Final Fantasy XIV: Week 1 - Player's Perspective

Follow our weekly series of Final Fantasy XIV Updates brought to you by Jorge S Fernandez.

Let's just dispense with the pleasantries and get this out of the open: Final Fantasy XIV is the biggest disaster in the history of the franchise.

On paper, it sounded like an appealing idea: release two Final Fantasy titles under one year. One, a full-fledged singleplayer epic that takes advantage of the latest console hardware, the other a massively multiplayer successor to the critically-praised Final Fantasy XI while cross-developed for both PC and PS3. What could go wrong?

Rushing it out the door in order to beat World of Warcraft's latest expansion, for one thing. In an attempt to hook in as many players as possible before Blizzard released their substantial update to make the world's most popular MMO even more accessible, Final Fantasy XIV launched as a completely shoddy mess devoid of polish (technical issues and poor optimization), presentation (several seemingly huge areas featuring re-used assets and repetitive layouts) and worst of all, content (a sparse amount of things to do, made only more insulting by the arbitrary restrictions limiting players to keep trying the stuff that was already available). At the very least, all that was needed was to launch the game with the same features that made Final Fantasy XI such a popular game, but they failed even in that regard (Mog Houses, Chocobos, and Airships were just the tip of the iceberg in regards to missing content). Final Fantasy XIV's launch was such a critical failure that even Square's president has admitted that the Final Fantasy brand has been "damaged" as a result.

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Fortunately, admittance is the first step to recovery. The next step was hiring a new staff dedicated to fixing the previous team's mistakes in an effort to salvage the disastrous MMO into something that wasn't a black mark in the series' numbered history. The person given this hefty task was Naoki Yoshida (commonly known by his nickname "Yoshi-P"), who despite not having any prior experience in creating an MMO possessed a far better understanding of the genre than his predecessors. As Final Fantasy XIV's current producer/director, Yoshi-P has been keeping the community up-to-date with promises to address everyone's concerns with the current game, as well as tout the upcoming 2.0 patch as a major "do-over" in the form of a Cataclysm-inspired rebuilding of the entire core game.

With Final Fantasy XIV Round 2(.0) still several months away (the current target date is late 2012 for the Beta, early 2013 for the full version as well as the suspended PS3 release), Yoshida is also promising to continuously polish the current build of FFXIV with routine patches that serve to fix the numerous issues plaguing the game while also adding extra content in the form of dungeons and quests, as well as modifying the current systems (such as jobs and parties) to be more streamlined and functional. All of this is being done to keep the current player base happy while simultaneously building up hype for the big 2.0 re-release.

Considering the amount of bad press and dwindling subscribers following its troubled launch, it's certainly a lofty task. In fact, it's debatably impossible. But you certainly can't blame Yoshida and Square Enix for trying, and if their claims (and concept art) hold true, Final Fantasy XIV's 2.0 re-launch may just prove successful in making everyone forget about the original botched PC release.

Until then, the PC version is the one we're stuck with, and as of January 2012 (over a year since its 2010 release), the game has now officially started charging a monthly subscription. According to Yoshi-P, this is because he feels that the game has reached an acceptable state in which he can confidentially charge players for participating in what is, by all accounts, an extended beta for the "real" release of FFXIV (though he also promises that those who are sticking it out now will be rewarded with exclusive items and progress once the game makes its big move).

To test this claim, I have chosen to create a new character and experience for myself what the current state of Final Fantasy XIV is like. Like many others, I was kept away from the original 2010 launch due to the numerous criticisms, but was curious to see what its new director considered to be an "acceptable" point to start charging its customers. In the weeks ahead, I will be reporting on the current features and mechanics, staring with a beginner's account of the core game.