Quote Originally Posted by Pablohoney View Post
First of all, WoW is both more strategic and more complicated than FFXIV in every way except perhaps being easier to avoid repetitive stress injuries. FFXIV is already more 'easy mode' than most MMOs on the market.

It sounds like you need a reminder that this game is a failure right now. Whether it fits with your personal tastes aside, no one is playing this game and it cannot survive in its current state. There is no reason for SE to remain loyal to the handful of people who still play (for free) when they're constantly losing money. There are certain changes that MUST be made if they're ever going to get other people to play this game. The combat system as it stands right now is not only boring, it's pointless. Whether or not there are abilities in the game that allow you to play more strategically, they aren't needed to kill enemies and advance. You can just light strike your way through 100% of the game's content. You can't do that in WoW.

Before people start typing up their regular defensive posts, you can save your 'wow fanboy' comments and your 'you know nothing about game development' comments because they're also irrelevant. This is a business. This game is a failure. Drastic measure are needed and there is no reason to keep this game the way it is right now because they're bleeding to death.

This is a beautiful game with a terrific crafting system. It has unrivaled art direction and design and the animations and story elements are truly well done. There has never been music anywhere near this good in an MMO before. There are core mechanics in place with the graphics and sound that will probably be the best in the genre for years to come, but the game will disappear entirely if they don't add engaging content and better combat/gameplay, implement a worthwhile system for trading goods that people craft/farm, give people something to look forward to at the level cap, and actually instill the player with a sense of accomplishment.

Really dig deep before you try to keep this game from changing, because almost everyone who has played or reviewed it has panned it. This is not a symptom of people wanting WoW 2.0, it's a symptom of bad game design, and you need to let the new dev team try to fix the mess so that this game survives.
You're completely ignoring the fact that a significant portion of the player base enjoys many of the things they're changing. For me, personally, there's no faster way to get me to stop playing that cramming it into the current popular mold for MMOs. If I want to play a quest hub bouncing, auto-attacking WoW clone, I'll play something else, cause I know of at least three games that do it better than FFXIV will ever be able to. I play FFXIV because it's different, interesting, and has a lot of design features that I really like. My only real complaints with the game at the moment are the lack of content and the direction they seem to be trying to take it.