Appreciation for the competition

[The_Last_Dragoon]

WoW was the father of the modern MMO, aka XIV 2.0 as we know it. It has more in common than you'd think, seeing as XIV 2.0 was a "tribute" to WoW. Just putting that out there. If it wasn't for WoW, XIV as it is now probably wouldn't exist.

Actually, FFXIV takes a hell of a lot more from XI and SE has come out publicly saying that it's because of the long standing success of XI that XIV was even considered as an MMO. When 1.0 failed, sure they said that they took a step back and looked at "successful" MMOs to learn from them, but I think even then they were influenced more by Guild Wars 2 if anything at all outside of simply updating XI.

Granted, while this conversation feels off-topic somewhat, and I've personally been off the WoW train since the beginning of MoP and dabbled in a LOT of other MMOs until FFXIV came out. I have to say though that I think the real main reason why this game has so much staying power is the strength of it's crafting system and the openness of the development team on stuff about the game. Hell, when Yoshida was giving the NY opening keynote message and started getting bad vibes from the crowds because he couldn't reveal that much I felt pretty bad for him. Not only was the expansion 8 months away from releasing, but things needed to be held back for the next two fan festivals. I've never been so much on the developers side when it comes to MMOs before because I've never had the type of insight into their inner workings like we get to enjoy with Yoshida and his team.

[Vahlnir]

-snip-

And I agree that the XI influence is prevalent, and I have no issue with that whatsoever. That's part of the game's success. I went from XI, which I still speak fondly of to WoW. That said, they picked up on a few things from WoW, some of which even WoW borrowed from elsewhere, but perfected in a sense. WoW's not the king anymore, and I'd give that to XIV in a heartbeat. They've got a good thing going, along with probably the best dev team I've seen in a long, long time. They genuinely care. WoW's devs are in perma-passive aggressive mode the last couple years. My whole point is, people will trash WoW just by mentioning it, when they don't get the full picture. And XIV could stand to borrow an idea or 2 more, that's all. MMOs continually borrow from others based on the success of whatever features are being passed around. WoW's not the devil some make it out to be. lol