So after waiting for about 2 weeks to see the consequence of homogenization

[Kabooa]

This is the path that every MMO seems to go down eventually. WoW being the best example, now that Classic got released. WoW Classic has more players than the polished, optimized and far more streamlined retail version, BfA.

It'll be interesting to watch the lifespan of WoW Classic.

I expect it to have a few good months and then it dies down once people realize Vanilla wasn't actually that great.

[MaelleRiou]

It'll be interesting to watch the lifespan of WoW Classic.

I expect it to have a few good months and then it dies down once people realize Vanilla wasn't actually that great.

I would absolutely hate for Square-Enix to design classes like Classic WoW. Who wants to be a 1 spell wonder like Classic mage or warlock exactly? Or to be an auto-attack bot like Classic paladin?

Not me, that's for sure.

[Taranok]

It'll be interesting to watch the lifespan of WoW Classic.

I expect it to have a few good months and then it dies down once people realize Vanilla wasn't actually that great.

It was great, for its time. And some people literally play WoW as the only game they play, period, so having a nostalgiagasm or seeing what they missed will be refreshing to them. But I am expecting it to be lackluster....eventually. Classic had a ridiculous ton of issues that plagued it, and it shouldn't take long for players to realize that it's not quite all it's cracked up to be. That said, I expect it to be hilariously popular anyways, since it still represents Blizzard's original and perhaps truest vision for WoW, a vision that has been massively eroded as the greedy aspect of RNG design worked its way deeper and deeper into it. But I digress.

This game has 2 major, legitimately concerning aspects of homogenization in it. Homogenization of how tanks mitigate damage, and homogenization of how healers actually heal. People will split hairs over how NIN or RDM is underpowered/terrible, but a NIN and RDM play vastly different than each other, and play vastly differently from every DPS you could hope to compare it to. And that texture difference between them works wonders towards helping prevent a homogenized feeling. But when classes all accomplish their role the same way down to button execution, it starts to massively undermine the variety and become a serious problem.

WoW actually has this issue, because the overwhelming majority of classes are all variations of the same style, which is a priority-based rotation with a hefty sprinkling of procs or other RNG elements thrown in. Very few of them aren't this, so they tend to blur together pretty quickly. But WoW doesn't have this issue, ironically, on tank or healer design for accomplishing the feel of being a tank or healer, because they focus on a different style of encounter design that allows them to express those classes in wildly different ways. So while their DPS start to blur together, their tanks and healers actually are more divergent than FFXIV tanks and healers because of it, and the truest example of this is looking at Brewmaster and comparing how it tanks (not DPS, tanks) to literally any other tank in any other game and then scratching your head as you realize it's such a bizarre style of tanking that it sits in a category all to its own.

There will always be a meta, some classes will always be mathematically better than others. Having raid utility or not is whatever, but what really should be emphasized is what makes the classes feel different even when they might perform the same. That is what legitimately will help break up the meta more than anything, because if someone seriously wants to play a class because that's stylistically what they prefer, it doesn't matter how off-meta it actually is, they will play that class. The rest is a matter of breaking the player expectations of what is or is not viable.

[Ryaz]

It'll be interesting to watch the lifespan of WoW Classic.

I expect it to have a few good months and then it dies down once people realize Vanilla wasn't actually that great.

Doesn't help they're basing it off 1.12 where Warriors were extremely overpowered and most of the population consisted of them, rogues and mages.

[Scryar]

Speaking about WoW classic. I don't know how current WoW is as i stopped playing it 12 years ago but after trying out classic and rolling my old class (mage) I realized how much i missed classes not being solely designed for dungeons and raids. As a mage in wow classic I have so many skills which purpose is not to do damage or increase someone's damage. Creating water and food, making portals for myself or party members, tons of crowd control spells, reducing fall damage, intelligence buff, a skill to see enemy magic buffs, a short teleport and probably some more i forgot. Then i check my favourite ff 14 class (red mage) and see that almost every single skill is there to increase my damage. And that's pretty much the case with every (damage) class in ff 14. Everything in this game revolves around doing damage (even tanks and healers) and whenever it doesn't, it get's removed (like Tether from red damage or group buffs from healers)