Forum outrage! An explaination?

[Wolfie]

It's a mix of people who are nostalgic about FFXI (and wanted an FFXI with updated graphics) and people who are WOW-phobic.

Yoshi-P said when he joined that his plan is to modernize FFXIV by looking at what made western MMOs successful, that's literally what he's done, and that's what these people are complaining about. A modern MMO that has a few things in common with WOW.

[Shurrikhan]

It's a mix of people who are nostalgic about FFXI (and wanted an FFXI with updated graphics) and people who are WOW-phobic.

Yoshi-P said when he joined that his plan is to modernize FFXIV by looking at what made western MMOs successful, that's literally what he's done, and that's what these people are complaining about. A modern MMO that has a few things in common with WOW.

That said, some of his work still seems too caught up on the western systems or conventions themselves, rather than why they worked for their given games. Quest density, for example, has often been a good thing, but why?

Does a grindy-addictive clickfest actually suit an FF style... wait... haven't worked through that yet...

It's never a bad idea to view and learn from your competition. But the more one focuses on what has been done, the less instinctive freedom one has in developing the actual targets of the game. And those, be in vast quest networks and diverse zones rolled through with easy humor, or party and labor-intensive gameplay over a world that feels about as realistic as fantasy can get, etc, are what will really set the game apart.