I wouldn't mind FFXIV becoming a WoW clone in the casual/hardcore appeal if...

[RuneSevalle]

WoW is hard? Anyone can just install DBM and press whatever buttons needed whenever they're told to. You mean the DPS race fights? Heh. Not even slightly hard. Didn't make it this week? No worries. There's no outside competition, we can keep doing this til our eyes bleed.

Quick comparison, how long did it take people to be AV, PW, Dynamis Lord, hell, Nyzul Isle? (Let alone HNMs that have a degree of competition that very few LSes could keep up with), then how long did it take to beat Hard Mode Dragonsoul?

Yeah, the time it took to beat WoW endgame was always less time than FFXI. That's why there are expansions and patches coming out so dang often to sate the people that already have FULL gear sets from the current content. FFXI, on the other hand, had optimal gear pieces that remained as such for a very, very long time. Byakko's haidate, anyone? It wasn't until the incredible dumbing down of Abbyssea that this ever changed. What's that? Time doesn't equal difficulty? True, but there were NO difficult encounters in WoW. It was just a matter of having the right add-ons, with the right gear, and a group of people that had enough of a brain to press 1,2,3,4,5 in the right orders.

Oh, you want a special achievement meant for the people that have full gearsets? How's that hard? It only took those people about a month (if even that) before the progressive guilds were on farm-mode.

TL;DR FFXI high-end endgame was much greater than WoW's Add-on encumbered endgame. Period. FFXIV should take aspects from both, but should probably favor more from FFXI than from WoW when it comes to endgame content. FFXIV has potential to trump both if they can keep third-party add-on junk out of the game.

[XxOstiaxX]

WoW is hard? Anyone can just install DBM and press whatever buttons needed whenever they're told to. You mean the DPS race fights? Heh. Not even slightly hard. Didn't make it this week? No worries. There's no outside competition, we can keep doing this til our eyes bleed.

Quick comparison, how long did it take people to be AV, PW, Dynamis Lord, hell, Nyzul Isle? (Let alone HNMs that have a degree of competition that very few LSes could keep up with), then how long did it take to beat Hard Mode Dragonsoul?

Yeah, the time it took to beat WoW endgame was always less time than FFXI. That's why there are expansions and patches coming out so dang often to sate the people that already have FULL gear sets from the current content. FFXI, on the other hand, had optimal gear pieces that remained as such for a very, very long time. Byakko's haidate, anyone? It wasn't until the incredible dumbing down of Abbyssea that this ever changed. What's that? Time doesn't equal difficulty? True, but there were NO difficult encounters in WoW. It was just a matter of having the right add-ons, with the right gear, and a group of people that had enough of a brain to press 1,2,3,4,5 in the right orders.

Oh, you want a special achievement meant for the people that have full gearsets? How's that hard? It only took those people about a month (if even that) before the progressive guilds were on farm-mode.

TL;DR FFXI high-end endgame was much greater than WoW's Add-on encumbered endgame. Period. FFXIV should take aspects from both, but should probably favor more from FFXI than from WoW when it comes to endgame content. FFXIV has potential to trump both if they can keep third-party add-on junk out of the game.

Let me quickly educate you my ignorant friend..... First Add-on's do not do anything that the current game does not do, it simply gives you a better picture of the information, there is no add on that you install and gives you a WIN BUTTON! Please do educate yourself before you start talking.

On the notion that XI content was cleared slower than Wow's well, for once you have 10-12 million people playing one, and you had 500K playing another, is simple numbers man, the % of people playing at the very top in WOW was probably equal or double the entire population of XI. Also Xi had roadblocks in place to artificially extend the life of content, as opposed to wow, wich had a more "Free access, beat if you can direction), what i mean by that is that in XI you had to most of the time beat other bosses or do chores time and time again in order to obtain an item to summon the boss you wanted, and they also had the horrible mechanic of spawning bosses, wish in turn turned into a bot war, where the difficulty became, claiming a mob before another LS did.... That was the hardest part in XI getting a claim....

Now go on your way, and educate yourself.

[Zumi]

WoW is hard? Anyone can just install DBM and press whatever buttons needed whenever they're told to. You mean the DPS race fights? Heh. Not even slightly hard. Didn't make it this week? No worries. There's no outside competition, we can keep doing this til our eyes bleed.

Quick comparison, how long did it take people to be AV, PW, Dynamis Lord, hell, Nyzul Isle? (Let alone HNMs that have a degree of competition that very few LSes could keep up with), then how long did it take to beat Hard Mode Dragonsoul?

Yeah, the time it took to beat WoW endgame was always less time than FFXI. That's why there are expansions and patches coming out so dang often to sate the people that already have FULL gear sets from the current content. FFXI, on the other hand, had optimal gear pieces that remained as such for a very, very long time. Byakko's haidate, anyone? It wasn't until the incredible dumbing down of Abbyssea that this ever changed. What's that? Time doesn't equal difficulty? True, but there were NO difficult encounters in WoW. It was just a matter of having the right add-ons, with the right gear, and a group of people that had enough of a brain to press 1,2,3,4,5 in the right orders.

Oh, you want a special achievement meant for the people that have full gearsets? How's that hard? It only took those people about a month (if even that) before the progressive guilds were on farm-mode.

TL;DR FFXI high-end endgame was much greater than WoW's Add-on encumbered endgame. Period. FFXIV should take aspects from both, but should probably favor more from FFXI than from WoW when it comes to endgame content. FFXIV has potential to trump both if they can keep third-party add-on junk out of the game.

The FFXI philosophy has always been horizontal progression until the level 75 uncap and abyssea. While WoW has always been vertical gear progression. They are different ways to design a mmo. FFXI wanted to keep players around with low drop rates, side grades, gear grinds that take forever a lot of players were satisfied with this because their Byakkyos haidate stayed BiS for years. WoW is more of a keep adding new raids, new tiers of content with decent gear drop rates to keep people playing by always adding new better gear and raids which require a higher gear level to do.

But it sounds like you never played WoW seriously in a top end guild because the hard mode raids are definitely harder then anything FFXI had to offer, there is no way to argue that they weren't.

The best guild in the world killed heroic Deathwing 4 weeks after it was out. However the majority of the playerbase could not kill it that fast. However Blizzard nerfs their raids over time so more people can clear them, they gave Dragon Soul a 30% hp/damage done nerf, even with that only 21% of the total raiding guilds have cleared Heroic Dragon Soul. Your average player still can't beat it.

AV and PW were both broken fights they aren't even comparable to something like Heroic Dragon Soul where the fights actually work and designed to be beatable. Both bosses had kill your whole alliance mechanics and nothing you could do about it which kept them unbeat for years. The thing is people didn't beat AV and PW until they added the summon Alexander so they could use Perfect Defense (mitigates damage) and zerg it. PW was manageable until his final phase where he spammed Astral Flow non stop to everyone was dead at every 25% hp. However once the 75 cap was lifted both fights became a joke.

Dynamis Lord came out shortly after the NA release of FFXI at a time where many NA players were still leveling to 75 but that didn't stop JP players from killing him close to his release saw many JP people with shadow mantle a couple weeks after his release.

Nyzul was very easy people were getting discs to max level without much problem only thing that made it take a couple weeks was you only got 1 tag pre day.

If you take 10 or 25 random mmo players give them ilvl397 gear and DBM throw then in heroic dragon soul in WoW there is very little chance they will be able to beat it. Having played WoW I know game does not play itself like you seem to think. It takes a lot of situational awareness which isn't needed much at all to do endgame in FFXI and knowledge about the fights and the class you play to be good at the game.

WoW pretty much is the MMO standard when people pick up a game they want it to be similar in aspects to other games in the genre. When I pick up a FPS it should feel like a FPS, when I play a fighting game it should feel like a fighting game. A lot of people played FFXIV and it really didn't feel like a MMO it felt unfinished and broken. If Yoshi is taking stuff from WoW like the UI, equipment screen, drag and drop interface for armor and hotbars ect, queue system for dungeons, quests for leveling those are all fundamental things that should be in a modern mmo they aren't really unique to WoW.

Yoshi is trying to make FFXIV feel like a modern MMO with a Final Fantasy style and that's perfectly fine.