Quote Originally Posted by kukurumei View Post
Yes there wouldn't such a big problem if FF14 was stable. Then it would be a rivalry shake hands on different approaches.

But right now FF14 is on a death bed and Rifts is not. No matter how you slice it FF14 is doing something wrong, Rifts is doing something right. That's the point.

It's less about styles then it is about what works so you need rifts to be in the picture, almost any single MMO can slap around FF14 as of right now.
Rift has success now because it copied a very successful game. And directly targeted a audience that was thirsty for a new WoW experience. "We are not in Azeroth (sp?) anymore" as a slogan for the game is proof enough of this.

While they used something to guarantee them success (A nobody development studio sorta has to if they want to lower their investment risk), this is exactly what MMOS developers should not be doing, and Trion Worlds should be getting flamed for doing this not praised. They literally copied an existing mmo and marketed it. Nothing original, nothing new, nothing advancing for the genre, just a mix of 2-3 other mmos that where successful put into 1. Besides the World and Story the game is 100% World of Warcraft... the crafting, dungeons, quest, gear, UI, AH, Shops, PvP, Souls (almost duplicate of talent trees from WoW), and Job Mechanics are almost completly plagerized from WoW.

The issue with Rift is all those things they copied from WoW, where done better and more fully developed in WoW. So while ffxiv is doing poorly now... I feel safe to say that rift has a higher chance of failing in the long run then FFXIV does. FFXIV has a focus on group game play and at least it seems for now the devs are going to keep it that way while adding more solo activities, this is something that keeps ffxiv apart from the rest... everything else is a solo mmo. What will happen when the players of Rift realize that it is just WoW but worse. Remember Aion for the first 3 months was "THE WOW KILLER", what happened to that game when the WoW fans realized WoW this game is not as wow as wow.

All in all if Rift done the right thing in developement the mmo genre is royal screwed.