It is rare in life to get second chances, and those chances are even more of rarity in the gaming world. Gamers are not always forgiving of publishers and developers when they promise an amazing game or installment to a franchise.
Cover art for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
Luckily for Square Enix, they seem to have earned their second chance with gamers after the re-release of Final Fantasy XIV, fittingly titled “A Realm Reborn.”
Pegged as Version 2, Square Enix completely redid the online multiplayer version of their 2010 bust Final Fantasy XIV. The game ran from September 30, 2010 until November 11, 2012. Servers were shutdown and Square Enix completely redesigned the game as well as it’s development team.
Generally described as a back step for the genre, the original version, dubbed Version 1, was filled with bugs and glitches that left most feeling as though the game was unplayable or not finished.
A review by 1Up.com said, “there is a game with considerable depth and potential here, but it needs another six to nine months before it’s ready for primetime. It’s impossible to recommend to anyone in its current state.”
GameTrailers said “it falls flat at every turn” and “it isn’t worth the hassle.”
In September 2011, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada said that the Final Fantasy brand has been greatly damaged as a result of the game’s shortcomings.
These issues seemed to be rectified in Square’s relaunch of the game with “A Realm Reborn.” An entirely new story was built, set five years into the future from the original version with an all new story and background, which includes a story as to what happened to the original world of Eorzea from Version 1.
The overall goal of “A Realm Reborn” is to rectify the issues with the original while offering a installment to the franchise that does Final Fantasy justice. And fans have seemed to agree with that statement.
“A Realm Reborn” released on Windows and Playstation 3 on August 27 of this year. And while the game is a hit thusfar, it did have setbacks of it’s own within the first week.
Erik Kain, a Forbes contributor, stated in an article on September 5 that many players were unable to log on to play the game in it’s first week after launch. This was due to server loads unable to handle the amount of people logging on to play.
Because of this, digital sales were suspended until they could be sure the server load could handle such a high capacity.
The game’s producer and director Naoki Yoshida stated in forums:
“Considering the outcome of our first launch, our sales estimates for this one were decidedly conservative, as we believed that there would be a more gradual rise in users over the opening weeks and months. Instead, to our pleasant surprise, we experienced tremendous support from a great number of players who were eager to get into the game from day one. To ensure that these players, once logged in, were able to play in a stable environment, we were required to implement login restrictions which kept server population near maximum capacity without exceeding those numbers.”
Servers were reconfigured to have a capacity of 413,000 users online at once, hitting a peak at 352,000 the day Forbes published Kain’s article.
The Playstation 3 version of “A Realm Reborn” hit 184,000 physical copies in Japan after it’s first week. Since then, sales and subscriptions have been on a steady rise for the Final Fantasy XIV relaunch, much to the joy of the game’s developers and publishers.
CONVERSATION – What do you think of the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn launch? Have you played the game? Would you be willing to give any publisher a second chance with a storied franchise if they failed to deliver to you and other fans?
