Quote Originally Posted by Lerend View Post
MMO's are designed however the developers choose to design them. It does not cease to be an MMORPG if the developers choose to incorporate animation lock as one of the core combat mechanics, it's entirely their choice, and IMO one that fits best with a slower style of combat like FFXI/FFXIV.
Except that FFXIV is not a slow-paced game.

FFXIV, at present, is trying to fight WoW content with the FFXI engine. That is hands-down what this game is right now. The content is fast while the player's ability to react and execute abilities is sluggish, unresponsive, delayed, etc.

You can argue that an MMO is still an MMO no-matter the mechanics the designer puts in, and that is completely true. However if the vast majority of your market does not like or want a mechanic you put in, your MMO will fail because no one will buy or play it.

Your apples and oranges analogy is very sound and I agree mostly, but the problem is if 95% of people like the apple and 5% like the orange, why would you sell a full-blown orange? You won't get your money back from it. It's better to sell the apple with a the best parts of the orange incorporated for the people who like the orange, too.

There's nothing wrong with liking the orange, but expecting the majority to like it if they don't won't work with multi-million dollar AAA game titles that a company is expecting to make profits on. SE has to sell the apple or orange to the market that seems to primarily like the apple. I do hope in the process they can do their best to please everyone, but nobody will be pleased if the game just rots and is abandoned because only a few people could be happy with it and the rest went on to greener pastures (there are a lot of those pastures out there at the moment).

And trust me, while I know most of the "hardcore" community here thinks they'd be thrilled to see all the "WoW crybabies" go, your game will die without those subscribers and you'll be left with nothing but going back to a 10 year old, dieing XI while they've probably found a new, fun game that's making a legitimate attempt to compete with the market.



This all said, I know that this Dev team IS attempting to make this game compete and I actually have a lot of faith in them seeing the things they have done to this game already (aside from still too much RNG and bad drop policies), but I constantly fear the influence of all the negative anti-WoW (or really anti-anything that isn't FF) mentality on their progress.



While I'm here, I'll post these.





Someone posted them a while back on the forums and it's a pretty good explanation as to all the anti-WoW sentiment going on. Many FF players (or many mmo fanboys in general) have not experienced other MMOs and thus fear the change because it's unknown to them, when in all likelihood if they gave it an unbiased chance they would likely enjoy it.

I know some people just don't like WoW or mmos like it and that is ok too; I am pointing out the people who have never touched it but judge anyway.