Who is this game targeting?

[Enkidoh]

This was an uneducated response all around. Before Making FFXI Yoshi played Ever Quest, and FFXI was largely based off of EQ in design. After 1.0 Failed (The lead Developer at the time had the vision of - an MMO that wasn't FFXI) Yoshi stated his point of view was that the goal was to make it not FFXI, and that made it nothing at all. For somebody who played 1.0, that is a fairly accurate description. It was pretty much empty at launch, large regions and landscapes with nothing in them.


Then before taking over and updating 1.0 to 2.0, Yoshi (again in a live letter, stated roughly) ~ that he played World of Warcraft - the leading game and standard in modern day MMORPG's and learned from it, what about it was successful? So that he too could make another successful game. Emphasis on another, because FFXI was in it's own right, successful.

FFXI (at launch) and FFXIV so far are nothing alike. The only similarity is that with one toon, you can change classes and play anything.

Oh right, you can do that in almost all Final Fantasy titles.

Yoshi didn't make FFXI, that was Hiromichi Tanaka (who was also FFXIV 1.0's original producer), and a lot of FFXI's original design brief was entirely Hironobu Sakaguchi's idea - but you got the part about Square basing FFXI on Everquest's design right (Sakaguchi had played the original EQ and was excited about the possibilities a MMO could bring to the FF series.), as well as Yoshi admitting Tanaka lacked direction with 1.0's original design and hence SE ended up with "not much of anything" (paraphrasing his words).

Once again, it seems the only ones really upset about ARR's direction are the 'hardcore' MMO players who believe that game companies should acquiesce to their particular tastes. Unfortunately, the hardcore players are something of a minority in this game, and aren't enough to make money for SE alone. Hence, like it or hate it, but it's obvious Yoshida has designed ARR with new players in mind, specifically, those who have never played a FF game or a MMO before. Sadly though, this has alienated the hardcore fans, especially a lot who played 1.0 and FFXI. But then, as I've been saying since the Alpha, you can't please everyone. SE made their choice, and whether you agree with it or not, it actually is paying off for SE.