1.19 Brings New Bugs, Lower Stability

Only Square Enix could hype up a patch for more than *six months* and repeatedly delay it for amost *three months* after the previous patch, and then launch it with this many beta-level issues, ranging from increased client instability and freezes to much-hyped quests and abilities not working.

• Mouseover on certain items killing the client.
• Unable to join Grand Companies, who were offering the big "content" addition to this patch with the addition of a questline leading to mounts.
• Market Wards that are broken, freezing up as you try to enter, and then not allowing you to log back in after you're stuck having to force quit.  Still waiting for a hotfix on that.
• New DirectX issues causing crashes on some systems.
• Opening the map causing crashes in Gridania on some systems.
• Patcher freezing partway in, and requiring you to force it closed and reboot.
• Macros broken due to various name changes to items and skills, as well as random changes to macro syntax.
• Hermes shoes not appearing in new character's inventories.
• Tutorial freezing up for approximately seven minutes before continuing.
• Certain abilities, like Fast Cast, simply not working.
• Final Fantasy XIV Config, required to adjust things like controller and graphic settings, no longer working on some systems.

So what do we have?  The prime source of new content inaccessible to some players, some genuine improvements, some new, game-breaking bugs and more instability in an already unstable client (keep in mind, basic things like alt-tabbing in fullscreen and UAC still crash the game).  And with this update, FFXIV finally cracks the double-digit mark for updates since March 3rd - Rift having double the major updates, and *seven times* the overall amount of significant patches.

Amusingly, yet another story broke today, reported on several news sites today quote the Square Enix CEO as reiterating that Final Fantasy XIV's abysmal showing "greatly damaged" the series as a whole.

Really, this is news?  The only people it's news to are the rabid fanbase who insist that "better" means "quality" or "fixed" or "acceptable".