FFXIV: A Realm Reborn Launch Failure

If you wanted to buy Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn tonight, too bad. They've temporarily stopped selling digital copies.

The game is meeting with positive feelings from its players--the ones who can get logged in, that is. Log in queues and outright blockages have hampered the early access period and look like they will continue well into the official launch phase.

It really is very unfortunate. I've been hearing good things about the game. Maybe it's just Final Fantasy fanboys getting their collective squee on, but that's exactly what a Final Fantasy MMO should be all about. If the game can please it's audience, it will be a good game.

All praise for the game aside, the fact that their servers are insufficient for the gamerload isn't all that surprising. The game is a relaunch, after all, and they must not have expected players to give them a second chance. Kudos, gamers. But I digress from the issue, which is that second chances don't beget third chances and Square Enix and pals seem to be squandering this one. The game didn't work the first time, and now their own lack of faith (it would seem) in their second try is dooming it to failure as well. They literally stopped selling the game. On the list of bad sales decisions, stopping people from giving you money is number one.

Remember the Diablo III launch? This is the kind of bad PR that destroys a game's potential to draw new customers. There are plenty of people who want the game, who've bought the game, who will play the game, but when things go wrong before the game can draw in players you have a sinking ship.

Here's how it's going to go down. The launch numbers will be fine. The folks who know about the game and want it are going to buy it and play it. Those same people are going to tell their friends to play it with them--hell, they might go as far as buying extra copies. The first few months are going to be tenuous, but just when everything seems okay, the problems will start. The new player numbers will drop; gamers who might have been drawn in will have forgotten to care how the game is doing--they'll only remember the ugly launch. FFXIV will be the butt of the same old jokes that plagued Diablo III, so the game won't be highly regarded. I've heard the most compliments for the game's crafting system, and no one picks up an MMORPG because they want grind blacksmithing levels. The game won't keep selling. It might turn free-to-play or pay-to-win. If that happens, the quality of the player base, which starts high with a fanboy game like this, will dwindle with influx of fickle free-to-players getting their kicks. Suddenly your party members won't have names like Aelix Whitetunic, they'll be grotesque abominations gestated in the churning bowels of a moron's poorly developed frontal lobe like Vajlick Swagdaddy. No one wants to play with you, Vajlick Swagdaddy, let alone spend their fun-time doing the same thing as someone like you. You ruined the fun for everyone because you're a sucktard.

Alright alright alright. Enough. The point is this: if FFXIV doesn't get their server issues solved soon, the future of the game is dark. Refusing to sell your game isn't a solution to anything; it's actually an enormous problem from a business standpoint. While you may want your customers to think you're doing something about the server issues, stemming the flow of hate mail you're receiving about it by cutting off sales will turn players away from your game for good.

Get your shit together, guys. Work through the night. Spend a couple thousand dollars if you have to. Get more servers up so people can play the game you want them to buy from you. We don't need an apology, we need to level up our blacksmithing.

The "apology": Announcing Server Enhancements and the Temporary Suspension of Digital Download Sales
Joystiq article: Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn struggles through early access weekend

SolForge

I've been playing a bit of SolForge recently. It is free-to-play, and an open beta is available on Steam, so I can recommend it without any qualms.

When I first started playing, the interface was heart-breakingly slow. You would wait three times as long for the game to load as it took to assess and play your hand. It's better now, though still not exactly quick.

I say "heart-breakingly" because the game has been enjoyable since I started playing it. The gripe most new players seem to have is that a starter deck isn't very strong, leaving the player helpless against the CPU's much stronger cards. In my case, I've played enough to have one good deck and one mediocre deck, so the problem isn't one which can't be overcome. You'll need to collect a few stronger cards before taking on "hard" CPUs and online players, so it's not well suited for an immediate binge.

But that plays into the game's charm. It's the kind of game you can play for a few minutes to an hour (at most), and then you'll be more than ready to go do something else. You can come back tomorrow for a daily log in reward and a chance at strengthening your deck, play until you win three games for another daily reward, and then move on.

If you want to play multiple games at once (if you're going to play online, you do), you'll be back and forth between games and the main menu constantly. It would be better if you could have a window open up for each game so that you could keep an eye on all of them at once. I'd love to see that happen in the future.

New cards are coming out and surely some changes are coming to old cards (grimgaunt predators are way OP). The game is still in its early stages and all the problems are certainly not ironed out just yet, but it's free-to-play and games are quick enough that you won't have much trouble keeping the daily rewards coming. The game is easy enough to play that it can appeal to a casual gamer with enough strategy to appeal to old-school tabletoppers. I'd say this game is definitely worth a try, and if you like it you can recommend it to gamer and non-gamer friends alike.

Smite's Arena Mode Has Me Hooked!

I've been playing Smite for a few months. I wasn't a big fan when it was a MOBA like League of Legends or DOTA2, but since they've added Arena Mode there is a lot of fun to be had. It feels like PvPing in an MMO, and the characters are all based on gods and goddesses from various mythologies which speaks to the geek inside my heart.

I found out about the game in an e-mail from Hi-Rez Studios inviting me to play the beta. I made an account with them to play Tribes: Ascend but that game has recently gone out of development. I hope this means more time spent on developing Smite.

Playing the game, I can't help but feel that it's not as popular as it should be. I don't know why that is, exactly, because it's not like I'm seeing the same names over and over. Something about it just feels small and indy, which I like, but at the same time it's hard to get my friends to pick up a game like this when they're already accustomed to playing League of Legends.

There's a trend in gaming, I think, to only play the games your friends are playing. Maybe it's a wider trend in sociology, but I spend my social time gaming so that's where I can see it. Games like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, League of Legends, or Starcraft 2 get to be these titans of their genre, and the little guy is stuck trying to collect the scraps. At the same time there's all this attention being given to games and ambitious projects getting made, but the general desire from the gaming public is to flow into these really limited avenues. Starcraft 2 is not the be-all and end-all of RTS gaming, yet I don't have anyone asking me to play something else. From what I can tell, this is the same phenomenon that drove Xbox 360 sales through the RRoD fiasco--I bought one because my friends all bought one.

So I'm recommending Smite, not because I love all the game modes but because I had fun playing it, it's free to play, and I like at least a little variety in my MOBAs.


P.S.
I really like that Smite offers a variety of gametypes:
-Conquest: Your classic DOTA-style game with three-lanes and a jungle.
-Assault: The same as Conquest but without that pesky jungle.
-Joust: Again, largely the same as Conquest, but played 1v1 or 3v3 for a change of pace.
-Domination: A King-of-the-Hill gametype with three turrets as bases that score points for your team.
-Arena: Smite's Arena Mode is the real gem. It is a gaming experience I've missed since the good old days in World of Warcraft's Ring of Trials with jungle buffs on the side. 5v5, this mode is about learning to communicate and team fight. I've found that some of the new Gods added by Hi-Rez seem to be geared towards this gametype while others are definitely not. I recommend downloading Smite for this experience alone.
-Match of the Day: These matches vary from Conquest, to Assault, to Arena etc. and include special rules. Sometimes all players start at max levels, or with a mountain of gold, or with randomly selected gods. New types are added and sometimes they hit, sometimes they miss. The point is they're trying out new things, and this provides a fresh way to play every day.

Welcome to my Critical Chit

My name is Christopher Holsen. I am a lifelong gamer from Wisconsin.

This blog is dedicated to gaming, just like me. My gaming experiences are limited by common problems like time, money, and shrinking friends lists, but I am deeply interested in all facets of gaming (digital and otherwise).

Here, I post my thoughts on the gaming industry, the gaming arts, and gaming audiences. There are precious few ways to share a love for gaming if one does not wish either to learn code or to cosplay, and keeping a blog is a pleasurable frustration, much like a good game.