3.1 Main Scenario picture

[Neophyte]

What you described is not hard and has been done in several MMOs, including FFXI.

No, it was not.

There was a fight, were a single member of the group was copied in appearance and got the same mainhand weapon, but he got no spells/abilities/pets. 3/4 of the enemy group was always the same.

Second the fourth Spitewarden (that's what he was called, right?) didn't play a huge role like we suppose the WoD will do. If it's just a copy of you, it's hard to give him a real own past/background, etc.

And most important: If the WoD is a copy of our character... why wasn't there a copy in the Ingame-cutscene on the moon we all saw? This was no promotion/intro cutscene, it was the reality our characters live in.
You know, in intros/promotion cutscenes you can even swap the appearance of characters (like dragons) and is has no effect on the game/lore itself. If something in intro/promotion doesn't make sense (like Hraesvelgr attacking Ishgard), it has no effect on the story/lore.
But ingame it has to.
If we'd had seen an echo vision instead (ingame at the end of 2.5), with a Hraesvelgr-like-looking dragon commanding the dravanian hordes and being evil, they couldn't have make a Niddhog-like-looking dragon being the evil leader of the dravanian hordes in 3.0 without logic/continuity errors or a real, real good ingame explanation.

And with the WoD it is exactly the same.
Changing the appearance of the WoD we all did see makes as much sense as changing the appearance of Alphinaud to a female Rhoegadyn in 3.1, Elidibus to a woman or changing the moon-location to mars.

You can't answer a question like "Why did we saw the derplander speaking with Elidibus after defeating Thordan?" with "Because it was a red herring of the developers."... you have to answer it lorewise, because all we see ingame is in fact the lore of the game. Why should the WoD be in disguise?

Just imagine you go to the INN and rewatch cutscenes. First the one on the moon (WoD = derplander), second the one where you first meet the WoD (WoD = You). Sounds stupid, right?

[Frederick22]

snip

It will be interest to why we went into the darkside. Last time we see Derplander he was a dragoon >_>