Quote Originally Posted by Mishakai View Post
It is hard to take your views as objective when your edit shows an emotional exclusion of a rather large title on the horizon.

That said..

I'm still having trouble buying the "next generation"-ness of XIV. I've stated it earlier, but they have made advances in some aspects, while completely ignoring other industry advancements that have been made over the last 8 years or so. There are some aspects of the game that are lacking compared to their own previous MMO offering.

I agree with you on Rift and DCUO, however, when looking at AoC, and looking at XIV objectively, I see the same thing. AoC, from what I hear, is actually quite the game now. Unfortunately, it never recovered from its launch. Looking at XIV, I fear the same fate. I believe the new team is working hard to bring the game up to the caliber it should be, and I believe they can and will do it. The question is, will there be enough people left to truly enjoy it? MMO's are quite dull when they feel void of population.

GW2 and TERA... I don't know about GW2. People are jumping on that like it's the holy grail of MMO's to come like I have never seen before.. Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid. TERA, if I am not mistaken is a conversion from a Korean game. They have Aion's reputation to break through to succeed. Speaking of which.. Another game that has suffered from a shaky launch with shallow content. Now that 2.0 is out, the game is pretty good from what I hear, but people seem to scarred to go back.

That brings us to the other 300lb elephant in the room that is slated (hopefully) for this year... TOR.. A company that has made quality games in an IP prior to converting that IP to an MMO. A company that has a solid reputation for quality products, period. Yeah, yeah, I hear some people complaining about Dragon Age II... Considering BioWare has been making arguably the best single player MMO's for what, like almost 20 years now, and are now taking a well known IP they have worked with before into the MMO genre, and have no problems delaying the game as often as necessary to release with quality content, even though the price tag has already exceeded 150 mil?

That's just too much to shrug off just becuase you might be burned on Star Wars I think. Yeah, there is still the chance that BioWare's gamble could fail. But they seem to be doing their best to make sure all the chips are in their favor, and something like that is what would bury XIV now. I'm a big FF fan, but I am also a realist, this game wouldn't be very fun without a good community to play with, and there are alot of other games on the horizon that could very well turn this game into a ghost town... Just like there are people here who say they would never ditch this game for say.. TOR... there were plenty of people... close to like 6+ million who said they would never play an MMO and are currently playing WoW. All it takes is the right game, at the right time, and they can pull it off. The MMO community is seething at the teeth for something new, if TOR delivers before XIV can, guess where they will go.
I'm not saying TOR won't be successful or have a huge subscriber base, I'm just saying I probably won't be a part of it because I'm not into the Star Wars IP anywhere near as much as I used to be when I was younger, and you can probably thank the prequel trilogy/Expanded Universe/growing up for that one. If Bioware manages to create a compelling universe that doesn't feel like either a PG flick or Star Trek/Lord of The Rings fanfiction, then I might be swayed back into it.

Did I mention that I'm not the biggest Bioware fan yet? >.>

Anyway, the parallel you bring up about AoC and FFXIV is a valid one, and something that could happen easily to FFXIV, but the key difference is that FFXIV has a second chance at press: the PS3 release, and SE knows that they cannot under any circumstances screw that up, or the AoC comparison will be reality.

Also the only thing I have to go on about GW2 and TERA are just tradeshow gameplay vids and other assorted things from youtube, and from what I've seen, I'm more partial to GW2, albeit ever so slightly, although I could never get into the original. Although like I said before, if there's one thing FFXIV should have taught us ALL, it's that high expectations are easily crushed. I prefer to wait until release or a ways afterward.