Quote Originally Posted by Kaurie View Post
GW2 Stuff
True, I probably should have been a little more specific. Guild Wars 2 is a bit of a special case in that it's a lot closer to a game like Diablo III than it is a more traditional subscription MMO, in addition to being entirely free to play. If Guild Wars 2 had a subscription fee on top of a focus on horizontal progression, I don't know that it would be as popular as it is.

As I mentioned, I do think there's room for some more horizontal aspects in XIV, and I'd honestly like to see them here, but I can't imagine we'll ever see a full-scale shift to it, as the subscription aspect seems pretty central to SE's business model for the game. They're also, I have to assume, very wary of full-scale shifts. They tried a couple times to move FFXI to a more vertical model (in the Abyssea era, and more recently with Seekers of Adoulin), and the player backlash, and indeed, subscription bleed, was hugely significant. The people playing the game liked the way it was, and although FFXI had stopped growing, the developers probably learned that a game has a certain natural level beyond which it probably won't expand, despite any massive changes to the overall structure.

That makes me doubt that they'll do anything major to change FFXIV's underlying structure, which have proven to be far more successful than FFXIV was at launch (and also more successful than FFXI ever was).