Originally Posted by
Nazrakin
The game felt like an Alpha because it introduced all these awful new ideas that were never fully fleshed out. It was like they were trying new things just to be new and people hated them across the board. People didn't quit because the game crashed a few times and the servers were a little laggy, they quit because it just flat out wasn't fun to play; because the gameplay systems that were in place were failures.
The game has improved because Yoshida (& co) have looked around at what everyone else did right and he's scoop out a lot of the those "unique" systems that didn't work. Looking forward to 2.0, he's going to continue to do just that. What is being taken from WOW? Pretty much everything that has been hyped so far. The questing system, the new UI, content finder, heavy reliance on crowd control, free companies, easy/hard modes for raids. The only exceptions I can think of are the changes to crafting and summons.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it either. I don't want it to become too much like WOW, but I have no problem with the team taking good ideas from other places. Refinement is, generally, what leads to fantastic games. It's rare that wee see truely innovative games that are nothing more than great potential. FFXI and WOW both took the Everquest formula and made it better. I fully support FFXIV looking back at its elders and doing the same.