WoW was inspired by EQ, and due to WoW becoming so popular it had paved the way for most MMOs to follow the same formula. FFXIV 1.0 was heavily inspired by FFXI considering it was the only other MMO in the main series FF titles that they drew inspiration from, and considering some of the team from FFXI were the ones who worked on FFXIV 1.0, it was inevitable that SquareEnix would build 1.0 the same way but with better graphics, but that failed and with Yoshi-P replacing the lead developer, FFXIV 2.0 was heavily inspired by WoW at the time in order for it to become successful; these are the facts just to clarify.

But I am confused... why did the topic turn to this in the first place anyways? It just seems kind of irrelevant to what the OP had posted.