I have completely lost faith in Square-Enix to deliver a quality RPG - online or off - after this and FFXIII... jeesh!
I played the beta, and found it to get uninteresting very fast. I'm glad I didn't pay for it. After going through some missions in the city, I was sent out and directed to find some camps where a faction would further help me. The map icons are very cryptic - I had no idea where this camp was, so I just pushed out to see if i could stumble upon it. On the way there were some fighting small animals - that for some reason were extremely tough. I almost got killed by some stupid squirrel thing - just ridiculous.
After about 15 hours of play i was disappointed by the fact that i still hadn't found a place to buy armor. There was a camp that had some amenities for creating stuff, but that was far beyond me at this point. I was hoping I could at least buy a decent weapon to fight with, but no go.
With my weak-ass character, one of the NPC's had nerve to ask me to join a group on a hunting mission - but problem was I was playing alone, and I had no decent fighting gear. At that point I concluded that this game is poorly conceived and unbalanced. Besides that it was boring me to tears, despite my hoping it would get better. Did the game not know my level and capabilities? Why would I be asked to join a mission like that?
I don't know what the incentive is to play - no leveling, no goals, no reason to do missions? What are we supposed to do, just hang out for a monthly fee? Be happy because its another FF game? I don't think so.
And it didn't help that they have Marlboros in this game and took it out of the SP game (FFXIII). I think I have completely lost faith in Square-Enix after this - and I was hanging on by a thread anyway after FFXIII...