After my agonizingly torturous ordeal gaining access to Final Fantasy XIV (henceforth referred to as FFXIV), I have decided to chronicle my rage-induced misadventures.<\/p>\n
Anyone who knows me on the forums as “tehNihilist” might have read about my struggles getting into FFXIV. It is ridiculous the lengths I had to go through to get this product working! Honestly FFXIV should not be sold locally to consumers in this state. This article is a strong warning and perhaps a guide for anyone having similar problems.<\/p>\n
The Longest Journey<\/strong><\/p>\n It all started out innocuously enough. I came to realize that my PC may not be up to the mammoth task of running FFXIV. To test this out I ran the FFXIV benchmark and I scored so abysmally low that I had no alternative. I had to make my PC harder, better, faster, stronger! <\/p>\n After dishing out a decent chunk of cash on some new parts from Zaps, I came back home and psyched myself up for the agitation of installing the upgrades. <\/p>\n It had been a while since I had done an upgrade, so I was rusty, and I never find it pleasant installing new hardware. The upgrade however went off relatively smoothly. I then promptly ran the FFXIV benchmark yet again, and low and behold, the upgrade had far less of an effect that I had hoped for. Okay, okay, no worries, it should still be fine. I would just have to run at some lower settings. With anticipation it was now time to go pick up my pre-ordered copy of FFXIV! Woot!<\/p>\n Making my way to a local BTGames (40km drive from my residence) for collection I noticed the traffic lights were all out as I ebbed closer. I tried not to worry – this is South Africa after all, traffic lights are out ALL the time here! Arriving at Northgate Mall the hard reality strikes me – the lights are indeed out in the area. This could be a problem… <\/p>\n Winding my way in darkness through the mall I reach BTGames and notice the branch owner camping outside the pitch-black store. This can’t be good. He drops the bad news that the power will only be on much, much later, so basically I cannot pick up my copy today. I leave somewhat dejected not knowing the horror that was about to start.<\/p>\n Click and DIE!<\/strong><\/p>\n Back at home I receive some disturbing news. It seems that most people are having issues getting into FFXIV because of a third party company known as Click and Buy which Square-Enix uses to handle their monthly billing. Many were finding it almost impossible to create an account with Click and Buy. I decided I could save some time by attempting to create a Click and Buy account ensuring it was ready for when I got my copy of FFXIV. Ho-ho was I in for a shock!<\/p>\n Where to start with the symphony of screw-up’s that is Click and Buy? Well, first off, creating an account through them is a hit and miss affair. It took two other friends and I over five hours to get it to accept our physical addresses in South Africa. The problem seemed to revolve around ZIP codes, and how you list your location. <\/p>\n After prolonged struggling, I managed to create a Click and Buy account. It should now be a simple process of adding a Credit \/ Debit card. WRONG! After filling in my card details I got a big slap in the face, “Your account has temporarily been blocked. Please contact us via email or by phone.” Seeing that they are based in London I decided to forgo phoning them – an email should get this sorted out. Wrong again!<\/p>\n Click and Buy do not seem to respond to the majority of emails. They did not respond to any of mine. A friend phoned a bit later saying that if you verify your Credit \/ Debit card on their site, it should unblock the account. <\/p>\n To verify with Click and Buy you are billed three amounts (not the two they state) ranging from R10-25 from your bank account. Of those three amounts, two need to be filled in on Click and Buy’s site to verify your Credit \/ Debit card. This should hopefully be easy enough… Wrong yet again!<\/p>\n Click and Buy charge in Euros, but we see it in Rands on our bank statements. You need the precise Euro amounts to verify your card. Converting from Rands to Euros with exact precision is not as easy as it sounds, and most banks are unable to tell you the amounts in foreign currency. To top this off you only have a handful of tries before your card becomes locked. Overall it took me twelve charges and many calculations to get it sorted out. After all of that my account was still blocked! Sigh… was this worth the effort?<\/p>\n I then resorted to the last avenue available which was phoning them in London. Ironically this was a breeze. I got through swiftly and they unblocked my account within seconds. <\/p>\n Was it worth it?<\/p>\n Right now I am able to play FFXIV and will be reviewing it for MyGaming in the next few weeks. Perhaps this article will be of some help to you, or at the least let you know you are not alone in your ordeal. If you have any problems, message me on the forums (tehNihilist<\/a>), and I will try help you out. <\/p>\n FFXIV better be mind-blowing or I am going to commit seppuku after all of this!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One gamer's tale of anger, rage and frustration. Was it all worth it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}