How exactly is FFXIV like WoW?

[TouchandFeel]

Actually, Everquest borrowed a lot of its structure from Ultima Online, which is credited as being the first "true" MMO (meaning element standards that persist to today). All current and past MMOs owe their existence to UO.

That is very true, UO was the first MMO and it did heavily influence EQ but I still feel that EQ was the first modern MMO (a different distinction in my mind) as it was the first fully 3D MMO and introduced many of the basic MMO trappings that we find today. While UO had some of the stuff that has persisted to MMO's today, I feel that the basic structure of MMO's now is more akin to EQ. All in all, I feel that both our statements are true.
So I guess it would go more like DnD PnP>MUD's>UO>EQ>WoW

[Elim]

I think the people who say everything is a WoW clone do it because WoW was their first MMO and they don't know any better.

[Renik]

FFXIV isn't necessarily "like WoW." It's like a lot of MMORPGs. It took what it considered were the good parts of previous MMORPGs and tried to combine them.

But when people are referencing WoW, they're more than likely talking about the PvE and combat. Off the top of my head...

PvE:

• Guaranteed loot
• Weekly lockout
• Instanced
• Specific group sizes

Combat:

• GCD based
• Holy Trinity (Tank, DPS, Healer)
• Lack of actual hybrid class viability
• Fire that you can (and should) move out of

This... it could be resumed as: mindless gameplay.

[Gramul]

Biggest examples I can think of are the progression style and quest system.

[HakuroDK]

I think comparing one MMO to another is stupid. Of course a lot of them share the same types of content, they're in the same genre! That's like saying Team Fortress 2 is a Call of Duty clone because they both force you into one of two teams and let you shoot people on the other team, or Jak and Daxter is a Banjo Kazooie Clone because, in both, you have to beat up enemies and collect items hidden all around one large area before you can proceed to the next large area.

I mean, doesn't it sound more than a little stupid? Or am I just taking crazy pills?

[Zumi]

I wouldn't say it copied wow. They petty much went with the standard for the mmo genre. Games evolve in that they take the best elements of previous games and build on them.

Remember how Capcom basically invented the super bar (a bar that fills up as you fight and once full lets you do a powerful super move) in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. After Capcom invented the super bar pretty much every fighting game released since then had some form of a super bar. But are they copies of SSF2T? No they aren't.

[Barimu]

How do people still defend that this isn't a WoW clone, THE DEVELOPER SAID IT WAS MULTIPLE TIMES.

[Chiramu]

You reference someone elses' work in order to make your own work more successful.

If someone made an MMORPG and didn't look at any other MMO then you would have the original FFXIV (from how the developers talked about the original production).

You always look at what other people have done when you make something.

[Ryel]

I think comparing one MMO to another is stupid. Of course a lot of them share the same types of content, they're in the same genre! That's like saying Team Fortress 2 is a Call of Duty clone because they both force you into one of two teams and let you shoot people on the other team, or Jak and Daxter is a Banjo Kazooie Clone because, in both, you have to beat up enemies and collect items hidden all around one large area before you can proceed to the next large area.

I mean, doesn't it sound more than a little stupid? Or am I just taking crazy pills?

I wouldn't say you're taking crazy pills but you're certainly missing the mark by far,

Just because two games fit the same "genre" (and this is generous in this case because there currently isn't a large list / unified set of rules that specifically defines what an MMO is at the moment) doesn't mean they have to contain the same elements.

Your example of CoD vs TF2, other than being on two opposing teams with firearms (sometimes in the case of TF2) the games share virtually no similarities, you will most likely never hear either one being called a "clone" of the other.

This isn't often the case of MMOs currently because in a lot of cases (by developer admission) they are taking inspiration or trying to emulate what has worked in other games (See: WoW) because of their success, as opposed to innovating entire new systems on their own (which is costly and risky). This leads to the playerbase being able to draw more direct parallels in content especially if the game that's trying to copy something doesn't do it nearly as well as the game they took inspiration from.

an FFXIV example of this is FATEs

Earlier in this thread an article was linked where Yoshida admitted looking at the Guild Wars 2 dynamic world content system and basing FATEs off of that idea, it was also pointed out that RIFT was most likely the originator of this concept as well. However in terms of execution FFXIV has probably done this the least successfully of the two above games that have used similar ideas.

Things like this leads players to say "That game did it better" and they may be entirely right.

The more often this happens in a game the more likely players are going to notice and bring it up if a large number of systems are "inspired" by various other games but each of those games have a better application of those elements because they created / refined them.

It's the risk you take when doing this.

[Oni_Akuma]

Don't play WoW. I came from there,being an elitist inn raids. I went from BC to MoP throne of thunder. The game has gotten easy from WotLK. Its not fun compared to how FFXIV challenges.