Monthly Cost?

[KoLAddict]

I bought the game at launch and only fiddled with it a bit. Is it free still, or is there a monthly fee now, and if so how much is it?

[Malacite]

$12.95/month. $7.00 for 3 months (then it goes back to 12.95... some discount) if you also subscribe to XIV.

[KoLAddict]

Is that the price with the FFXI sub discount? Or is that for FFXIV alone?

Thanks, I thought it was still free

[Malacite]

New MMO's aren't you? No, your 1st 30 days on XI are free then the 12.95/month fee kicks in.

[Etra]

What. Mal, this is for XIV, not XI.

Game is currently $10 a month for XIV after the free thirty days, which you've already used.

[Malacite]

rofl owned, my bad.

Well, it IS going to go up to 12.95 like XI is once 2.0 is out (unless you qualified for Legacy, then you keep the $10 discounted price)

[KoLAddict]

Ok thanks that's why I was a little confused, lol. I played XIV when it first came out for a bit and thought it was decent but not spectacular, so I canceled, but because of all the criticism it was free for so long, I wasn't sure if they had finally started charging for it.

So XIV is $10/month, do they have a bundle like they used to, where you get a discount if you have XI as well, or is the $10 the price with the discount?

[Malacite]

The bundle discount applies to XI's sub, not XIV's - XIV is already currently discounted (check the Lodestone for full pricing details of 2.0 but it's a lot more expensive for non-legacy folks who want multiple character slots) - and it's also only for 3 months. The way it works is when your next bill for XI comes in, if XIV is also active they knock it down to $7 but it's only for 3 months then it goes back to the regular $12.95

Honestly SE wtf? Who the hell offers a temporary discount for people subscribing to multiple services? But then I remember this is SE. We've been putting up with their BS excuse for customer service for years.

[Aeni]

Honestly SE wtf? Who the hell offers a temporary discount for people subscribing to multiple services? But then I remember this is SE. We've been putting up with their BS excuse for customer service for years.

Honestly, who has the time to be fully invested in TWO MMO titles? You're just reaching a bit, Mal, with that comment. The discount for 3 months was only to try to pull people from FFXI into FFXIV. That was all it was (promotional discount, no different than if Sony pushed out a new service for PSN and offered it to PSN Plus members for free for 2 months as a trial) My thinking is that most CURRENT FFXI players will not likely "leave" their game even after the 3 month discounted trial and SE doesn't have much to lose as that's just added revenue from an otherwise non-existent source. The hope was that just a few (10% even) of FFXI players will leave that game and play FFXIV instead. It will allow them to reduce operation cost for that game a bit more while shifting that burden to the newer title. 10% might not seem huge to us but for those working backstage, it's pretty big, especially since SE has had to juggle their finances a lot in this poor economic climate (also coming off that Touhoku earthquake last year)

I think they should just leave FFXI and let it slowly fade like Everquest and other "old" MMO titles. Maybe even convert it into a F2P system and zeroing out live customer support to compensate and shift the resources over to FFXIV. I think the MMO industry needs to figure out a standard way to "kill" a title. Nothing more sad in an online game than to see it wither away. Better to just bring it to a complete conclusion with a special and memorable event.

[Feba]

really, SE should try to move back to the idea of POL as an integrated online service-- you pay the monthly fee for POL, and then whatever games you want to play are included in that. That would probably have saved them a ton of money on the FF14 fiasco-- instead of having a few people quit XI for XIV, then give up entirely, they could've had nearly the entire XI playerbase give XIV a shot, and then instead of simply quitting en masse, they would've moved back to XI while SE fixed up XIV. Also, the new people that XIV would've drawn in could've tried (or retried, in many cases) XI and see how they like that. TetraMaster would actually have players, along with the potential to release new games. Somewhat like the 'magazine subscription' format. Less money from the superfans, possibly, but more money overall.

SE could also use old titles to round out such a service; simply have Virtual-Console style releases of old titles. Costs them very little, and they'll have people burning through subscription time to play games that don't require any maintenence.

[KoLAddict]

I think a temporary discount is bogus too to be honest. Especially because it was implied in the marketing that it was a permanent discount while you were paying for both games. I followed FFXIV up to release and gave it a shot long after I had stopped FFXI so I never looked into the discount further, but they had said that there would be a discount to people subscribing to FFXI multiple times, and never mentioned it being a temporary discount so that does surprise me.

As far as paying for the PlayOnline service and getting access to all the MMOs for free (well, FFXI and FFXIV at this time), I don't see how they'd profit if they offered both MMOs at the same $12 price point. They could do something similar to what Sony does though, and offer each MMO at their own monthly fee, then offer a bigger price (but discounted) to access all.

Is Quad Mist still played? If so, I guess there are three games Square is supporting right now. I don't hear anything on it anymore though.

[Aeni]

really, SE should try to move back to the idea of POL as an integrated online service-- you pay the monthly fee for POL, and then whatever games you want to play are included in that. That would probably have saved them a ton of money on the FF14 fiasco-- instead of having a few people quit XI for XIV, then give up entirely, they could've had nearly the entire XI playerbase give XIV a shot, and then instead of simply quitting en masse, they would've moved back to XI while SE fixed up XIV. Also, the new people that XIV would've drawn in could've tried (or retried, in many cases) XI and see how they like that. TetraMaster would actually have players, along with the potential to release new games. Somewhat like the 'magazine subscription' format. Less money from the superfans, possibly, but more money overall.

SE could also use old titles to round out such a service; simply have Virtual-Console style releases of old titles. Costs them very little, and they'll have people burning through subscription time to play games that don't require any maintenence.

I was hoping that SE would've continued supporting POL and adding additional features, such as SE Manga and maybe even integrating their mobile division games. You're spot on with your ideas and it's a shame that SE didn't do more with what they had. I was almost certain FFXIV would've been added to POL and was a bit dismayed to see it didn't. That fiasco early on with requiring a 3rd party pay processor (to buy crystas) was such a sham.