Did Yoshida went a bit too far by cloning WoW?

[KisaiTenshi]

With all the intimidating dating depth and obscurity ironed out. At least when it started. I can't speak for anything past vanilla.

Also, it seems some people saying that the game is just copying MMO standards don't seem to realize that the wide majority of these standards are because modern MMOs have been copying WoW sense it got popular. Those mechanics are no less cloning for their popularity.

Exactly how many MMO's have you played? I can tell you that nearly every MMORPG has been copying WoW since EQ fell out of favor, but EQ came out when FF8 did. Ultima Online and NexusTK were the two games I tried during beta's but the hardware requirements of UO (and then later EQ) were always too high. When the large cities have 1Mbps Cable Internet, and you're stuck at 28K Dial-up, MMORPG's are pretty damn terrible to play.

Each MMORPG came out after a certain piece of the hardware puzzle fell into "everyone can play":
UO was a 2D game that came out in 1997 AND IS STILL GOING. At launch the game was about as visually impressive as Ultima 8. It's longevity owes a lot to player-investment in time. You (currently) need a 400Mhz Pentium II to play it and no 3D accelerator. At release the fastest CPU available was a Pentium 233-MMX.

Everquest was the first 3D MMO to become popular, it's visual quality was actually high for the hardware at the time in 1999. It is ALSO still running. When people talk about tank/damage/healer/support classes, this is where it comes from. But this is also where the "Turn based RNG" comes from, that "familiar" hotkey bar (which actually came from Diablo)

What has changed substantially since is the compression of inventory (Diablo had a "tetris" style fit objects into your inventory, Ultima just let you throw things anywhere thus was a mess to sort) The idea of multiple bags, also came from Ultima 6.

Current MMORPG's due to widespread "dupe bugs" have been scaling back the inventory space (or have been using it as a cash-shop cash grab,) and FFXIV is the least generous when it comes to inventory.

Larger inventories also requires far more bandwidth, because everytime you opened the inventory window, the game had to transfer the complete contents over the wire. Every time you changed something, every slot had to be checked again.

But as for "what are MMORPG's copying from WoW?" Probably the dungeon-crawling pace. I've never played WoW, but I can see pretty clearly where "things have been copied from WoW or EQ" because they copied the UI representation in exactly the same way. For example SWTOR's inventory and Wizardry Online's inventory made use of the "one icon represents 30 some odd pieces of gear, only with a different color grade", FFXIV doesn't reuse gear nearly as much, but it certainly does enough that a lot of "materials" have to be checked before being disposed of because you don't know if you're throwing out crafting materials or Alexander weekly rewards without checking closely.

1.0 world feeled not alive. It feeled empty. Except of the aetherite camps and the 2 hamlets in every region there were no settlements, no villages and not even NPCs outside of the 3 cities.
Big =/= alive


Also don't forget the limitation of 30 visible players/NPCs/enemies/objects, in a MMO

V1.0 was unfinished, and I don't buy the excuse Yoshi-P gave for why it was copypasta'd. They said it was so that the world was seamless, but it seems the true reason was that they had separate people working things, with "field design" somehow outsourced to China and they got exactly what they paid for. Look at anything else in V1.0, and a lot of care went into the game design. But somehow it looks like either one person copy-pasted everything, or they left it to an algorithm that just randomly picked "premade" tiles and then picked random biome-specific textures. It's not unprecendented. Games like Minecraft, Everquest Landmark and even going back to StarFlight, did it, but even then, some care was spent into actually making what you got have a reason for existing. FFXIV's V1.0's landscapes once you got outside the 3 cities felt empty, like not even a "front line" of exploration and discovery, but more like "we ran out of budget, here's a tent" Something I remember from those early V1.00 days was several "airship" landing spots, but no airships.

A game that has lore, has to have a reason for the landscape to take the shape it does. A game like Minecraft (Starbound and Terraria too) or Starflight does not, because the landscape generation algorithm isn't taking into account plate tectonics, volcanism, hydrology, or erosion. It just determines what you get through a fractal landscape generation seed, and a sub-algorithm goes "biome 1, biome 2" etc based on distance from sea-level. An algorithm can create a cave, it can't create "ruins" that were once an ancient city built by an intelligent race. Like V1.0 can pretty much go "What the hell is Allag?" because there is nothing in the terrain that suggests it ever existed.

[Kaedan94]

And don't forget, EQ2 actually launched *before* WoW did.

Most folks might not be old enough to remember Ultima Online.

When the original EverQuest released, I was in my senior year of high school, and when I broached the subject to my mother... "You mean you want me to pay monthly for you to hog the phone line playing a game? How about no?"


Because all we had in town at the time, was dialup. And we only had one phone line. And I was still using an old ass beat up 486 that likely couldn't run it anyways.

I didn't get into MMO gaming until 2002, with Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings as a result. Then beta tested WoW. And then played it and EQ2 off and on for 10 years. And beta tested most MMOs to date since. -_-

Sounds very similar to me, except replace EQ with Neverwinter Nights (AOL). I was a huge D&D fan and bought NWN(AOL) as a teenager, not really paying much attention to the fact I'd have to pay to play. Yeah, my mom wasn't too happy when she found out. Needless to say, I didn't play it long.

Ultima Online was my first real MMO (also a huge fan of the Ultima series in general). I think EQ came out my freshman year of college.... that was NOT good for my studies.

[Kallera]

I wish there was some true innovation that can make this experience not feel samey for people.

I also think 1.0 was more in line with a final fantasy game. when i play the story mode, when I help out with my fc and friends, i honestly get that magic back, and enjoy my character's doings. When its down to a grind for tomestones and other tokens, or putting up with utter toads in a party, sometimes that magic is gone.

There are still some things from 1.0 that i would love to make a comeback here under the new engine, but I guess I just want SE to keep exploring new things for us to have fun with, rather than settle into a pattern of content, stat limitations, and homogenizing play.

Since this might open up a can of worms, here are some of the things I would like, were it possible:

-the old gathering minigame as a new type of gathering point.
- hamlet
- making battle gear as strong as we want it to be with crafting and melds again. Even if its unsellable i want this.
-expanding on stats and their effects, at least make it something other than "dump it all into one stat and forget"

[Kotemon]

Rose-colored glasses and ignorance are to blame, really.

To be frank, most MMO gamers nowadays don't even remember Ultima Online. WoW was most likely their first MMO, and they believe the BS passed around that WoW did all this stuff first and that WoW was the only successful MMO, etc.

Wasn't that an episode of South Park? Everything they came up with was already done by the Simpsons.

[BlaiseArath]

I think if people gave 1.0 as much time to get good as people white knight 2.0/3.0s lack of meaningful content, 1.0 would have for many people been a much better and enjoyable Final Fantasy game than XIV would ever have hoped.

It wouldn't have been as big of a commercial success I'm sure, but honestly comparing 1.0 to 2.0+ I feel like the game traded far to much in the name of Stream-lining everything. It can barely be considered a FF game to me TBH. So many of the classes and jobs play like, well, WoW classes, and not Final Fantasy classes. I know its in the name of balance, I don't care, like I said, I feel like the game traded far too much for the sake of attracting the casual crowd from WoW and other such MMO hoppers.

But Its a commercial success, you know, like all the wonderful trash Ubisoft and EAtsh*t pump out. While imagination-less, by the books, copied mechanics garbage with nary a sight of original thought, it makes money so that means its good!

[saber_alter]

Wasn't that an episode of South Park? Everything they came up with was already done by the Simpsons.

if it's in a comedy show, the Simpsons have done it. either that or a long-running comedy show that predates the Simpsons.

[Arixtotle]

I wish there was some true innovation that can make this experience not feel samey for people.

As someone who has at least tried every single AAA MMO and many other ones as well I can say there IS a lot of innovation. FATEs, Sightseeing Log, Hunting Logs, logs in general, Grand Companies, Link Shells, the class/job system as a whole, the telegraph moves, the boss fights in general are better than all other games I've played, the mix of GCD abilities and Off CD abilities that make a unique combat system, the fact that Healers can effortlessly DPS and not feel weak as hell, and more....

Now I will admit that I MAINLY played WoW but all of those things do NOT exist in WoW or most (if not all) other MMOs. This is a really unique game if people would just actually think about it and stop LOOKING for only the things that are the same.

[Ayuhra]

IDK guys don't you know you just gotta give the 1.0 Dev team a few years to get the hang of it. Yah the world was empty but its a new game! GUYS ITS A BRAND NEW GAME GUYS THEY NEED A FEW YEARS TO GET IT GOOD. Like in XIV with 2.0 and 3.0 being the exact same content with more walls, Just give them time IT'LL PROBABLY GET BETTER! Why didn't you just give them time guys!

ALL THEY NEED IS MORE TIME GUYS

TIME

GIVE IT TIME

Like how XIV is sooooooooooo good now, like 2 years past 2.0 and we've got 1 relevant endgame raid with a weekly lookout! its SOOOO GOOOOD and so improved!

You seem upset.

[BlaiseArath]

You seem upset.

Not sure what you mean, clearly you didn't give my post enough time to update its content. It was a new expansion of my old post so you needed to wait for it to get better. Just like this one, give it a couple years and It'll be enjoyable, probably. But most likely not, because by the time I add new content to my post, all the other content will be irrelevant so you'll have the same amount of content as a couple years ago. Sorry

[Ayuhra]

Not sure what you mean, clearly you didn't give my post enough time to update its content. It was a new expansion of my old post so you needed to wait for it to get better. Just like this one, give it a couple years and It'll be enjoyable, probably. But most likely not, because by the time I add new content to my post, all the other content will be irrelevant so you'll have the same amount of content as a couple years ago. Sorry

Ah, I see.

I never played 1.0 so I can't speak for it's quality or its potential, but from what I've heard the game had a ton of problems. Had the developers stayed in charge of it I doubt it would have lasted even if it had a chance to improve. The design logic was just too archaic and the game a bit too brutal.

I know it kinda stinks if you enjoy a challenge but "brutal" does not make for good player retention which means the game would not survive. You need look no further than WildStar for evidence of that.

Personally, I think there is a lot that FFXIV offers if you expand your scope beyond just raiding. Which feels odd to say because when I left WoW the opposite was the problem. Raiding was all there was. FFXIV may be by the books but it's creative enough in how it does it.