So.... why the Races from FFXI?

[Duelle]

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.

This is pretty much all that needs to be said as far as the races go. Not to mention on the technical/animation side having races with similar body structure makes animating stuff much easier.

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.

It was a business decision. They banked on XI's players moving from XI to XIV. That didn't pan out very well for numerous reasons. The reverse of what Sony wanted to do with EQII (attract new players but got a good chunk of the people who played EQ instead).

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

Wow, TheVedis and I actually agree on something? *pinches self*

That looks an awful lot like a Lineage 2 Dark Elf female.

You're saying that as if it were a bad thing...