Did Yoshida went a bit too far by cloning WoW?

[Daralii]

For posts like these?, I disagree there's far more trolls on these forums who would just downvote everything for the hell of it these days this post needs more damned upvotes as the game is by far lacking in its potential.

You're assuming that the English CMs would relay this to SE, as I sincerely doubt they read the English forums themselves.

[Reinha]

Differences between wow and ff14:

Story gated content and areas.
Story quality. Wow had to introduce time travel cause they ran out of ideas....
Edit. story presentation and side stories too, like the amount of cutscenes, class quests and max level quest lines.
Factions. Horde and Alliance can't group up, and on some realms they can kill each other.
Content differences: fates, hests, clan marks and group hunts, trials VS world bosses, scenarios and rare mobs.
Professions, gathering.
Housing.
Combat speed.
Class rotations. Apart from maybe WHM, BRD and SMN there's no loose wow equivalent to the classes.
Tank's primary job being holding aggro by following the rotation and watching the enmity bars VS aggro being trivial and the primary focus being "active mitigation", i.e. using short cooldown abilities to even out damage spikes.
Healers having decent dps in ff.
Armory system.
Character creation details. Amount of different races.
Wow has a longer patch cycle and more focus on raid content. Ff is better for casuals.
Wow allows the use of addons like ui mods and dps meters, ff doesn't but it comes with more ui customization.

These differences in gameplay and content are very apparent to anyone who has played both games. The only similarity I can think of is a couple of creature skins, the huge amount of colors in their art and that they both have quests, instanced pvp, dungeons and raids. Calling ff a clone because it has some basic mmo elements that wow also has is a bit of an exaggeration.

[NamNem]

All MMOs follow a similar path. Open World is not a bad thing, but it needs to be limited in MMO cases, because a linear progression system is needed. Most people would feel overwhelmed trying to level up if it the story did not steer them in the correct direction. WoW did a lot right. It also did a lot wrong. MMOs are trial and error, but people have to stop comparing one MMO to another. This is FF and that is WoW. Although, they might share characteristics, but they are completely different games.

[Elazu]

For posts like these?, I disagree there's far more trolls on these forums who would just downvote everything for the hell of it these days this post needs more damned upvotes as the game is by far lacking in its potential.

For posts that state 1.0 had good combat.

[Kathryn]

For posts that state 1.0 had good combat.

It was a lot better than what we have now but each to their own opinions I have mine and you have yours.

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

FFXIV is far from a WoW clone. I played wow for years and never once did I get this engaged with my character or the storyline. I can be all classes, not just one. The story is presented to me in custcenes and small lines of dialogue. Not walls of text inside a window....

The 1.0 world was extremely lacking in storyline, which for me makes or breaks a game and was the ultimate reason I left wow. (I never bothered to read the walls of text, story presentation is everything here). I can deal with UI issues or graphical errors but if there's no meat on that skeleton why even bother?

While their may be elements of WoW in XIV, I can argue that of almost any MMO these days. Just because WoW was/is the biggest, doesnt mean its the best. And just because they did it first, doesnt mean they did it better.

I love FFXIV, but I hate WoW for various reasons. and it shows probably in my post. Maybe you are the opposite of me and prefer WoW. I dunno. To each their own, but I like FFXIV the way it is now.

It really is a WoW clone, but with a twist of having storyline. Yoshida has even said he is not out to make anything new, just take from other games and mostly he just took it all from WoW. I am not even saying that is bad, it is what it is.

I didn't play 1.0 much because after 2 hours I started getting the feeling that I was playing FFXI again. Made me turn off the game and never look back. I don't get that with ARR.

People love to make the WoW comparison as if it were an insult to ARR because of lack of originality, but then demand FFXIV to be a copy of FFXI. One game shouldn't determine the "identity of FF". More so when they want to bring back outdated gameplay mechanics.

It is a lack of originality, that does not have to be a bad thing always, but in the case of XIV it is borderline just because they took it very far. As for outdated gameplay mechanics I've heard it by several people before on these boards, which is just funny because if you think WoWs gameplay mechanics is anything but outdated since several years you are just putting your head in the sand and quite frankly XIVs version of it is a bad clunky version even which is just worse. It just has other qualities which make up for it overall compared to WoW, like graphics/music/storyline and the fact that it isn't more than a decade old, people get bored after a while regardless.

[Chewy2nd]

It was a lot better than what we have now but each to their own opinions I have mine and you have yours.

I suppose each to their own, but there was nothing fun about five minute long battles with just normal overworld enemies.

[Felis]

Yes and FF ARR is lenghtening it by implementing hundreds of careless "get me 10 milk bottles" quests within the main story. Kill 6 random mobs... right. thats what a mainstoryline mission deserves.

I see no difference to 1.0 story tasks like: "go to Mor Dhona and bring me some unaspected crystals" or "go to the Black Shroud and kill 2 wolfes" (many CS about a Migho resistance group you have to help, rescue one of their members and then you just kill 2 wolfes within 15 seconds and it was finished. Next MSQ in 3-4 levels).
The difference is that the story in ARR also help you to level up your class, while in 1.0 it just gave you some CS between the leve grinds. What 1.0 MSQ lacked was battles that you can't win within 15 seconds or with parley. And the "needed level to next story quest" range was too high..


And yes, the graphic in 1.0 was the best, but played on a regular PC like ARR on PS3. And sometimes a christmas tree melded down your graphic card.

[Defias]

So you want an online MMO to play like an Offline RPG, be very inaccessible to the mass populace, have very little variety in mounts, & be tedious to navigate.

Honestly...you want 1 mount for a persistent online world to try & avoid coping another game?
Well by that right the Final Fantasy series, and every medival RPG are just copies of Dungeon & Dragons.
Look at MMOs like Vanguard & WildStar. The time of EQ1, FFXI MMOs are over with.
Todays world/society does not fit those gameplay styles anymore.

I played WOW, EQ2, & SWG (pre-NGE) for years.

This game feels like WOW in Boss fights, ease/speed of travel, & streamlined gameplay only.

The crafting & gathering is not as fun & simple as WOWs.
Classes are basically LOCKED into their roles unlike in WOW.
Character creation is extremely in-depth unlike in WOW.
The Storyline is overall told/presented better. WOW didn't become cinematic until Wrath of The Lich King and many folks will argue that WOW ended in the Expansion.

If ARR had launched and played like XI...then we would not be having this discussion, Square-enix would be out of business and we'd probably be on ESO's forums arguing on how IT's coping WOW.

[Chewy2nd]

XIV 1.0 may have been graphically impressive, but artistically and in terms of level design? No

Which looks more fun to explore?

This


or this?