Quote Originally Posted by _Pigzig View Post
Yeah but I think most people who play now never knew about any of this. 2.0 was successful because they made a different game and it was good. All I knew about 1.0 was what youtubers and people who ripped it to shreds said. It was one of those games people loved to hate.
What Square did do well though was communicate how different 2.0 was going to be. They even made A Realm Reborn the prominent title on the box, Final Fantasy was only underneath. This trend actually continued. You see ENDWALKER and then FFXIV online underneath.
A lot of the playerbase now aren't even Final Fantasy fans, a lot of people I've talked to don't know the Crystal Tower is a big FF3 reference. The success just seems to be plain old buzz and word of mouth about the game.
I feel like we've got the same point we're just at different parts of that point ahah.

2.0 onward wouldn't be where it is now without the 1.0 players sticking around during the Free play period and putting enough trust in the devs to be willing to start paying again when they said they'd need to reactivate the subscription model. It honestly wouldn't have made it without that trust. New World doesn't have that - it's a corporate game with zero soul and absolutely no brand identity. My whole point was it feels NW is trying to pull a NW 2.0 ("OOPS, too much, gotta burn it down, pls trust us as we fix it!") But without any of the other reasons XIV 2.0 worked.