Yet another interview..Kotaku however.

[Elexia]

But not as biased as you'd think.

http://kotaku.com/5963155/new-final-...h-the-original
The funny part is, this is how you know you couldn't have blamed Tanaka (like it seems to be the cool thing), because he had them do their homework for XI's development, so XIV clearly was a misstep by the entire company, not just one man.

In Yoshida's opinion, the reason FFXI was a success is that it took the areas where Final Fantasy was strongest—cutscenes, dramatic scenarios, and story-driven content—and input them into an EverQuest inspired framework.

Just a key note for those who like to tell people SE shouldn't look at what they did with XI and learn from it.

Something XIV was and is missing in comparison to it's predecessor.

However, when the original FFXIV was in development, the goal of the project was simply to make a game that was different from Final Fantasy XI. Yoshida feels that the creators didn't recognize that the global standard of MMOs had been significantly raised in recent years. He would have suggested a different path for the game—one that mirrored FFXI's own creation. "I think it would've been good if they tried seeing what happened if they turned World of Warcraft into Final Fantasy. So, because they tried only to make something that was 'different from FFXI,' they ended up with not much of anything."

I don't agree with this because we seen what happened when people settle for doing exactly the bolded, but I agree with what he was trying to say.

[Rau]

tl;dr because WoW

[IloveYouPumpkin]

woot something to read, thanks.

[Wynn]

Sure beats reading entitlement threads

[Alhanelem]

The funny part is, this is how you know you couldn't have blamed Tanaka (like it seems to be the cool thing), because he had them do their homework for XI's development, so XIV clearly was a misstep by the entire company, not just one man.

Two things: Tanaka (plus other senior staff members) took the fall for the faliure, he wasn't solely resopnsible, but since he was the producer it was his responsibility to get a good product from his team. So yes, it was a misstep by many, not just him- Just explaining why everyone thinks it's him. The other thing is, it's the very fact he was on the original XI team that led to dated ideas and concepts being brought to the project. MMOs have changed and evolved since he made XI, but not a lot changed in XIV 9 years later.

Just a key note for those who like to tell people SE shouldn't look at what they did with XI and learn from it.

Just because XI was successful, doesn't mean that they should be pulling every idea and concept from it. As I alluded to above, the things that made XI successful years ago and the things that will make an MMO successful today are not the same.

Yoshida's comments reflect this- he recognizes that the needs of MMOs have shifted as time has gone on.

[IloveYouPumpkin]

I'm not too worried about the "they should have turned WoW into Final Fantasy" comment. He does mention that it's good to be influenced by what's working, like being influenced by everquest when they created FFXI. Everquest and FFXI aren't copies of each other. I'm pretty sure he understands that you can't simply copy everything from one game and just add your own touch of graphics and characters and call it a success. I'm pretty sure he doesn't think that. All you have to do is look at the load of MMO's that have tried doing this already, and failed immediately.

[Elexia]

Just because XI was successful, doesn't mean that they should be pulling every idea and concept from it.

However, what that says is exactly what Yoshida says in regards to pulling from WoW. He stated the reason XI even got successful is because it did what it should have done, Look at Final Fantasy (Hence: Final Fantasy XI) and use the appropriate MMO framework (EverQuest at the time.)

So unless I haven't kept up with MMOs, there's still plenty that XI does well that new MMOs have yet to do or has done extremely poorly that they could easily look at and build from it while still using "Standard" framework..however people immediately says something is from GW2 just because it's a new MMO lol.

[Arcell]

Two things: Tanaka (plus other senior staff members) took the fall for the faliure, he wasn't solely resopnsible, but since he was the producer it was his responsibility to get a good product from his team. So yes, it was a misstep by many, not just him- Just explaining why everyone thinks it's him. The other thing is, it's the very fact he was on the original XI team that led to dated ideas and concepts being brought to the project. MMOs have changed and evolved since he made XI, but not a lot changed in XIV 9 years later.

Just because XI was successful, doesn't mean that they should be pulling every idea and concept from it. As I alluded to above, the things that made XI successful years ago and the things that will make an MMO successful today are not the same.

Yoshida's comments reflect this- he recognizes that the needs of MMOs have shifted as time has gone on.

Pretty much this. It had some good ideas but not every idea was good. The genre has changed since it was created.

[Wynn]

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.

[Hulan]

For myself, I'm not terribly worried. As long as it's fun, and has a deep, compelling story and world, I will play. That being said, from a global trends perspective, it has proven quite dangerous to borrow too heavily from other MMOs. There's a fine line between using a foundation to support your game, and using crutches.

I've been seeing a lot of echos from other MMOs recently in the new information we've seen from the dev team. The FATE system sounds awesome; it also sounds a lot like the system in GW2. We'll have to wait and see if they tiptoe the line well or jump right over it, I just hope Yoshi-P knows how precarious of a game he is playing.