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Virtual Autonomy October 2010 Update »
Oct/27
2010

Final Fantasy XIV - What on earth happened Square Enix?

Categories: Virtual Reality & MMOs, Misc, reviews / Tags: fail, final fantasy 14, final fantasy xiv, response, review

As a gamer, I feel it appropriate at times to comment on important moments shared amongst  fellow enthusiasts. The subject of this entry is the recent response to Final Fantasy XIV and why it has scored so lowly.

Few people remain unfamiliar with the Final Fantasy franchise after over 20 years of it being associated with some of the best gameplay experiences around (by way of narrative and core mechanics alike). It's not unusual then for people to sit up and pay attention when a new game bearing that name is released upon the world. This series has, after all, set standards and raised the bar in its genre, consistently, since the original in 1987.

What I'll be looking at today is the most recent addition to the series, Final Fantasy XIV. That's a fairly big number as far as 'sequels' go, but it's more than that. Up to this point, each of these flagship titles has had to bring something new to the core gameplay experience in order to remain fresh. Square Enix (previously known as Squaresoft) have a tough act to follow. The original talent responsible for the titles prior to FFXI (Hironobu Sakaguchi) has moved on to create his own company (Mistwalker Studios).

Where does that leave Square Enix? - Let's find out

Final Fantasy XIV retains the same visual impact as its predecessors

As a MMORPG, Final Fantasy has never achieved the success it has perhaps deserved (referring to the original foray into the genre, Final Fantasy XI). This can be attributed to a number of reasons but most notably that Square Enix have never been one to take advice from other people or even to heed standards outside of what they themselves have established. FFXI was rather unique and, in some respects, it fell short of many peoples expectations. It took about a year after its Japanese release for it to become accessible to the western world and, by that time, it had changed for the better.

 

It became famous for allowing all geographical regions to congregate on the same servers and for facilitating the process by including an in-game translation system. The community became well established and remained strong until some years later when, as people started to slip away, it became apparent just how dependant the mechanics were on party play. Depending on varying tolerance levels, people would end up waiting up to 8 hours for a group to be formed (shortly after which the key support character would inevitably have to leave). The somewhat disconcerting fact about all of this was that it took Square Enix another three years to rectify the problem. This has made one thing abundantly clear, that SE are very slow to respond to serious problems.

 

With that in mind, let's look long and hard at Final Fantasy XIV...


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