Thoughts on players of the community.

[Zofis]

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?

I don't think so, at least they probably didn't know that they liked it until they played it themselves. The MMO market in Japan is incredibly small. If a Japanese XIV player didn't come from XI there's a high probability this is their first MMO period.

2.0 turned out the way it did because of Yoshida's experience with Western MMOs and his overall love for the genre. He's also an admitted Blizzard fanboy of sorts and has a very good understanding of WoW and it's mechanics, which is ultimately the main reason the game is the way it is from a design perspective. It was built for a worldwide audience first and foremost and Yoshida was the person at Square Enix that had the best idea of what that worldwide audience wanted.

[Black_Rose]

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

no plan where you got that idea from, but you're way wrong there.
1.0s original design was all tanakas idea.all that was similar to FFXI was the races, and tanaka himself said that he introduced the same races so to aid FFXI players with transitioning over to FFXIV.
if you were part of the very early stages of the game, alpha to yoshida takeover, you'd understand that.the only thing that ever came close to FFXI was how the old skill point system worked, not exactly like it did in FFXI, but a similar approach.

[SkizzleofRagnarok]

Black_Rose: Don't forget that Tanaka said in multiple interviews he never wanted another WoW. WoW is something thats already out and every hard to compete with. 5m accounts dont mean 5m active subs we all know this. This is why IMO Yoshi P should have known better. All it takes for Blizzard is to release their new MMORPG and its kinda gameover. You should create trends and not follow them espcially coming from someone as SE thats a powerhouse with an amazing franchise.

[Moonleg]

All it takes for Blizzard is to release their new MMORPG and its kinda gameover.

Do you mean Project Titan, which got restarted twice and finally scrapped sometime last year?

And all the people that feel extremely wronged with Blizzard's attitude towards WoW, do you think they will just go, "Yay, new MMORPG from Blizzard!"?

[Naliee]

Black_Rose: Don't forget that Tanaka said in multiple interviews he never wanted another WoW. WoW is something thats already out and every hard to compete with. 5m accounts dont mean 5m active subs we all know this. This is why IMO Yoshi P should have known better. All it takes for Blizzard is to release their new MMORPG and its kinda gameover. You should create trends and not follow them espcially coming from someone as SE thats a powerhouse with an amazing franchise.

But you should also remember that 1.0 wasn't so successful which lead to that Tanaka step down and Yoshi took over.

and BOOM, 5 million (not all active, but majority) players.

[Fendred]

@Tadacho

The feedback from 1.0 players barely did any real changes to the game. Yoshida would have made the same game regardless of the feedback of 1.0 players because he based it off of playing WoW and GW2, which they were fairly open about during development.

[Ayuhra]

I have 4 chars 2 on legacy servers and two on non legacy servers. The legacy servers gaming mentality is very ffxi and the non legacy ones are very "wow". I say it like that because it has turned into a generalization and everyone thats non 1.0 and ffxi seems to be put in the same folder. .

To be fair, trying to emulate what was successful about World of Warcraft is not in and of itself a poor idea. I think WoW's biggest success was in its fluid combat and usability. That's an area Blizzard has always excelled in. WoW also had great content once, in the days that Yoshida said he used to play. It's easy to forget that now. WoW of today is a shallow husk of its former glory but Wrath of the Lich King and Burning Crusade were fantastic. WoW in its prime was the best MMO I've ever played, yes, including FFXIV. So why am I here now?


Well, believe it or not, FFXIV is more reminiscent of Wrath of the Lich King than Warlords of Draenor is. And it has much more memorable characters and a deeper setting.

Also, regarding an abundance of WoW players...let us not forget WoW at its peak had 12 million active subscribers. There was enough of us to populate a nation. So in any MMO you are bound to run into people who have passed through Azeroth at least once.

[Iromi]

@Tadacho

The feedback from 1.0 players barely did any real changes to the game. Yoshida would have made the same game regardless of the feedback of 1.0 players because he based it off of playing WoW and GW2, which they were fairly open about during development.

This. The stuff us 1.x players wanted was just tossed out the window mostly. We thought we were getting an updated and improved upon 1.23 , instead we got...well, the entire core of the game changed. I remember the alpha forums were...quite a scary place.That is when they implemented the limit on how many characters you could have per post..because people were ranting so long, etc. Haha.

I was there for the whole thing, I read every article Reinheart translated, every little thing Yoshida said and all the community reps. From 2010 to the relaunch to now. Never once did they give us the impression that the entire core game would be 100% changed. This is why nearly all my 1.x friends are long gone.

Personally, I feel indifferent about the game. There are aspects I like, like the graphics, QoL stuff this game has, but then the dislikes, the end game, how each patch now is like a copy paste, no variety of content, no end game open world content (Only gathering, and treasure hunts, and then hunts which are invisible fates) and if I had to pick,

I liked the direction 1.x was going vs the direction the game seems to be going now, which is cut/paste patches with weekly/daily caps. I detest the system. My friends and I jokingly refer to it as the chore list.

Edit: In fact Rokien would post daily saying how the game is going to end up a GW2/WoW clone or have tons of similarities...and people laughed him off the forums. Because everyone playing 1.x had the mentality that nothing was going to change, just improvements that were needed. Like removing the lag, adding more content, etc. I don't know where you saw the dev team say this because the forums woulda been hardcore raging...

[kazeandi]

Well I played Ultima Online, Everquest 1, Shadowbane, Dark Age of Camelot, Jumpgate and many others.
I never played FFXI though.
I did play WOW.
Guess that disqualifies me automatically.

[Fendred]

@Iromi

They mentioned it fairly late in development with comments like how Yoshida said he enjoyed Guild Wars 2. They also said they had their developers playing current MMORPGs to gain insights into how to design the game. The only reason they'd make comments like that is if they were going to copy paste the living hell out of what they were playing, which was most likely WoW. I don't have a date for when they said those things. However, I do know it was some time after the servers for 1.0 were shut down, possibly half way through development of 2.0.

I can sympathize with how 1.0 players feel, since I lived through the Star Wars Galaxies redesign era and saw how that effected a lot of people. "Hey, I know you really like the game you are playing now, but here is a brand new game! Oh, and you can't play the old one ever again. K, bye~!" Bait and switch on a whole other scale.