https://massivelyop.com/2021/06/07/n...ames-relaunch/
https://min.news/en/game/1ab181a5b07...791c924d1.html
https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fanta...-interview-wow
Yoshida has mentioned other MMOs, like he really enjoyed play Dark Age of Camelot, I believe he mentioned Lineage before, Ultima Online obviously, other games- he has self professed he's fairly hardcore gamer and has talked about some of those games in concept of being a bit hardcore player.. But in context of WoW here... He has out right said, on multiple occasions, that WoW was used as a form of inspiration and learning (I'm sure on what not to do sometimes too). As well as Guild Wars 2, if I recall correctly.
On the topic at large, I really hope they continue to check out other MMOs both what they're doing and what they plan to do in order to encourage and educate themselves on what is working well, what doesn't work well, and just what is going on. There are things that other MMOs do substantially better than FFXIV, and then things FFXIV does exceptionally well in comparison to other games (of course there are bias / preferences, so like "that's a good idea, but I wont do it because it doesn't fit here").
Maybe even for my selfish reasons lol- Like
long ago I had asked for really interactive mount system and that it would be fun 'i totally promise bro' lol and most didn't buy into it, but then like a year later GW2 came out with a mount system that is frequently considered one of the best mount systems in MMOS, and now recently WoW is taking large inspirations off that... Might be able to convince SE to improve mounts now :3.