The WoW Factor

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OP,
I only read a fraction of what you said and it wasn't to be an ass but I've seen this topic 1,000 times before so I am going to explain something to you that you're not understanding just based off of what I read.

Innovation. Some companies beat other companies to the punch with certain innovations. Such as the wheel for example. Now it's how you take that innovation and use it to your own liking that can stand out from others. There's not much more you can do to improve the wheel, but there's a lot you can do using the wheel. That goes for a lot of things.. even food. There's tons a variations of the burger that all have the same basic concept, but then there's a few that vary from just a plain burger. You may like cheese, or not and you can choose to have cheese on your burger or not while Joe has cheese on his. You can enjoy the same burger, but catered to your liking. Just like in games you can choose how you want to play it because developers give you that option.

Now as for games. They're changing and there's a different demand for what is wanted and needed in games than there was 11 years ago. Companies can't stick to old methods because those old methods are dying off among new, and yes even old, gamers. Do you still have a flip phone? Doubt it. It's called progression, adapting, evolving. It has to be done to be relevant. Yes, a lot of people still play old games for fun and nostalgic reasons, but with the growth in popularity of gaming the numbers of people who want companies to stick to the old ways isn't high enough to warrant them to stick with those. Games like FFXI, EQ, DAoC, Star Wars Galaxies, etc were fun and great, during their time, but games with those mechanics are a things of the past and they need to stay there.

Which brings me to WoW. When I started playing WoW I came straight from FFXI maybe about a year before the BC expansion. It was not easy to level in WoW, and it was not easy to beat raids. It was, though, easier to level than in FFXI and that's because FFXI was a time sink. Fighting mobs and progressing wasn't hard, and it was decently fast, but what made it harder to level up was looking for a party. How many of us here searched for hours to get into a party that disbanded in 10 minutes? I bet if I was speaking to you all in front of a room everyone would raise their hands. How many of us here tried to solo mobs for crappy EXP just to quit? Yeah. It sucked.. There was no solo progression and that didn't make FFXI harder, that made it annoying. There was nothing hard about fighting mobs for progression, it was finding people to fight mobs with.

WoW did introduce a new way of progression. You CAN solo from 1-max if YOU wanted too, but not every quest was soloable, and eventually you needed to group up to do the more challenging stuff which IS challenging. If there's one complaint I see that has people making their WoW clone judgement, it's the progression. "It looks like WoW!" Yeah.. it's going to if you use WoW as an example. All MMO's have a minimap, a hotbar, a character in the middle of the screen, a world that lives without you so why is it the deciding example? Because it stands out more because it is popular. As well as GW2 with dynamic events which have been around since EQ. You just don't know it because 1. you never played or 2. you just didn't think of them as dynamic events. Ever been in a random invasion at Free Port by Orcs in EQ? I have. It was just like when "Clever girl" FATE starts in Gridania. Granted they weren't frequent, but by definition they're still dynamic events.

Have MMO's become too easy in a grab for casual gamers? Heeeh, yes. But what was gaming originally about? Sitting on the couch passing time. When did it become a job you didn't get paid to do? Schedules, rules, strict guidelines, requirements SUBMITTING APPLICATIONS. They're supposed to be fun not a tedious time sink. Yoshida has explain time and time again that the game will cater to both people but that doesn't seem to be sinking in. One mistake is allowing thousands of people to beta test who treat their games like a demo and not a test. That's a problem. I've seen countless "endgame" posts about the beta when there is no endgame to make judgement calls about. I also think there's a certain level of selfishness coming from people who want the game catered to their playstyle, and also those same people have a secret sense of competition where they don't want others to progress faster than them.

The challenge will be there guys, but the challenge isn't in finding an EXP party anymore. That's how it should be. This game also has to evolve with what is demanded today and a casual gamer market is what is demanded. Finding the balance for both demographics is on the devs, and they know that's what we want especially with most of us being FFXI players. It's going to take time and even WoW had to struggle to get to where it is today. FFXIV having some familiarity from other MMO's, WoW most notably, isn't a bad thing.