, we have determined that a number of Square Enix accounts were compromised by a third party. Therefore, to prevent any misuse of accounts potentially compromised during this incident, we have changed the password for all of those affected.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but we ask that you change your password through the URL listed below:
https://secure.square-enix.com/account/app/svc/reminder

As a precaution we are notifying you of this potential breach. This e-mail has been sent out for your information only. Please do not reply to this e-mail address.

Thank you for your understanding and we again apologize for any inconvenience caused.

SQUARE ENIX Support Center
 http://support.na.square-enix.com/

To have an disclosure email go out it sounds like a pretty big compromise.

[Paelos]

Uh, I'll go ahead and ask who in their right mind would want to breach FFXIV accounts?