FFXIV/WOW cross over event?

[Lium]

So, ESO really isn't that much different from WoW. The real big distinguishing part was its leveling process and the do any expansion in any order you want (which is one thing I love about ESO). But it's still the theme park blue print that WoW normalized. The bulk of the game — end game — is still do the same repetitive content over and over to get more gear and / or alternate advancement points to become stronger. Which is what XIV is. Which is what SWTOR is. Which is what every successful MMO is. Even before that, to look at ESO, you enter a zone, do the main quest (and side quest if you like), complete it, move on to the next zone. It's the same thing, with slightly different points of emphasis.

Uh...you've just described pretty much every Western MMO ever. Hell, these things were all popularized in MUD games.

I'm not at all discounting WoW's influence on this game. In fact, I've said many times FFXIV is a WoW clone. But WoW's endgame was completely lifted from EQ, their devs even said so. A few of the early Blizzard devs were EQ raid leaders. That's actually documented. I mean this line here: "You enter a zone, do the main quest (and side quest if you like), complete it, move on to the next zone," is quite literally ever RPG in the history of RPGs. Yet the way you put it, WoW normalized this playstyle.

It was normalized nearly 30 years before WoW.