Clearing Confusion - MMORPG differentiation

[Isaveron]

The thing is, while FFXIV is supposed to be different, it almost died a month after released because it was trying to be different for the sake of being different.

No, it almost died because it was a broken mess of a game that still needed another year or so of development. It being different had nothing to do with this.

[Kopuno]

No, it almost died because it was a broken mess of a game that still needed another year or so of development. It being different had nothing to do with this.

Yet if XIV had simply copy/pasted the most basic's of XI, perhaps XIV would not have been so "broken".

[Jennestia]

No, it almost died because it was a broken mess of a game that still needed another year or so of development. It being different had nothing to do with this.

Given another year of development it would have still been plagued with foundational issues because it already went against the basic systems at even "half" completion.

It being different for the sake of being different was indeed the problem, trust me. Games like Iris, Eden Eternal, Rusty Hearts etc are all basic MMORPGs, yet they never suffered the same "oh this horrible /quit" after 1 month because they each had a solid foundation, even in Beta.

XIV was in an identity crisis through the final beta phases and launch, it's no secret it released far too soon given almost no titles for the 2010-2011 year they were banking on XIV's success, but we can't deny that there were a lot of bad design choices that would have continued through another year or two of development.

The thing is, there was nothing wrong with using the basics and expanding them, that's why the games that are doing well today are indeed doing well.

Even TERA is trying to rip off Rift and Aion in order to save itself and that game launched beautifully though heavily under financial expectations (30 million+ short, so investors are pissy.)