Final Fantasy XIV has not been met with critical acclaim. A glance at its Metacritic ranking reveals a rather painful 51/100 for the critics' rating on the PC version and 3.8/10 for the user score. It's fair to say the game has some issues. But Square-Enix has a solution to appease existing players, and entice new ones, all the while giving the developer time to make some much-needed changes. Yes, the trial period is being extended to 60 days.
The extra 30 days will be added from the time your account was opened, even on new accounts opened before the 25th of this month. That's over two months of free fun for everyone then. Sorry, 'free gameplay'. Well... 'free use'. Here it is doing its thing:
The 30 day extension does make business sense. It would still apply to anyone buying the game today, so you could get two free months out of it... although the game itself costs $49.99 so that's not very 'free'. Squeenix wrote on its official blog:
Above: 'Considering the nature of the feedback'. Doesselling all your Squeenix sharescount as feedback?
The bit at the end about 'humbly ask[ing] for your continued support' doesn't sound awfully confident. MMOs need a large community to take off, and losing massive numbers of potential subscribers this early on could send this game the way of APB. Concensus seems to be that FFXIV could be a lot of fun, but it needs a hell of a lot of tweaking to get it ready.
Is another 30 days really enough? Will anyone subscribe to the service once the second month is up? And why are Chocobos now called Horsebirds? At least two of these questions will be answered in 30 days' time.
Are you playing FFXIV? What do you think of the game? Let us know in the comments.
19 Oct, 2010
Source: Jolt
