How exactly is FFXIV like WoW?

[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.