Do you folks remember when Final Fantasy XIV, Square Enix’s second MMO was released? It was bad, not as in the “this is kind of boring and clunky” kind of bad, but the “this game is still in its alpha stages of development” kind of bad. To say it was a disaster is an insult to disasters.
So, what do you do when you have a game critically panned as one of the worst games ever? Some companies would have cut their losses and just scrapped the whole project, but not Square Enix. Instead, they announced last October that they’d be redesigning the game and creating a “Version 2.0”. Well, they’ve decided to ditch the Version 2.0 moniker.
Square Enix instead announced today that the redesign will be called Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, and the MMO will center on the quite fitting core concept of rebirth. For the sake of the company, I hope that it truly is a rebirth, because if A Realm Reborn falters out of the gate like the original FF XIV, then the cries of the people claiming that Square Enix has “jumped the shark” will only intensify, and that would not be a pretty sight. At this time, it’s unknown about when A Realm Reborn will be released, although it appears that it will be coming out for the PS3 at some point by the end of the year.