I feel defeated...I want to correct stupid testers' ridiculous judgements of this (incomplete) game but I just can't keep up.

Seriously, everywhere I look I see people breaking NDA and spreading false information about this game. "There's only a handful of quests" "The introduction is incredibly boring" "Nothing to do but grind" "Only one kind of zone" "Combat is too easy" "No cutscenes / voice acting", "bitch", "moan", etc.

I realize the whole "it's only beta" thing was one of the reasons FFXIV 1.0 failed (yeah, I was there, and yeah, I said it) but when people are flat out critical about things that

• A: have been specifically talked about by Yoshi P
• B: are explained in the beta test road map
• C: could be easily understood by reading the info posts on the beta forums

...and then take their ridiculous thoughts to the uniformed masses as a critique of the final product....I don't know, it makes me sick. I want to correct these ignorant posts...but as soon as I do, I find someone else saying the same uninformed things and I just feel defeated.

TLDR: Anyone else upset about the amount of NDA breaking by people who really don't understand what they're talking about? I think SE has done a great job of being transparent as far as their goals and intentions here, and people are either missing the point or just ignoring them because "LOL this game is just like WoW, I quit"...and I'm afraid the game will suffer for the misconception.

edit: Maybe I should've been more clear or something, everyone thinks I'm white knighting for the game when in reality I'm far from doing so. All I'm asking for is that people don't break NDA with unfounded opinions based on a product that's not complete. It's the reason we have the NDA in the first place...so people's opinions about the purposely unfinished game don't leak outside of the beta forums and influence the opinions of those who aren't in the beta and don't fully understand the scope of each phase.

more thoughts: Since this thread is getting way more exposure than I thought it would, I feel the need to voice my opinion about the game, since everyone else is.

My opinion is that we shouldn't have ANY opinions yet because no matter how any of us feels about anything we've seen in the game so far, we're all wrong.

We have no idea how ANY of these seemingly disparate systems intertwine because we have yet to see the big picture. Don't like the combat? Well maybe you will after you see limit breaks and have more classes to pick from. Don't like the enclosed spaces of Gridania? Maybe it works as a contrast to the open air of Limsa. See what I'm getting at? Our view of this game is so narrow that quite literally having any opinion at all at this point (and I'd argue even up until beta phase 4) just makes us all, collectively, worse.

We aren't playing, we're testing. I feel like I'm the only one who understands the difference.

A comparison, if I may: The japanese guy at Nintendo in 1985 is responsible for testing a level of super mario bros where mario swims for the whole level. All day for weeks all he does is test the swimming level over and over again. He goes on the (then non-existent internet) and starts screaming "THIS GAME FUCKING SUCKS, ALL YOU DO IS SWIM". Everyone says "wow that sucks, I surely don't want to play a game where all you do is swim all the time." Again, do you see what I'm getting at? It's about the bigger picture. And quite frankly, we don't know what that picture is yet.

TLDR (pt2): Everyone needs to STFU about their personal feelings (be they good or bad) towards things until we have a more solid understanding of the game as a whole. We're not playing, we're not reviewing, we're simply testing. And if you honestly have so much passion that you can't contain your feelings about an aspect of the game EVEN after reading all of this, knowing how ignorant we all are to how the game actually works...then there's a place for you. The feedback threads in the beta forum.

Next day update: wow you guys. This has become the most discussed post in my reddit history and I couldn't be happier about the discussion that's ensued. Glad to see we have such a dedicated community here at r/ffxiv, regardless of which side of the fence you're on about ARR. /cheer!