Did Yoshida went a bit too far by cloning WoW?

[zipzo]

Nature likes to copy paste. If you want natural landscapes, then you will need to copy paste to some extend. Its interesting that people use the copy paste argument as a reason tho. I dont think they looked on the current maps; there is plenty of copy pasting in 2.0 and 3.0 as well.

And yet you don't see such complaints about other games that do it or, rather the beauty of nature rather as per your example.

The reason it's an issue with 1.0 is because it was blatant, obvious, and lazy. Every map was literally a grid of the same square mapped sector for sector across the entire grid. You see this formation of rock/hills/plants, you take 10 paces, and it's literally the same thing. Sure, you do get that in nature occasionally, but not as ever so consistent as this. This wasn't nature. It was a game created by people who have the choice to make it that way or not, and they choose quite possibly the most lazy direction for their map design that I think has ever possibly been conceived in a newer generation MMORPG.

The argument you use here, what that nature itself can "copy paste", is the one that is lame. There's literally no excuse. It was just plain shoddy development.

[Bishop81]

Not sure what you are proving with screenshots to be frank. :P

I agree that there are some aspects of WoW that FFXIV should not copy though. For example, the over-indulgence in raiding and it's consequences - e.g. like how the developers virtually washed out all of the uniqueness of the classes because "raid balance", like how crafting is useless because raid drops have to be better than everything else, how crafting is boring because interesting items could potential unbalance raiding ...

[Gardes]

Exploration doesn't really matter much when they make you see everything just from leveling I think. The zones are big but once you finish MSQ you've visited every zone. There may be spots on the map you didn't get to see but air of mystery is diminished by then.

Even in wow there are zones that you might not get to see if you level from 1-50 without getting side tracked, at least in vanilla and tbc era. Pretty sure I havent seen all of azshara and that place at the southern most of one of the continent with all those insects right below the dinosaur crater zone (pretty sure that I one I havent even seen more than 20% of it). XI was even more extreme because of the extreme danger that most zones had, making traveling dangerous, solo or not. There were a lot of maps I entered and simply had to turb back thinking "maybe later when i get stronger or had friends with me", which I did. There were plenty of zones left to 'newly' explore months after I hit level cap on one class (both 75 and 95 at the time). The zone obstacles that required multiple people to pass through also added to this. Before abyssea, places like eldieme, garlaige citadel wasnt simply a place I can walk in without a care (due to both the obstacle and danger).

So yeah, even after all that bigger zone and more dangerous mobs promise for HW, I still think it fell short of my expectations. Not enough for me to pull a big tantrum over it, still disappointed none the less.

[Sakei]

If FFXIV had stayed more like 1.0 then most of us wouldn't be here discussing it today.

[Rumpelstiltzkin]

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?

They have done everything in their power to make sure there is nothing to explore regardless. There are no surprises, there are towns and teleports 1 min away from wherever you are in the world and there is nothing out there to do because it is all instanced. So your point is quite moot tbh. I mean it is funny, but if we are talking stricly about the world WoW did it so much better its not even funny simply because there were not an aerthyte around every corner. That being said the 1.0 world was not very interesting either and I am not saying 1.0 was better in any way except for visuals, but this game is so bad at several things too including an interesting world.

[justinjarjar]

Sounds like vanilla wow, new wow lets you tele everywhere from your house and gives you no reason to explore. I loved the explore of old wow, but alas it is a thing of the past now. (and wow stole that from games like this tbh)

[Fendred]

Sounds like vanilla wow, new wow lets you tele everywhere from your house and gives you no reason to explore. I loved the explore of old wow, but alas it is a thing of the past now. (and wow stole that from games like this tbh)

What you mean to say is that every MMORPG past the year 1999 borrowed the idea of an open world from Everquest. Saying that they stole something "from games like this" when FFXIV:ARR came out ten years after it doesn't make sense.

[justinjarjar]

What you mean to say is that every MMORPG past the year 1999 borrowed the idea of an open world from Everquest. Saying that they stole something "from games like this" when FFXIV:ARR came out ten years after it doesn't make sense.

I said the TP idea being brought to WoW.... god do you read? Or just jump to salt? Yes every game takes some influence from other games (even wow over time has added other games features) like art takes influence form previous art or engineers take influence form previous work. Everything does it, the question is what do you add? An artiest takes a new take on how to perform or new ideas, the engineer makes a better bridge or a cheaper bridge. Nothing is wrong with taking some influence form your predecessors.

[Reinha]

The thing is, that it doesnt feel like playing a final Fantasy online game.

Yes it does have Final Fantasy superficial charactertistics like the jobs and typical FF monsters (besides they are trash mobs) stuffed onto the mechanics of WoW ... but hell even the "Summoner" in FFXIV isnt a summoner like it should be playable in a Final Fantasy Game. It is a WOW Warlock.. a DoT caster with trash summons that look like flying potatoes. Nothing compared to the summoner of FFXI or a summoner like Yuna from FFX. what im trying to say is: Borrowing things etc. from other games okay..
but for me it went a little too far...

as in my opinion it doesnt play Final Fantasy'ish. you and me can have fun with FFXIV ARR/HW... but i am questioning how much they copyied from WoW.. ending up being a WoW clone in FF aesthetics.

What are these mechanics of WoW that FFXIV copied? So far you've only mentioned cosmetic things like mount skins and the UI (which isn't even customizeable in WoW unless you download an addon), and the superficial similarity between SMN and Warlock. To me it seems like you haven't even played WoW and are just comparing their aesthetic.

The classes/jobs are NOT copy paste from WoW. WoW has 34 different specializations, the equivalent of a job in FFXIV. They all play differently and have talent skills to further customize gameplay. Is it any wonder if a couple of classes/jobs here some resemblance to a spec in WoW? Nevertheless, similarities don't mean they are the same. Out of the 13 jobs we have here, Summoner is the has the most in common with a WoW spec, as it has pets, dots and curses like Affliction does. But Affli also has a secondary resource (Soul Shards) which they build up with regular attacks, a dot which explodes (SoC), the ability to temporarily summon a second pet, the ability to fight without a pet, teleport moves, free health "potions" for their party and the ability to drain health from enemies to restore their own. Affli also doesn't have a reliable heal like Physick, a placed ground aoe or the ability to spread all dots on all targets and keep them up on all targets 100% of the time, like SMN does. There are quite a few core differences as you can see, so it would be straight up lying to claim they are one and the same.

Then there are also BRD and WHM which in my opinion resemble Survival and Holy Priest respectively, but a lot less than SMN resembles Warlock. Melee and tanks have strict combos, a mechanic which doesn't even exist in WoW. Black mage alters between spending and refilling mp, another mechanic which doesn't exist in WoW. SCH is a pet healer, which also doesn't exist in WoW. I really don't understand the comparison between the class systems. They simply have a lot more differences than similarities. The biggest of all being that all but one class here can only play one role!

Then there's also crafting and gathering. They don't have rotations, gear and end game in WoW, because it's nothing but clicking a button daily and clicking on a node to get some ore/herbs. You are also limited to only two professions per character in WoW. These crafting systems have nothing in common so there's no way the one here could have been copied from WoW. Housing isn't like in WoW either (garrison).

The only similarity between content, is the existence of quests, raids, dungeons and pvp. But even their structure is different. In FFXIV, raids have only a handful of bosses, dungeons take longer and can wipe you, world pvp or duels don't exist and pvp battlegrounds are MASSIVE. Group sizes are very different. Level sync doesn't exist in WoW. We also have a single questline starting from level 1 which is required to participate in end game. Then there's also trials, leves, guildhests, fates and A/S hunts and clan marks with their own currency as a reward. Those don't exist in WoW. Raid-scale world bosses with gear drops don't exist in FFXIV. Class quests don't exist in WoW. Can you explain how exactly content is copied from WoW?

I'm not going to say whether this game feels like a traditional FF game because I have no clue. But I have played both WoW and FFXIV and I can tell they are more different than you claim.

[Gramul]

Oh yeah. Way too much. Would have loved to see what they could have done if they just fixed 1.0 instead of totally replacing it
Still pretty enjoyable though.