Dear Alpha/Beta Testers,

I am sure most or all of you are rather angry at me, but I believe, for the wrong reasons.

You all state that you are just trying to follow the rules of the NDA and policing the Alpha/Beta community. But I have to say, assuming you're all human, the majority of your statements are false and just a coverup for your true thoughts. I know how important and regal it is to be one of the only people allowed to test a game before it comes out. The feeling can sometimes be intoxicating and addictive. This leads you to become extremely possessive over the game, and any action that will remove even a tiny bit of that feeling away would cause you to go into an almost offensive mouth foaming rage, metaphorically speaking of course.

Now keep in mind, I have nothing against you guys, nor am I trying to defend what I did was right. I am also not defending the people who are flaming you guys on forums all over the net. I do not support these actions. What I did wasn't right, and I fully understand that now. However, there is still the important issue of how you guys, as testers, should behave.

You all are given a privilege to test a game, and more importantly, PLAY the game. I'm sure you've all heard the saying "Work hard, play harder"? Well this is pretty much the same thing. Ultimately, Square Enix has recruited you guys to do two things: Play the game, and find/report bugs. You have to admit, the first thing that comes into your mind when you received that amazing email from Square Enix was, "oh my god, i get to play FFXIV before everyone else!" I am 99% sure that's the first thought that came into your minds, the fact that you get to "play" the game, and nothing about "testing/bug reporting". Hell, it came into my mind first too. Now, for people who know what the job entails, will start thinking about the testing and bug reporting part, but many of you would just stay at the playing part. This means you have good intentions of seeing the game become a success, but you do not plan on really reporting anything, just leaving that job to the more dedicated players.

Alpha/Beta forums exist solely for you guys to discuss various aspects of the game, a collaboration of thoughts that Square Enix can follow so they can come up with solutions to problems or new content that they have never thought of before. It's very difficult for developers to fine tune games because they've been working on it for so long they don't know what the players want anymore in the game. It's kind of like working on a monotonous job of working a cash register. After a while you forget you're supposed to be nice to customers, and you become more and more grumpy until your manager comes up to you and reminds you what your job is. It's the same thing, except now you're not getting paid to do it.

Therefore, it is important for you guys to understand, the last thing SE wants is posts like "WTH @ ign.com" or "Leaked to GameInformer!" Yeah you guys know what I'm talking about. SE wants posts that will help them understand what the community is thinking about aspects of their game. Again, collaboration of the community. Bug reports are important, but they're usually technical, only deal with individual players, and do not deal with the real "group" problems of the game. SE wants to know what the players are thinking when they are playing "together". However if you guys fill up the forums with nothing but posts that aren't really related to the gameplay, you're defeating the purpose, and ultimately SE doesn't get what really needs to be done done. This is why I did not even reply to the post made about me. It would only fuel the fire.

This brings me to another subject, the NDA. A lot of people preach about releasing of information, violating the NDA. Even if you all make these accusations, for all the internet cares, you could be the actual person releasing the information. There is no way of telling. The people who are releasing the data try to be sneaky by covering their names up and various other mundane methods. This is called dishonesty, and is more dangerous than what I've done. Why? Because most of the time there's no way of tracking who is releasing the information if that happens. They want to cover their butts, and at the same time, fuel their ego because what they're doing is the equivalent to "Look, I have access to info and more, but you can't see it all, only me, and I won't be caught for showing it to you". So those of you who are saying I was stupid by not covering up anything, I'm sorry, it's not stupidity. It's honesty, even if it obviously resulted in my alpha/beta account being terminated. I took responsibility for what I did, even before I started doing it, and I promised not to do it again, and I will keep that promise.

So once again, I have nothing against you guys and I don't hate anyone for ratting me out or calling me all kinds of names. I'm not going to defend myself because I already knew what I did was wrong. I do hope you all take what I said here seriously, and at least try to act in a mature and responsible fashion. Although, knowing it's the internet, it probably won't happen. ^^

Thank you for listening,
Pookypoo - Odin