Review of Final Fantasy XIV after 2 weeks

I award this game....

2 / 10

The economy is completely stalled due to no market search function or auction house.

Crafting progress is stalled due to too many complex recipies for simple upgrades. I am all for a mixed crafting experience, but there is value to making at least ONE upgrade readily available without co-dependencies.

The UI leaves nothing but frustration on this side of the screen. There is no reason for all those sub-menus, even on a PS3. A lot of menus could be joined together without any loss whatsoever - for instance when you craft and you open up a list of things you can craft (1 screen), select one (2nd screen), confirm your selection and learn the crystal requriements (3rd screen) and only THEN you find out if you actually have the materials on you - if not, you have to click "back" three times through the 3 screen with each leaving a 5 second lag = a total of at least 30 seconds in order to get the respons "insufficient materials". This check should and could be moved to the first scrren, so that the game shows you a marker or icon in the inital list on the items you have crystals for.
This is just one of many examples of the dysfunctional UI - where too much priority information is hidden in sub-sub-sub menus.

The retainer system is simply useless. The only way to sell something is to plant your character in a crowded part of the cities, /sit it down and go to work or bed for 8 hours.

The lag and targetting system is insufferable in combat. I play a marauder and my boyfriend plays a healer. We sit in the same room and we are separated by about 3 seconds. We constantly die due to the server lag since he can't effectively heal me, and the targetting system suffers due to the lack of targetting frames for your party member.

You have to do macros for the most simple things. It's 2011, I shouldn't have to manually write a macro for battle targetting or switching gear! Manually switching gear using the user interface can easily take 5 minutes if you need to change several pieces of attire and weaponry - a macro does this in 5 seconds. Why are these basic functions missing from the game?!?

You cannot sort your inventory. Insufferable. I have 80 slots on me and 80 on my retainer that I CANNOT SORT. IN ANY WAY. Not even alphabetize it!!! This is a deal-breaker for me.

The chat and social functions are under-developed. Even the early MUDs had better chat- and social functions. The SMS-lenght chat messages that you can send after correctly typing in both the name and surname of your friend Ynymnminjh Zhvtcyth is unacceptable for a MMORPG and the area chats have the same range as an average piss radius. Without a functionig chat system, this is nothing other than a very dysfunctional and clunky one-player game. I get more in-game social interaction from Dragon Age, and that's a single player game.

The user interface is what we actually USE to play the game. If the UI isn't working, the game isn't working.

Now, I don't need everything to be just like WoW, because I hated the way that WoW developed over the years, but one thing that WoW DID excel at was a customizable user-friendly interface that was easy to use and understand and let you do multiple things at once, such as checking out your ínventory or organizing your bags while you were crafting, inspecting a fellow player while running, and chatting while doing ANYTHING.

I have hoped for FFXIV, but let's be honest, except for pretty graphics and animations, this game blows so far. Big time.

I will be returning to the game in the future if the UI, the social, and the trade are fixed, but in the mean time, I am not paying for this. The game is, at best, in an alpha developement state and the PC launch seems to be only an attempt to finance the PS3-launch in 6 months.

In short, I will NOT be playing past my free 30 days at this time. The game is way too unfinished. And yes, while WoW and other games also had rough starts, they were nowhere near as unfinished as this product. This is, by far, the LEAST finished MMORPG I have ever seen launched.

Sorry, SE, I am NOT paying a monthly fee for access to a game in Alpha state. No f*cking way.

I will play casually for about 2 more weeks until my free 30 days run out, and keep updating the blog. After that, I'll take a looooong kitty nap and play some games that are actually finished before I give FFXIV more of my time.

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