The disapointment that is Alexander

[DukeBurden]

Actually, people have a hard time realizeing it's not a clone, and just call anything that pretty has mounts and HPs bars a "wow clone" this terrible assumption has been thrown around since relase, and no matter how times you say it in your head, it won't make it true, inspiration does not mean "we copied the game" this is a big mistake all the nay sayers keep using and it just keeps making them look foolish. You are most certainly not a die hard fan if you can't even see this.

It's.... basically a WoW clone.

[Blood-Aki]

It's.... basically a WoW clone.

It's not, but we can do this all day,

If it was a wow clone, pretty much every MMO after wow was created is also a clone, and anything new will also be, in addition to being an FFXIV clone, you see the pattern?

You may just be used to WOW if you played it for so many years, and everything you play after will seem like a clone, it happens to a lot of gamers.

[Kazama]

It's not, but we can do this all day

It's not, it's worse.

What FFXIV has taken from WoW:
Vertical progression of replacing gear every few weeks/months for higher ilvl.
Standard cookie cutter UI and combat mechanics.
One single progression path for endgame content.
Cross server Dungeon Finder.
Hand holding quest system that leads you to your objectives.

I'm not saying other post WoW games also didn't copy these formulas but in some of those cases, it wasn't the primary mechanics of the game. What SE didn't copy they actually did rather well. By that I mean story and.... story? They did literally nothing new in FFXIV, nothing, not a single new or unique thing in the MMO genre. There is no reason outside of story to play it over another MMO and actually plenty of reasons not to. Broken features like housing and PvP are enough to dissuade a lot of players as it basically means your only side content available is chasing minions, mounts and glamour. There is virtually 0 open world content outside of gathering and crafting which do nothing but maybe make you some money to spend on nothing because again, unless you're chasing minions and glamours there is nothing to even buy. Housing was their attempt at a gil sink and even that they screwed up.

You can defend and argue your point til you're blue in the face, fact of the matter is, XIV is incredibly shallow for a game already in it's first expansion. By this time in XI there were 100s of things to do that would progress your job/character that were not just cosmetic or related to leveling another job and that is why it is always used as a comparison to what should have been it's successor not it's bastardized illegitimate child. They had the entire foundation of 1.0 and years of feedback from legacy players in addition to the two years of ARR to do something new with Heavansward and it ended up as an identical repetition of ARR.

[Ibi]

By this time in XI there were 100s of things to do that would progress your job/character that were not just cosmetic or related to leveling another job.

FFXIV 2.0 (and onwards) has been out for a little less than two years. FFXI launched on May 16, 2002. By May of 2004, based on this page, there were the following end game events:

- Dynamis
- Sky
- Ground Kings

Dynamis could be done twice a week, King were on a spawn timer, so the only thing there was to do with no limitation was Sky (though even that had timers on all the NMs to drop the pop items for gods).

[Kazama]

FFXIV 2.0 (and onwards) has been out for a little less than two years. FFXI launched on May 16, 2002. By May of 2004, based on this page, there were the following end game events:

- Dynamis
- Sky
- Ground Kings

Dynamis could be done twice a week, King were on a spawn timer, so the only thing there was to do with no limitation was Sky (though even that had timers on all the NMs to drop the pop items for gods).

- Dynamis = 4 different large scale encounters each equivalent to coils / alex.
- Sky Gods = killing 8 NMs to fight 4 gods to fight one supreme god - 13 fights in all not including farming pop items.
- Ground Kings = What, 5 HNMs during Zilart I think?
- Regular NMs = I don't even know how many there were at this point, lots.
- BCNMs = Over a Dozen battlefields.
- Divine Might = The most challenging fight in the expansion.

This doesn't include the fact crafting and gil played a huge part in endgame which alone made for quite a lot to do. Sure you can spend your time crafting and gathering in XIV but it will never make your character stronger. I know a lot of people hate gil sink mechanics, I personally love it. If I couldn't fight a HNM due to not having a HNMLS I could still buy some of the items with enough effort. It's an entirely different game, in XIV you really don't care about gear or progression until cap, in XI you spent a lot of time getting gear as you leveled. You might get something at level 50 you would use at level 75. It was a journey, not a rush to the end like MMOs are these days.