Yet another interview..Kotaku however.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

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.

cutscenes, dramatic scenarios, and story-driven content at flavor of Everquest: ok
cutscenes, dramatic scenarios, and story-driven content at flavor of WoW : evil incarnate

sounds legit

[Kallera]

cutscenes, dramatic scenarios, and story-driven content at flavor of Everquest: ok
cutscenes, dramatic scenarios, and story-driven content at flavor of WoW : evil incarnate

sounds legit

I think the concern is a bit warranted. It not like we haven't seen game developers attempt to "put their own spin on WoW" only for their efforts to be called a "WoW clone". Its ironic that for all the complaints about SE's game development of recent years this is the thing they are being given wide berth on...

[Keisuna]

I think the concern is a bit warranted. It not like we haven't seen game developers attempt to "put their own spin on WoW" only for their efforts to be called a "WoW clone". Its ironic that for all the complaints about SE's game development of recent years this is the thing they are being given wide berth on...

That said, being inspired by WoW and just outright cloning WoW are two different things. The trick is figuring out what aspects of WoW would go well with Final Fantasy, and which won't. So long as everything fits together well and WoW aspects aren't just put there arbitrarily, I think they can dodge the "WoW clone" label quite easily.

In the end, whether something is a "WoW clone" or not has more to do with how successful they are than it does with actually cloning WoW.