So.... why the Races from FFXI?

[Zaaku]

This is something that has played heavily on my mind and I just can't brain it out. I'm really trying to understand the reasoning behind, or what you could call the Tail-end for people who used to have tails but lost them in which case we'd call it the ass-end, the selection of playable Races for FFXIV. Follow along we're going to be moving pretty fast here.


FFXI was modestly successful. It never had MILLIONS of subscribers but there was more then healthy player base for nearly 8 years straight. It is the only other MMO in the Final Fantasy series. So, of course the first thing that one could reason is this. SE is making a new MMO. They want to begin putting resources into this new project instead of keeping an aging title limping along past its expiration date. Yet they still want the money their subscribers were giving them. What easier way to 'just the tip' in a game population then to make the playable races the same?

Makes sense in bubble thought mode but there is a snag with that. This game is nothing like FFXI. It is like taking The Master Chief and Elites out of Halo and putting them into a Racing crossover. You can technically do it and there will always be die-hard fans who play HAAWOOW: X-treme Hover Putput Go Fast but you will lose a huge portion of the original fans because it is not what they know. It isn't what they enjoyed the Characters for in the first place.

Next go could be just sheer popularity!

Hold dat, FFXI was an abusive Husband that savagely beat the Joy out of players and was only really embraced by a small limpit of the MMO community. Not to mention Final Fantasy itself. Hell there are more people who would be tickled six shade of lavendar if we had the FFT Races instead. (Bunny girl >Cat girl IMO) They could have plucked the races from any of their more profitable and respected titles and gotten more subs then going with a study but under achiever FFXI.

Easier? Cheap? Not really. Since all the models, animations, and gear which would eventually be worn had to be coded from the byte up. We could have just as easily had Ronso or Cat siths as an available Race and it wouldn't have put them back or forth another penny.


As many many.....spirited people have jumped down my throat when I bring the topic up about why we have Mithra, Galka, Tarus, Elvenen, and Humes in this new world the most common response I get is.

THEY AREN'T THE SAME THING! DIFFERENT GAME! DIFFERENT RACES! RABBLE DABBLE KER-FABUL!

A blind squirrel could find this nut. You cannot deny the Races in FFXIV were ripped from its predecessor FFXI. You would have to be dense as Mercury (lookitup!) or trying to sweep the issue under a rug by claiming otherwise. We may have new names and a slight brush up with the faces but these are the FFXI Races. So back to the orginal question, Why?

My best venture is this. My first thought! The plan up and crapped itself though. They wanted to transpose their paying sun base into a new game by making the Races familiar. So the shell shock from moving crayon backgrounds to full HD sex-in-pixelation format wouldn't fry-skittle our poor minds. This was back when they had this awesome idea of keeping the Hard Core from FFXI while still allowing casual play to keep pace and well... we all know how that turned out.

As a player who Chose the Galka Race to represent my personality I can't help but feel perplexed with this whole situation. The Roegadyn races by far has had the most damaging modifications during its cross over. Perhaps the pattern buffers were not properly aligned but some MAJOR facets of what made Galka Galka are missing. If the original intention was to make us feel 'at home' so we can continue our Journey with our same Characters, why have that fallen short on that effort?

[Scherwiz]

Galkas are no longer galkas, Altana is dead, and you are no longer my favorite vampire. Good day sir.

[Cendres]

................. Oh dear.

First off we all know the races are carbon copies of what we had in XI. Denial isn't why people are correcting you, they are doing so because they've made a divide between XI's lore and XIV's and expect you to do so as well because that is what is intended.

The original dev team obviously had letting go issues, they wanted a brand new world that still felt 'familiar' to players of XI so they transferred the old races with small changes and new names and lore to give things a new spin. Not really sure why they thought this would be preferable to a brand new fresh world with brand new races ( I would have loved to see that... ) but that's not what they decided to do.

You can argue until you are blue in the face that they are the same races essentially, but you have to understand that even though intellectually people can see that, most of us are huge lore buffs and like to immersed in the current story and lore and so we prefer to use the new names so many are still going to correct you if you insist on calling Miqo'tes Mithras.

Also perhaps your personal problem is you have issues too with letting go of what was and instead of being in a familiar place with a familiar character you are constantly reminded of what you had and that what you have now is different.

It's time to make that divide, or petition for brand new races. There's a thread somewhere...

[Irishwars]

I'm not reading this. Alot more things to focus on rather then the core races in the game. This will never change

[Jinko]

GET OVER EETTT

[TheVedis]

most mmos have similar races to other games....so why is it any different here

[Alhanelem]

They aren't the races from FFXI. The reason they were designed similarly though is because they figured a lot of people would be coming from FFXI and would want to create a character that looked a lot like their XI one. That's really all there is to that.

[Dhalmel]

MEH. All I want is my viera and lamia races.

[Eagleheart]

This post actually exists, doesn't it. o.o ... goodness.

[Fear]

They used races that looked the same so the game was familiar to FFXI players so it helped them to change over.