Thoughts on players of the community.

[Ducky]

One of WoW's biggest issues is that in order to reduce the intimidation factor for potential new players looking to join, Blizzard makes a concerted effort to completely invalidate every previous expansion the minute a new one comes out. To that end they have even started including a free character "boost" with expansions (as well as selling them separately for $60 each), so that when a new player starts, they can have a character at the same level as everyone else going in.

For those who haven't played WoW in its current incarnation, imagine this alternate reality for FFXIV:

Everybody who buys Heavensward is given a free level 50 class of their choosing and goes straight to Ishgard from the character creation screen, with no context or story catch-up provided. That's okay though, because this version of Heavensward is a brand-new narrative with absolutely no connection to the story, characters or events in ARR. 99% of the story threads, characters and questions left unfinished, missing and unanswered in ARR will remain that way forever. The Scions of the Seventh Dawn are never seen or mentioned again.

All of your max-level characters lose the ability to queue for any of the pre-expansion dungeons or raids from ARR using the automated system, and now can only access them solo or by manually forming a group, so no more daily roulettes. All of those earlier dungeons and raids also no longer offer any alternate currency or anything else of value that is relevant within the Heavensward expansion. Instead the game now effectively has a mere eight dungeons in total with no more to be added, there is no alternate currency here either, and the gear they provide is outdated within a month by raid and world gear, meaning there's no reason to ever run those dungeons again within the 1.5-2 year lifetime of the expansion.

Flight has been removed because the developers admit they can't figure out how to make the game interesting or challenging if flight exists. Instead, the world has been designed with as many bumps, rocks and logs as possible to make simply getting around irritat— sorry, "challenging" and time-consuming instead, while all world content is removed except for a handful of daily grind zones.

FATEs and hunts have been removed from the game.

The day/night cycle and weather have been removed from the game, outside of certain scripted events.

All crafting professions now each use a single universal resource material (e.g. blacksmiths get "metal", weavers get "cloth", culinarians get "meat", etc.), of which they gain a set amount once a day by pushing a button. Players can now only wear three crafted items at a time, and crafted items are all considerably weaker than every other contemporary gear alternative.

Miners and botanists no longer need to explore the world to harvest resources. Instead, the only gathering resources in the game are now "ore" and "herbs", and these are collected from a personal instanced mine or garden once per day.

Retainers no longer wear actual gear, and instead only have an ilvl number increased by applying generic "weapon" and "armour" tokens. There is now only one category of retainer mission, and this primarily rewards either retainer XP or 100 gil.

Airships are no longer crafted by players, and instead are created by talking to an NPC, pushing a "Create Airship" button, and waiting two hours. When sent on missions, airships have an 80% chance of being destroyed, rewarding no items. Actually using the airships to explore islands in person will no longer be in patch 3.1.

The Gold Saucer is now only accessible the first week of each month. Chocobo racing, Triple Triad and both Cactpots have been removed.

All new reputation factions no longer include quests or storylines, and instead simply require you to kill literally 9,000 mobs to reach max level to gain access to the relevant faction's best items.

90% of hardcoded emotes are now just text with no accompanying animation, and separate face and body emotes are no longer a thing. The remaining emotes are no longer interactive, and characters will no longer look at things, characters or enemies they are targeting. Casters will no longer wield their specific class weapons when casting, and will instead all share the same two bare-handed casting animations.

Housing for players and free companies has been removed.

All cutscenes (main story, side story, transition and incidental) have been removed from the game, with the exception of a 60-second cutscene at the end of each zone.

To make up for the lack of non-raid content, two more difficulty modes have been added to Alexander instead: "very easy", which has no mechanics and rewards no loot, and "hard", which fits between normal and savage. The developers feel this is more than enough "content" to be getting on with, so stop complaining.

Heavensward itself will end with the Allagan Empire turning up out of nowhere to be fought in a raid. This will in turn will culminate in a 30-second cutscene where the Garlean Emperor turns up, claims victory over the Allagans, then is never seen or even mentioned again in the game ever again, along with the rest of the Garlean Empire.

Other than the Allagan raid, there will be no other endgame content or things to do that don't revolve solely around acquiring disposable gear. No relevant dungeons, no Gold Saucer, no minigames, no actual crafting, no player housing, no non-grind factions, a severely-restricted "transmogrification" glamour cosmetic system, no dyes, no airship exploration, no Primals, no sidestories, no hunts, no sightseeing, no challenges.

There will also be no in-game narrative linking this expansion to the following one; instead, SE will employ a second-rate writer to put out a pulp novel you have to buy separately to discover the story that should have been in the game itself.

This is what WoW has become. With Warlords of Draenor the game managed to lose half its playerbase in the space of six months, and Blizzard are only retaining a sizable chunk of those left because they introduced the ability to pay for game time with in-game gold. For many of the remaining players, Legion is Blizzard's very last chance to get their act together.

[SkizzleofRagnarok]

Ducky: The thing is this game gets compared to WoW so much. Thats why I thought its because of the player base and if they are the majority of consumers.

[Ghishlain]

Ducky: The thing is this game gets compared to WoW so much. Thats why I thought its because of the player base and if they are the majority of consumers.

This is the case because WoW is considered the most successful MMO of all time (and still is if you look at just raw sub numbers), so of course players will try to draw parallels to in a way to emulate its success.

[Arabian_Wolf]

As a Summoner I will keep DOT's ticking on mobs even if it's just two in a pack like any half decent Summoner should.

So you're telling me you'd 'try' to dismiss me because I'm not ONLY attacking your target because you want your Job to be even easier than it actually is?

Nope,

As I mentioned "DPS focus" and dotting other targets while focusing on marked target with casting ruin or whatever new filler spell SMN is given is fine by me.

But say you were focused on different target from marked several times and when I tell you to focus on mine but you still refuse I will dismiss you in the end.

[Waeksyn]

I played FFXI from the day of launch, took a hiatus to try FFXIV 1.0 through beta and launch. After experiencing that stinking pile of crap, I ran screaming back to FFXI for the release of Abyssea content which revitalized a fading game dramatically. When they released Seakers of Adoulin, I recognized the featureless maze zone design and crap content that I saw in 1.0. Clearly, you could tell how they reassigned design teams as they focused on reboot of the FFXIV title. FFXIV 2.0 has been incredible so far (except for what they've done to crafting in 3.0)

I tried WoW on a trial version and really hated it.

That said, the influence on game direction is not being set by old WoW players. It is being set by whatever opinions SE listens to from their Japanese players. You can say whatever you want over here, safe in the knowledge that it won't influence a damn thing.

[SkizzleofRagnarok]

Waeksyn: Do SE japanese consumer market really like this WoW gamish style then? I thought JP where the hardcore ones that loved FFXI and stuff that was a insane grind?

[Waeksyn]

Waeksyn: Do SE japanese consumer market really like this WoW gamish style then? I thought JP where the hardcore ones that loved FFXI and stuff that was a insane grind?

My personal experience with WoW was too short to have any opinion.

It's interesting you mention FFXI and the grind. It seems like more and more new content in this game is designed to slow people way down - either through grind or lockout limits. I don't think this has anything to do with "influence" by one game style or the other. It's more about trying to hold subscriptions for the longest possible time.

Eventually this will be the game's downfall as more and more players lose patience and realize that weekly lockouts are a bad substitute for having enough content.

[dementiondrive]

i know i am in a very very niche minority. though when for myself. i have never found myself banging my head because it was to grindy. going back to my first sentence. i actually want more grind to XP and way harder hitting monsters. like i said. i am in that much of a niche player base that wants it more grindy.

i know other would definitely disagree with me. which is ok.

[SkizzleofRagnarok]

Dementiondrive: I think many people agree with you on that matter. Everyone is assuming that A Savage is considered and hard and thats it beat that and then complain. Aside from A Savage you are kinda stuck just capping your esoterics and levling other jobs and crafts shouldnt be an option just because you should have something to do. The game should provide enough gameplay for you to feel like you want to play your main job all the time and not just spend countless of hours farming ex roulette for yourself and helping friends in order to put that in a position of having something to do. This is for another discussion though. I'm smiling when writing this knowing there are many people who want the original content to be harder

[Tadacho]

I'm pretty sure it was the 1.0 players who provided the feedback that has reshaped this game into what it is today. Though that isn't to say SE weren't inspired by certain general themes and concepts from other successul MMOs, because, well, why wouldn't they be? Ignoring other successful MMOs would lead to a bad game and failed launched... Oh wait.

People and ideas from FFXI resulted in 1.0's original design.