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

[Starlord]

You know what I think? EVERY GAME IS A COPY OF SOME OTHER GAME!!

You know what I think? EVERY GAME IS A COPY OF SOME OTHER GAME!!

Quoted for Truth ^.^

[kazaran]

No you dont win the thread, but you do get a Cookie!!

Also i don't know why people get their panties up in a bunch, was XI based on EQ ? Yes! Is that bad ? No!

But i guess there are always fanboys that wanna make XI more than what it was.... O well

THat's mean. Cookie.... Humpf. I may be borderline diabetic and may not be able to enjoy cookies for very long. I been hitting 190-220 and takign longer to drop. Going to be stuck with rice crackers.

[kazaran]

There is a tad of EQ in XI but not much.

THere is lag in WOW, I guess not many mutiboxed If playign two accounts and you have a mule tag along there is delay, just like there was delay in FFXI, suprisngly there wasn't more lag on XI.

The AI in XI shined, the story shined. THe interface would seem odd to WOW players, but not to other mmo players before wow.
The AI in wow had extremly limited paths. It chaced to yoru point on the map. IF you strayed outside a radius, reset to it's limited area.

THe AI in FFXI (As it progressed) had several hundred times the radius, and ability to create it's own track, go around obsticles, based on how it was made to track based on the core AI design. IF it was site and you went invis, it lost track after several feet. SO mobs did not desapwn and tracked back, some despawned since it may have tracked you clear across a map.

FOr an older game, it had the better AI system. BEtter story system. Harder questign rather then a majority within a limited area.

I hope SE doesn't simplify things to a point where the challenge is gone, people are lazy, don't read quest objectives, and point A to point B to much. The leves are getting to be that way, so the story lines, GC's and now FC missions will be what makes it better.

Xi got simplified due to age and to try to make it easy for those used to games like wow. Addign objectives on maps and radar, coffers , and easier progression. Old school XI was much harder then wow, and unless you played that period, you would never have gone into playing wow and found it as challenging.

[kazaran]

To be fair, you can't judge the community based off of the official forums.

To be fair I based it off playing wow, and playing XI. I typically bounced to not get burned out.

I base it off years on both games through all there addons, additions and patches. Not becuase everyone else plays the game, or which had more locked in players that couldn't afford multiple MMO's.

I have active WOW, XI, XIV, EVE, ST:O, Rift and now GW2 accounts.

[Xairos]

After reading most of the posts here I can summarize:

WoW endgame is easy, if you know what you're doing.
FFXI endgame is easy, if you know what you're doing.
Wow endgame, pre-nerf, was super hard (but easy, if you knew what you were doing *and had the right gear*).
FFXI endgame, pre-nerf, was super hard (but easy, if you knew what you were doing *and had the right gear*).
If you had to tank endgame, WoW was a snooze-fest. Because you didn't have to know "much" about what to do.
If you had to tank endgame, FFXI was a snooze-fest. Because you're skill rotations were easy and you didn't have to know "much" about what to do.

Of course, no mention of different play styles for different roles. Some mention of how FFXI was just "tank and spank" (regardless of that term largely surfacing from WoW). No mention at all (surprise) of how Blizzard cannibalized their own content in favor of pushing new players to the end just to get them into raiding*. But to be fair, FFXI just cannibalized themselves due to Abyssea.

*supporting statement: I leveled a dps mage (which i admit is an easy role to play in an mmo) from 1 to 84 in a week in Cataclysm. I play casually. I just used Dungeon Finder. Parallel this to my first character, a 67 druid, which I started half way through the launch of TBC and it took me weeks to get a good leveling groove. However, my druid had more experience of the game itself (pvp, world maps revealed, quests completed, total gold). No one can deny that blizzard was the first to admit (without words) that all of their creative focus was in their endgame. Which, in my book, gets some points knocked off.

Because I would feel bad for all those months of development that just gets passed over.

[fusional]

No one can deny that blizzard was the first to admit (without words) that all of their creative focus was in their endgame. ... Because I would feel bad for all those months of development that just gets passed over.

except they redesigned almost every map in azeroth for cata. that isn't for the benefit of endgame. they redesigned skill trees. that isn't for the benefit of endgame. they redesigned instanced questing. that isn't for endgame, either. and last but not least- they made it so the vast majority of quests in any new zone tied to an instance also tied in with the lore of the area and the story involving that instance. you know what that isn't for? endgame.

so i'm not sure where you're getting the impression they've 'admitted' ALL of their creative focus was on endgame. especially when they make the game increasingly welcoming to casual players with each expansion. do casual players participate in endgame? yes, they do. but only casually.

what does that mean? simple. it means most of their creative focus goes toward appeasing the casual player, whether that player is scrounging around maps with archaeology, grinding dungeons for xp, questing, or pugging RAIDS with their content finder. as you can see- endgame is only part of the equation.

[kazaran]

Blizzard has lowered raised lowered raised dungeons and endgame, So has SE with XI (now concidered lower except specific new ones). Xi was redoen to be easier so new players can get through content faster, in the old days the game was very hard.

Drop rates need to change it's a tad rediculous in XIV right now. Maybe easier to gain tokens to get gear through fights.

But fights can't be to easy, Guruda and a coupel others are still a pain, but players are better now. Balance is the key. THen again Yoshi has hinted at doign away with the ability to simply tank run through a dungeon area and mobs will not simply retunrn as easy. As logng as it's not to hard.

[Huginn]

my apologies if this sounds harsh or rude, but if you want a WoW clone, just go play WoW

[XxOstiaxX]

So if you want a Xi clone go play XI ? That's how it works ?

[Reiterpallasch]

And if you want a clone of yourself, just be yourself!

I love the "If you want WoW, go play WoW" shit that people throw around. Now, this is gonna blow your fucking minds, but get this: You can do things similar to other MMOs without "cloning" them. You can adjust or improve them to make them your own. Games like WoW have some very good ideas that would work quite well in FFXIV. So far though it seems like people will shoot down just about every idea simply based on the fact that WoW has it, with no regard for what the actual idea is.

Know what I'd love to see in this game? An auction house. Guess what WoW has? An auction house. But I guess since WoW has an auction house, we can't have one in FFXIV because we'd just become another herpity derp derp WoW clone right?