What is so bad about FFXI?

[ellohwell]

So, being Final Fantasy XI, an MMORPG made by Square Enix which had almost the same general development team, including directional leads of the previous one isn't one of the 'best" reference sources to use? Even FFII built off of the basics FFI laid and did something new (the battle system we all ABSOLUTELY LOVED! (Sarcasm btw.))

Somebody clearly understood what I was saying (sarcasm btw).

This is why people reference FFXI, because they took a lot of steps backwards from XI instead of taking the logical steps forward. Search system for example, they could have easily taken the search system from XI and built the Recruit system around it, we'd have an easier lfg system as well as a recruit system.

FFXIV took some step backwards from FFXI but it also cannot keep making steps backward to FFXI, and that's generally what people like myself are afraid of. FFXIV has made some strides and progress in the industry (and many of those are due to deviating from FFXI) and I don't want to see FFXIV moonwalk back to the dinosaur era, erasing all the progress they've already made.

FFXI had a better search feature, granted, and so maybe in the future you should limit yourself to making the suggestion that FFXIV implement a search feature with "x, y, z elements" because of "a,b,c reasons".

Just flat-out saying "ffxi was better than FFXIV and therefore FFXIV should be like FFXI every way" is what myself and others like me cannot stomach. We don't want the game to revert back to the FFXI standard, because despite what some might say, FFXIV made many steps forward, even though it did take a few steps backwards too (the search feature being one such backward step).

In 2001, Tanaka stated he was inspired by Everquest and used Final Fantasy III (or V) as a base for the world, so yeah, it is a clone, but it's a Final Fantasy based clone, which is why when XIV rolled around, people reference XI because realistically, comparing the two, they should have left XIV as 'Rapture', since the namesake of Final Fantasy generally makes people expect certain things to be in line, which Final Fantasy XI did a good job at bringing in a lot of Final Fantasy aspects.

Much like when I played World of Warcraft, I expected quite a bit of Warcraft lore and feeling.

You were actually kind of starting to make sense until you launched into this tirade about what "Final fantasy should be" like you're the boss of Final Fantasy. I think if anyone gets to decide what final fantasy can and should be it's Tanaka or anyone else at SE.

One might expect certain things of a FF game, but one also expects the unexpected from a FF game. So I'm sorry if it deviated too far from your safety zone but artists need to keep things fresh.