Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Beta Review

Yeah, so far ... I can't say that I'm a fan.

Here's why:

This game wasn't really on my radar, to be honest.  I've never been a big Final Fantasy guy.  But I had heard about some people talking about it and one day I get a message in my PSN box from Square Enix inviting me to the beta (I think I entered originally by like downloading a video off off PlayStation Plus or the like).

Great.  So I click on the attachment in the message.  This is what this message looked like:

It downloads a 28MB launcher, which in turn sits there and downloads some untold gigs of actual game software.

Slowly.  OK, so there went using the PS3 for a while.  I go about and do ... some other Friday night thing for a while.  I come back.  Still downloading.  Wash, rinse and repeat about five times.  Finally downloaded.  It's late now, but I can stay up for a bit to smoke test the first few moments of the game.

Except, there's no play button.  Instead I first have to enter in my Beta Code.

What Beta Code?  I don't have a Beta Code.  I have a huge amount of software that got downloaded from a small amount of software that I downloaded from that ....

Oh, right - that message.  So I go back to the message.  The Beta Code can be found if you artfully scroll down a bit.  It's 20 characters long.  There is no concept of cutting and pasting on the PS3.  Thankfully I've got an iPhone with a camera and a USB keyboard.

OK.  Beta Code in.  Time to kill some ... I don't know ... bird things.  Whatever they kill in Final Fantasy a lot.  Seriously, I haven't played Final Fantasy since like ... well at least before they needed more than a few Roman numerals.  But now I can play - right?

Nope.  Now I get to create a Square Enix account, and then I have to tie that to my PSN account. Usually typing in a promo code isn't really needed if you get it through PSN because it just gets passed through - but OK.  And sure, I've had to link accounts before - but usually that can be done pretty smoothly either through my browser or through the PS3 - this was pretty much neither.  I had to create account information, confirm account information, follow my confirmation instructions, confirm my other account information and so on.

Usually "closed beta" means "exclusive rights to download", not really "fill out enough forms to get a new rate on your loan".   After about three more screens and a couple user agreements, though, I've got it.  I'm all signed up, linked up, and I have every single code I could possibly have entered in.

Time to kill some Cocoa Birds, right?

Wrong.  I just get a message thanking me for joining the Square Enix community and come back when there's a beta not already in progress.  Don't call us, we'll call you.  We'll do lunch.  So days turns into weeks and I get bored with having this downloaded beta I can't play ... so I delete it.

Fast forward to yesterday.  I get this in the old inbox:

Now, there's just one teeeeny tiny little problem here.  I mean, really, so insignificant that I hesitate to mention.  Really, it might not be worth your time.  I should just go, really.  I mean - oh, well, OK - here's the thing.

I don't own a PC.

And I really would have thought you would have known that from the thirty minutes of paperwork you forced me to do just to have the privilege of not playing your game.

Sigh.  OK, probably a simple misunderstanding. Whatever, no big deal - like I said.  I mean, I spent all that time registering with Square Enix, surely I can just download the beta again and then login and then we'll be fine.  I go back to my PSN inbox, click on the attachment.

I get prompted for a 12 digit promo code.  I don't have a 12 digit promo code.  I have a 20 digit beta code.

 I got to the support center noted in the email.  I log into my account (which at this point I assume that Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn might just be the most subtle ARG ever made).  I fumble around until I find some forums in English.  I put a post there, and a fellow gamer tells me that I should have gotten a 12 digit code in my email.

You know, the email inviting me to download the beta client for my non-existent PC.

So I find Customer Support.  Square's concept of Customer Support seems to embrace the often used tactic of "fend them off with FAQ's and then ignore them completely".  I get past their measly FAQ's and submit a "ticket".

Of course, a "ticket" would imply that a) someone received it and that b) I could go back and check the status of the "ticket".  Only, there is no open tickets area in Square's Customer Support mindset.  So what they've really created is email.  And since I have no confirmation email, it might be email that goes nowhere.

So now I stumble onto the Technical Support forums, where I find the grandest of all the grand punchlines this little saga could have ... a thread entitled:

• Played Phase 3 PS3 beta but received Phase 4 PC beta email >.<

OK.  now we are getting somewhere.  Surely out of eight pages of Internet wisdom will be the answer, or at least some kind of response from Square Enix on the situation.  Right?

Right?

Oh, hell no.  There are, and I shit you not because I respect you as a person and would not do that you this late in a long post, eight pages of people posting their public email addresses to an international Internet forum in the hopes of someone sending them a beta key.

Because, I should mentioned, these forums do not have private messages.  So the thing is - I don't even really blame people for posting in the hopes of getting a code.  Several have.  Square is completely silent on the issue and have left them no other choice.

Eight pages ... and growing.  Of personal email addresses.

Nicely played, Square, you have managed to fuck up a process the gaming industry has been honing for like decades into a process where people are willing to forego their personal information for a 12 digit code.

So yeah.

First of all, if you are going to force me to jump through so many registration hoops - I should get some benefit of it.  That I had to create like three accounts, pinky swear four times and what not - but you have absolutely no way of giving me a beta code except email? Ludicrous.  Absolutely ludicrous.  This is like when the phone company asks you to put in your phone number so that they can put you through to a human whose first question will be what is your phone number.

Second - I am so tired of first rate game companies with third rate customer support systems.  I'm kinda glad I already played Tomb Raider - because now knowing that Square Enix basically has no customer support, I am far less likely to buy their games in the future.

And thirdly ... Square, if you are reading this - don't even respond to me until you have responded to that forum thread.  Like you should have done at least a day ago.


The Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Beta?

I am not a fan.

Not at all. 

Early Look: DC Universe Online Beta (PS3)

It shouldn't really be surprising to anyone that currently DC Universe Online is a buggy mess. For one thing, it is technically a beta ... but also a beta of an MMO from SOE, who doesn't exactly have a long track record of deploying stable products in their first iteration or so. Take Planetside, for instance, where I routinely spawned into walls.

So when I spawned into floor while playing DCU, I was hardly surprised. Course, this is now many years later and I would thought SOE would have had a few new tricks to keep this kind of thing from happening. Other common issues: sound will disappear, you'll occasionally be unable to jump into a new zone (including logging out), odd delays between doing damage and actually seeing the effect, graphics detail jump here and there (DCU uses the Unreal Engine - though it seems to vary between UT2004 and UE3 sometimes. I think the detail settings are TBD), random complete lockup, mission items may be missing, etc. etc.

If you squint really hard and ignore the bugs, what remains is a fairly by the numbers MMO experience. The character creation is quite decent, perhaps not quite as impressive as City of Heroes, but offers a gamut of physical options for your comic avatar. You can create a hero or villain, and select a specific mentor - all of which will guide the missions you get out of the gate. Power selection is fairly shallow, you select a power base (Fire, Sorcery, Ice, Nature, Technology, etc.), a weapon (from hand blasting to massive hammers), and a movement type (flight, acrobatics or super speed).

Much of the game feels like a fantasy MMORPG with a comic book theme and the action setting set to high. That might sound like a bad thing, but it's really not and offers a solid and familiar core to the gameplay. You do gather gear as you go along, but you can equip the gear without having to change that carefully selected appearance of your costumed crimefighter. You can swap out the appearance of your gear at any time without having to change what you actually have equipped, making it easy to toy around with the look and feel of your character. You select a gear palette when you create your character which all new gear conforms to - meaning that even that Amazonian helmet might suit your wardrobe.

If I ignore the complete lack of stability - my real complaint about DCU is that I've actually found it very hard to engage many things which warrant the MMO side of the equation. Sure, when I'm running around Metropolis there are umpteen other heroes fighting around me - but often that's a liability more than anything else as they're in competition for the same rats I need to kill for my "Kill Five Rats" mission. At least on the console, the interface for creating groups on the fly seems clunky at best and my time waiting outside zones for a party only ever resulted in one invite ... and then the zone itself was crashing.

DCU does have the ability to create quick groups for instanced quests, such as the "Alerts" - where Martian Manhunter will teleport you and a few other heroes to a specific location. While this could potentially create some greate Pick Up Game potential, I would generally teleport into a location unable to find half the party and on one Alert, kept getting trapped in a room with no doors (literally).

It's bizarre to me that I can load up Borderlands - also on the Unreal Engine, and grab a pick up game in minutes, and the experience is seamless ... and yet DCU is an actual MMO and I've spent 99.9999% of my time solo on it. As a solo RPG, it might be worth the price of admission without the monthly cost, if made to actually work, but I'm certainly not getting anything from the game I'd pay monthly for right now.

If they make the game stable, look a bit better, and fix the grouping - DCU might be a big draw for MMO fans on the console. You can see the potential in the game right now, but there is plenty of work to be done for sure.

Game Play: World Of Warcraft

You might have heard of this one...

So I finally play this game after GameFly sends me a free guest disc. I've refused to go out and spend money on it as I assumed my conclusion would be that I didn't want to spend the monthly fee.

And sure enough ...

Look, I get that if you can make WoW a spoke on your social hub, it is probably quite a lot of fun. As someone who prefers to mostly solo and sometimes multiplay, though, the cost of a monthly upkeep just doesn't make much sense. Nothing in the guest pass convinced me otherwise. Yes, the graphics are fairly good. Yes, it has quite the solid interface.

But just how much can one go into an area, kill X number of Y, return with a pittance of gold, eventually level up and then repeat? Sure - I get that this is the model by which the whole MMO genre has made its fortune, but I had three different characters and I could barely tell the gameplay apart. Sure, that's in part because I got too bored to reach a high enough level to get more distinct skills ... but it's not like I want to pay rent to get that right.

And I'm not sold on some of the mechanics. Can someone explain to my why ghosts in Warcraft are so encumbered by gravity? They're ghosts. So when my druid fell off a cliff and died on a random tree branch ... my ghost waved helplessy as it fell past him, only to get stuck at the bottom. The guest pass didn't seem to have the auto-stuck feature enabled, so I had to ping a GM.

The GM tried to impress me with an temporary ninja costume and brief "flying" (read ... low gravity jumping) abilities. It didn't really work. And I think the ninja costume might have been because my mage was running around in skivvies to see if her defense skill would get raised.

I'm not saying WoW is a bad game - clearly it is a cornerstone of MMO's. It's the genre that annoys me.

As a footnote, I poked back into Dungeon Runners to see how it was faring. Honestly ... not well. They've tacked on a bunch of ads to free accounts and I can't say the gameplay has really gotten any better since the beta.

Guess it's back to poking at roguelikes for me...

Tonight on The Simpsons

Marge goes online for the first time and becomes obsessed with a role-playing game that Bart and many of their neighbors are playing.

Marge meets World of Warcraft? Excellent.