How exactly is FFXIV like WoW?

Never played WoW but interested in picking it up with the new expansion. I keep seeing people reference WoW when describing this game but no direct comparisons are made to features.

I know FATEs are the dynamic events from GW2, what features were taken from WoW?

People always credit GW2 with those dynamic events for some reason. RIFT made them popular, not gw2.

As for comparison to wow. Most mmos are just evolutions of other mmos. People see the holy trinity and go "Omg wow clone". While the games are similar, ffxiv has enough to differentiate itself IMHO. Wow is an EQ clone, if you wanna get technical.

Try the free trial for wow before buying if you've never played it. I think it let's you play up to level 20.

FFXIV isn't necessarily "like WoW." It's like a lot of MMORPGs. It took what it considered were the good parts of previous MMORPGs and tried to combine them.

But when people are referencing WoW, they're more than likely talking about the PvE and combat. Off the top of my head...

PvE:

• Guaranteed loot
• Weekly lockout
• Instanced
• Specific group sizes

Combat:

• GCD based
• Holy Trinity (Tank, DPS, Healer)
• Lack of actual hybrid class viability
• Fire that you can (and should) move out of

For me the biggest similarity is how progression is handled. That seems (to me) to be the biggest design choice they both use. Both use what is known as "vertical progression". Your level and ilvl go up with each respective expansion. Some games use a horizontal progression which involves giving you a wider range of choices in how you itemize. I believe this is how XI did things, but having never played it, I can only operate on hearsay.

Both use the normal leveling methods of questing and dungeons (5 player rather than 4). The notorious monsters of WoW (world bosses) are about achievements and gear, so similar to hunts except that it's faction tagged rather than open.



If you're going to play WoW, be prepared for the differences. One character - One class. If you want to play other classes, you level an alt. Gathering nodes, quest items, quest mobs, holiday events, everything is competitive and normally amazingly so. The game has factions that, depending on your server, can and will kill you when out and about in the world. PVE servers offer some protection from this, but there are ways even here for people to grief you.

I can not stress that point enough, the entire game is built around player competition. If you thrive on it (and many do like the element of danger), then it can be a lot of fun. If you don't have the patience to be someone else's content, then it's less fun.

Also, the game isn't as pretty, but it also is 10 years old and has 10 years of content.

Pretty sure the "Dynamic events" you speak of were first seen in the failure that was Warhammer Online with Public Quests, PQs.

Everyone references WoW because it was the game that really brought the MMORPG genre into the mainstream and was the first MMO that many people played, it was in no way the progenitor of MMO's as I would more give the title of father of the modern MMO to Everquest as that really defined how MMO's have been structured and built since and if you want to go even farther back in the evolution, Dungeons and Dragons Pen n' Paper>MUD's>EQ. WoW just simplified, "streamlined" (for better or worse) and popularized the genre.

Also while public events were popularized in Rift and Guild Wars 2, Warhammer Online did them before either of those.
(Ah, beat me to it while I was typing!)

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

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Actually, Everquest borrowed a lot of its structure from Ultima Online, which is credited as being the first "true" MMO (meaning element standards that persist to today). All current and past MMOs owe their existence to UO.

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Originally Posted by Kalandros

Pretty sure the "Dynamic events" you speak of were first seen in the failure that was Warhammer Online with Public Quests, PQs.

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I don't know where the concept was invented but I mentioned GW2 because Yoshida did reference it specifically when talking about Dynamic Events. He's been pretty vocal about admiring other MMOs for certain features.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

Everyone references WoW because it was the game that really brought the MMORPG genre into the mainstream and was the first MMO that many people played, it was in no way the progenitor of MMO's as I would more give the title of father of the modern MMO to Everquest as that really defined how MMO's have been structured and built since and if you want to go even farther back in the evolution, Dungeons and Dragons Pen n' Paper>MUD's>EQ. WoW just simplified, "streamlined" (for better or worse) and popularized the genre.

Also while public events were popularized in Rift and Guild Wars 2, Warhammer Online did them before either of those.
(Ah, beat me to it while I was typing!)

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Yea, X came before Y so it influenced all further developments.
Regardless if X was relatively unknown in comparison and Y still holds nearly all the titles for MMOs these days.

Totally legit argument bro, tell me more.

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Originally Posted by Wolf_Gang

I don't know where the concept was invented but I mentioned GW2 because Yoshida did reference it specifically when talking about Dynamic Events. He's been pretty vocal about admiring other MMOs for certain features.

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Vista's points were also taken from GW2.
Thing is, DE's were actually really fun in GW2 when I first played. [A month after opening.]
FATE's here are pushed into too much content and it's not fun at all.

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Originally Posted by Velox

Actually, Everquest borrowed a lot of its structure from Ultima Online, which is credited as being the first "true" MMO (meaning element standards that persist to today). All current and past MMOs owe their existence to UO.

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That is very true, UO was the first MMO and it did heavily influence EQ but I still feel that EQ was the first modern MMO (a different distinction in my mind) as it was the first fully 3D MMO and introduced many of the basic MMO trappings that we find today. While UO had some of the stuff that has persisted to MMO's today, I feel that the basic structure of MMO's now is more akin to EQ. All in all, I feel that both our statements are true.
So I guess it would go more like DnD PnP>MUD's>UO>EQ>WoW

I think the people who say everything is a WoW clone do it because WoW was their first MMO and they don't know any better.

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Originally Posted by Zaft

FFXIV isn't necessarily "like WoW." It's like a lot of MMORPGs. It took what it considered were the good parts of previous MMORPGs and tried to combine them.

But when people are referencing WoW, they're more than likely talking about the PvE and combat. Off the top of my head...

PvE:

• Guaranteed loot
• Weekly lockout
• Instanced
• Specific group sizes

Combat:

• GCD based
• Holy Trinity (Tank, DPS, Healer)
• Lack of actual hybrid class viability
• Fire that you can (and should) move out of

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This... it could be resumed as: mindless gameplay.

Biggest examples I can think of are the progression style and quest system.

I think comparing one MMO to another is stupid. Of course a lot of them share the same types of content, they're in the same genre! That's like saying Team Fortress 2 is a Call of Duty clone because they both force you into one of two teams and let you shoot people on the other team, or Jak and Daxter is a Banjo Kazooie Clone because, in both, you have to beat up enemies and collect items hidden all around one large area before you can proceed to the next large area.

I mean, doesn't it sound more than a little stupid? Or am I just taking crazy pills?

I wouldn't say it copied wow. They petty much went with the standard for the mmo genre. Games evolve in that they take the best elements of previous games and build on them.

Remember how Capcom basically invented the super bar (a bar that fills up as you fight and once full lets you do a powerful super move) in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. After Capcom invented the super bar pretty much every fighting game released since then had some form of a super bar. But are they copies of SSF2T? No they aren't.

How do people still defend that this isn't a WoW clone, THE DEVELOPER SAID IT WAS MULTIPLE TIMES.

You reference someone elses' work in order to make your own work more successful.

If someone made an MMORPG and didn't look at any other MMO then you would have the original FFXIV (from how the developers talked about the original production).

You always look at what other people have done when you make something.

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Originally Posted by HakuroDK

I think comparing one MMO to another is stupid. Of course a lot of them share the same types of content, they're in the same genre! That's like saying Team Fortress 2 is a Call of Duty clone because they both force you into one of two teams and let you shoot people on the other team, or Jak and Daxter is a Banjo Kazooie Clone because, in both, you have to beat up enemies and collect items hidden all around one large area before you can proceed to the next large area.

I mean, doesn't it sound more than a little stupid? Or am I just taking crazy pills?

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I wouldn't say you're taking crazy pills but you're certainly missing the mark by far,

Just because two games fit the same "genre" (and this is generous in this case because there currently isn't a large list / unified set of rules that specifically defines what an MMO is at the moment) doesn't mean they have to contain the same elements.

Your example of CoD vs TF2, other than being on two opposing teams with firearms (sometimes in the case of TF2) the games share virtually no similarities, you will most likely never hear either one being called a "clone" of the other.

This isn't often the case of MMOs currently because in a lot of cases (by developer admission) they are taking inspiration or trying to emulate what has worked in other games (See: WoW) because of their success, as opposed to innovating entire new systems on their own (which is costly and risky). This leads to the playerbase being able to draw more direct parallels in content especially if the game that's trying to copy something doesn't do it nearly as well as the game they took inspiration from.

an FFXIV example of this is FATEs

Earlier in this thread an article was linked where Yoshida admitted looking at the Guild Wars 2 dynamic world content system and basing FATEs off of that idea, it was also pointed out that RIFT was most likely the originator of this concept as well. However in terms of execution FFXIV has probably done this the least successfully of the two above games that have used similar ideas.

Things like this leads players to say "That game did it better" and they may be entirely right.

The more often this happens in a game the more likely players are going to notice and bring it up if a large number of systems are "inspired" by various other games but each of those games have a better application of those elements because they created / refined them.

It's the risk you take when doing this.

Don't play WoW. I came from there,being an elitist inn raids. I went from BC to MoP throne of thunder. The game has gotten easy from WotLK. Its not fun compared to how FFXIV challenges.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

That is very true, UO was the first MMO and it did heavily influence EQ but I still feel that EQ was the first modern MMO (a different distinction in my mind) as it was the first fully 3D MMO and introduced many of the basic MMO trappings that we find today. While UO had some of the stuff that has persisted to MMO's today, I feel that the basic structure of MMO's now is more akin to EQ. All in all, I feel that both our statements are true.
So I guess it would go more like DnD PnP>MUD's>UO>EQ>WoW

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Atually, UO was and wasn't the first MMORPG XD It was the first in a way because with UO was the term MMORPG first used, taken from MMOG coined in the mid 90s. The first graphical MMO was Neverwinter nights in 91, followed in mid 90s by Nexus: Kingdom of the winds (Korean), Meridian 59 and the Realm online, Ultima online followed a year after in '97. Lineage in '98 then EQ went live in '99 the same year as Asherons call.

All of those are still available to play except NWN, as a side note, Meridian 59 was the first 3D MMORPG.

History lesson complete XD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEGKVUzHlGk
The first MMO :D

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

History lesson complete XD

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You are most definitely correct and I concede to you.

Definitely a derp on my part, especially since I played a number of those here and there like NWN and Asheron's Call, yet I completely forgot about them.

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Originally Posted by Barimu

How do people still defend that this isn't a WoW clone, THE DEVELOPER SAID IT WAS MULTIPLE TIMES.

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-.- Never said it was a clone, they did say however they drew inspiration from WoW since it was the most popular MMO and that's what they wanted to make, a popular MMO.

Like FFXI, WoW has a decade of history behind it (or it will this year). TBH, I preferred EQ2, but no one I know played it. To me, the single most important part of MMOs is the ability to play with others. They're built on communities and they fail with their communities. All the fancy features in the world won't help a game if it's full of asshats or the community falls apart. Blizzards efforts to make WoW more social have actually had the reverse effect. The best communities left are the various forum groups.

Nostalgia goggles

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Originally Posted by Wolf_Gang

Never played WoW but interested in picking it up with the new expansion. I keep seeing people reference WoW when describing this game but no direct comparisons are made to features.

I know FATEs are the dynamic events from GW2, what features were taken from WoW?

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To those with the IQ of a potato any MMORPG with a quest based leveling design is "like WoW" or a "WoW clone." Pay no attention. If you want to play WoW, knock yourself out, its a good game specially for those trying it out for the first time. However dont go in expecting it to be "like FFXIV" because you heard/read some neanderthal say it in-between grunts. Its not ... at least not any more than CoD is like or a clone of Battlefield or whatever.

WoW Clone

1) Endgame Instance Raid Progression
2) Quest driven leveling
3) Item Level
4) Duty/Dungeon Finder'
5) Short Lived Content (content that is negated ever major patch to allow new players to catch up)
6) Quick Leveling (can get to cap in less then 60hrs of focused playtime.)
7) Focus on accessibility and simplicity of game mechanics
8) Rotation Based tab target combat
9) The UI design is a pure WoW clone. but then again everyone adopted the model.


XIV is a game based off WoW. Is there differences, yes. But if you never played WoW and you go into that game. You will immediately recognize aspects of the game. Example you will know how the UI works more or less without ever playing the game. You will understand rotation for combat. You will know to go to quest to get xp. You will know to be ready to join raids and dungeons at endgame to get the best gear. WoW invented the Themepark mmo, XIV based on Yoshidas own Words is using that model in XIV. XIV is a pure Themepark game based on the concept of WoW but with a FF twist.

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Originally Posted by Barimu

How do people still defend that this isn't a WoW clone, THE DEVELOPER SAID IT WAS MULTIPLE TIMES.

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This^

People seem to have selective memory as it pertains to interviews.

Unless someone was on the original development team, they can't really say for sure which features "came from WoW." We know that Yoshida instructed the team to learn from WoW and other games in the same way the development team for FFXI learned from EQ, but which elements came from where cannot be known. And, of course, if you trace back the origin of a feature, that doesn't mean the XIV team took it from that game, and indeed may have taken WoW's (or another game's) later interpretation of that feature.

What people can do is list some features which hold common ground between two games, and that is what most people here are doing already.

Here's some I can think of:

• Quest-based, primarily solo progression
• Treatment of the leveling up portion of the game as an "introduction" for the "real" game at max level
• Linear equipment progression and the "item level" system governing progress past the level cap
• An open world exists, but most if not all group content is instanced
• Boss fights are heavily scripted and rely on memorizing patterns and following "telegraph" markings and other visual cues, plus "announcements" from the boss
• Combat is based around a "global cooldown" imposed by a used ability on most or all other abilities
• A cross-server automatic group-building system is in place to allow people to enter instanced content more rapidly
• Cross-server PvP matching in the same manner
• Most if not all equipment worth having cannot be sold to other players and must be "won" from its respective content
• Most if not all equipment binds when equipped/used and can never be re-sold to another player
• The economy is based mostly on player-game interaction and not player-player interaction
• Repeatable daily/weekly quests exist to provide players with money or other items/tokens when their normal level-up quests are all complete

How is FFXIV like Wow you ask.

WoW implemented Transmorgrification which allowed you to use the appearance of a piece of armor of similar type in place of the item model you were wearing. That feature is in widespread use after your first 50 in this game too.

Instanced lock out raids which require visiting the dungeon first again something that was not present in FFXI, but was required in WoW from Vanilla and daily quests.

Another favorite of mine Collectable mounts again wow did it first, up till now every ff title has exclusively used the good ole chocobo.

Another great similarity WoW's tag loot system, implemented in Mists of Pandaria allows players to loot the same NM or rare kill regardless of faction or party just by tagging or attacking said nm or rare in the field while it is being killed.

The ability to jump freely!!! nuff said something ffxi needed for years. Also projected flying mounts.

There are other similarities

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Originally Posted by stardrifter

-.- Never said it was a clone, they did say however they drew inspiration from WoW since it was the most popular MMO and that's what they wanted to make, a popular MMO.

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Don't bother, i tried this already trying to teach people the difference between a clone and a Inspiration of a game, but some people are blind and refuse to see on their own, "omg the developer said so!" The best thing to do is let some people think what they want to think, some people just refuse to accept this isn't a clone. if it was so is every other MMO out there.

The difference lies with the fun factor in this game literally being completely drained by the addition of ridiculous "beast tribe" dailies, unnecessary changes to systems such as spiritbonding which ultimately hurt the economy even more, gated features that don't even deserve to be gated such as the ability to dye your chocobo, AF armor, and silly quests to unlock some emotes.

This is mostly my opinion from someone who has completed all of coil and who has an FC and doesn't really have to worry about the gates...just keeping others in mind but I also do find most of the stuff that gets added to the game to be rather boring, pointless, or just nonsense.

flame on.

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Originally Posted by Xatsh

WoW Clone

1) Endgame Instance Raid Progression
2) Quest driven leveling
3) Item Level
4) Duty/Dungeon Finder'
5) Short Lived Content (content that is negated ever major patch to allow new players to catch up)
6) Quick Leveling (can get to cap in less then 60hrs of focused playtime.)
7) Focus on accessibility and simplicity of game mechanics
8) Rotation Based tab target combat
9) The UI design is a pure WoW clone. but then again everyone adopted the model.

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A lot of these were defining the MMORPG genre before WoW even existed.
What you are describing is a lot of well known game mechanics for the MMORPG genre, meaning that we find these in a lot of games.
WoW made them popular, but that's it.
Plus, using the word "clone" means that it's a perfect copy of the original, which is obviously not the case for FF XIV.

Instructional videos:
http://youtu.be/dpmy7Ze18NY
http://youtu.be/TeO2oNe19Ko

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Originally Posted by Velox

Actually, Everquest borrowed a lot of its structure from Ultima Online, which is credited as being the first "true" MMO (meaning element standards that persist to today). All current and past MMOs owe their existence to UO.

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Lets just agree that games borrow from what came before them and built upon it.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

A lot of these were defining the MMORPG genre before WoW even existed.
What you are describing is a lot of well known game mechanics for the MMORPG genre, meaning that we find these in a lot of games.
WoW made them popular, but that's it.
Plus, using the word "clone" means that it's a perfect copy of the original, which is obviously not the case for FF XIV.

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Would you mind listing them and for what games? Because most of these where either introduced or made popular by WoW. MMO's prior where more based on the Everquest/Ultima sandbox model.

Secondly, "clone" in the instance of media, especially games, is referring to the core structure and model used in its design. If "clone" was a literal exact copy, the only use of the word would be for having multiple disks of the same game.

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Originally Posted by Barimu

How do people still defend that this isn't a WoW clone, THE DEVELOPER SAID IT WAS MULTIPLE TIMES.

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Please point to where he directly said that this game is a WoW clone. Since you say he has said it multiple times, I expect multiple sources.

Can't really hold a candle to the Final Fantasy series in general in terms of original mechanics. They have been using inspiration from other games since day 1. At most they shake up the formula somewhat. What Final Fantasy has always exceeded in has been it's quality, presentation, and story lines. If you believe they bring originality beyond that, you are poorly mistaken.