I'm perfectly fine with an MMO releasing in not a completely finished state but it is in no way acceptable for FFXIV to be released in the condition it's currently in.  While FFXI wasn't near perfect when it released, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as FFXIV is.

SE is essentially punishing us for them rushing the game out.

-signed by a FFXI player since 2003

Have patience, maybe you should forget about FFXIV for now and buy it 1 year later, by then it'll be cheaper and probably better?

-signed dog lover since 1992

whats your major gripe with it, the UI? was the same way with xi, slow and annoying. is it still slow and annoying?

I have many complaints, the biggest of which is the UI.  The UI in XI wasn't exactly the greatest thing, but it wasn't bad either.  The UI in XIV is just a giant mess that's slow, laggy, inconvenient, unintuitive, and just plain outdated.

Also, I don't remember the UI in XI ever actually being slow and laggy.  It was a pretty simply UI that worked fine for what it was.  XI was a PS2 game first so it makes sense they had a menu made for the PS2.  XIV is not a PS3 game first and even if it were, it's 2010 and people want a UI that actually works well.  There's no excuse for that awful of a UI.

You almost sound offended I and just about every other rational personal that has experienced hates the UI, do you like it?

Sorry, I was in a hurry in my last post so didn't get to finish my thought.

Not only is the FFXIV a failure in every possible way, it's incredibly antiquated.  There are no hot keys what-so-ever, you have to use an external program to setup controls and graphical settings, and they are still using the text command based macro system.

The PS3 can use a keyboard and it's an MMO so most people are just going to use a keyboard.  So ignoring the unintuitive UI problems, the game just needs hot keys.  Not every MMO should strive to be WoW, but every MMO needs to understand why WoW os successful.  One of the reasons is WoW's excellent UI and a little thing call hot keys and the ability to have multiple menu windows open at a time.  Any UI that makes you fight with it the entire time you're using it and makes you take extra unneeded steps is a failure.  It's as simple as that.

Next, it's this is a pretty damn annoying thing, but as annoying as UI is, it's even more annoying having the settings menu in an external program.  I spent hours just trying to get my resolution, graphical settings, and gamepad controls just right because I had to keep opening up and closing the damn game.  Every time I want to change anything I have to exit teh game, blindly change the setting, open up the patcher, input my username, password, and one time password again, select my character, wait the two minutes it takes to make the world load (I timed it), and then finally see if what I changed is what I like.  There's no reason for that. 

And finally there's the fucking stupid macro system.  If it were powerful I could handle it.  If it were 2002 I might understand.  It isn't either of those things.  There's no reason I have to know a series of text commands that I have to look up on an external website and spend an hour setting up the macros.  And then each time I level, I have to go back in and touch all those macros again.  To make it even worse IT'S CASE SENSITIVE.  There's no reason for that and it's just makes a frustrating process even more frustrating.  If all that wasn't enough, we come full circle to the not having multiple menu windows open because when inputting abilities and equipment, you have to remember the name, spelling, punctuations, and case of the item.  It's easy enough when you're adding Thunder to you action bar, but when you're equipping spells or equipment with funny names and multiple words, it sucks not being able to see them.

And all that is only scratching the surface of the UI problems alone.  I could go on for pages.

An xi player hating the macro system?

Have you tried the xiv windower I've heard great things that fix a lot what square seems to not fix.

Why would I be offended? I am not the one who wastes money on an mmo when it is first launch. I still have XI and am in no rush for XIV till mid to late next year when I know things will be smoothed out.

But curious though, in the making of the realm videos didn't they mention that they build this around the ps3 for UI reasons?

In XI I used the Windower and whatever the program was that used the XML files (forget the name).  For SMN alone I had a script that was well over 1000 lines.  I accepted that because it was powerful, I could do a lot with it, and because it was adding something to the game that FFXI needed.

For XIV, their macro system isn't powerful.  There's no reason to have  to input case sensitive text commands to get the game to work.  It's just an awful system that I really can't believe they carried over, especially when the game requires even more macro changes than XI.

As for the FFXIV Windower, last I heard of it was that it only fixed FFXIV so it could be full screened windowed and SE actually shut it down.  It also isn't made by the same people that made the FFXI Windower.

I didn't watch those videos and while the game is better when using a controller, it still isn't good.  They also shouldn't completely forget about the keyboard when every PC user will have one and every PS3 user can have one (and they made us buy a HDD for XI, it's not hard stretch to make us buy a keyboard for XIV).

The UI in XIV is just outdated and plain bad.  I really cannot think of a single positive thing to say about it.

The problem is even the Japanese players are complaining :P

Look at the japanese Amazon site reviews for the game :P

Though just found out you can look at other people's stats online, which is kinda cool.  Like Armory from WoW

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com/rc/character/status?cicuid=1527802 <- Me