I honestly don't see a difference between (play everquest for a year - make xi) and (play wow for a year - make xiv) because, to me, WoW was made by some dudes playing EQ and figuring out what worked well in it.

Yoshi is, of course, right on the money as usual though. XIVs problem really was simply because the only focus was to make it as different from XI as possible. That's just no way to build a game.

I'm hardly an advocate of XI 2.0, but you can't and shouldn't reinvent the wheel when a perfectly good and fully functioning wheel is sitting right in front of you. You aren't going to do better than the wheel. There is no better design there. Just dress it up to reflect your style and move on to areas that have room for innovation.