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FFXIV ARR, another WoW clone
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I remember reading an article in a magazine years ago when wow was first announced that the developers were inspired by the fact that they loved EQ, but they were tired of waiting so long for content updates, and they thought the grind turned away a lot of potential players.
The same article announced the rested experience points system.
I groaned, said oh no they are just catering to the casual gamers, this wont' be good for the mmo community.
Here we are years later.
Point of this story is yes, wow WAS directly inspired by EQ, to the point which you could call it an EQ clone at its core and at its launch it was hyped as the evolution of EQ.
I don't know why you are still talking about how this is a WoW clone after everything you've seen. Is it the exclaimation points above an NPC's head that makes you think "wow clone"? You never justify your statement except with what you think is damning evidence of Yoshi saying they were inspired by WoW.
FFXI was inspired by EQ. We see how different it turned out from WoW.
Two games, WoW and FFXI. The same game inspires both, yet they are extremely different. This is just one example of why you are crying wolf.
With the original FFXIV, they tried to change everything they could from the current themepark model, and they failed miserably. When the new game director stepped in and did a lot of surveys about what people wanted in the game, it turned out that the majority of people who took the surveys WANTED more WoW-like features to be added, or to replace the current systems in place.
FFXIV ARR is going to be the sum of those surveys and player feedback with some much improved graphics, animations, combat, and, hopefully, story, as well.
It's what the players wanted, and it's what the players are getting.
The ONLY WoW-esque features I would be happy to see is a more fluid control/combat scheme, with jumping (confirmed!) and NOT menu-based activation. Yes, Final Fantasy is known for menus, and it works great for offline single player games. But for an MMO, it's annoying. I love(d) FFXI, but you simply had to macro every ability/command to be effeceint.
When you say that both FFXI and WoW were inspired by Everquest you are capturing my point nicely. Neither WoW or FFXI were Everquest clones. Both games were influnced by Everquest but were not clones of Everquest. Most games since WoW have been clones.
How can you call WoW an Everquest clone? Can anyone actually explain that?
The exclamation points above NPC heads is just indicative of something greater. The worlds are not worlds anymore. There is nothing to figure out, no actual reason to group (plenty of motives, ie treasure) or form communities, etc. Also, these themes have ran throughout every MMO since WoW. Before WoW things were much more heterogenous. I really don't want to turn this into a "what's wrong with the current state of MMOs thread." There are already lots of those and I have posted in those. The point is that FFXIV ARR is not going to be any different. Yoshi has stated that.
Multiple games could claim to be influenced by Everquest and be totally different. Now every game, whether it says it is a "Wow killer" or "has been influenced by WoW," is almost a clone of WoW.
Are you serious? The person who directed FFXIV 1.0 said he was using WoW as his model os success. I have mentioned, like 5 other times, how similar FFXIV 1.0 is to WoW. Can you name some differences? Expain yourself a little?
Where does it say that FFXIV was trying to be entirely original? Not a single person complained about FFXIV 1.0 graphics or animations. Guess what the current director is always talking about concerning ARR? Graphics and animations.........
I read stuff like this, and I want to crawl in a hole and die. Aviggin, just because a game fails does not mean that it was trying to be original.....
They got seriously distracted if they ever said they were following the WoW model.
They opted for a EQ style Bazaar instead of a traditional auction house
It's quests were largely based on the somewhat random leve system and behests
I don't believe dungeons were instanced until later when the new guy took charge
Combat revlolved around buliding TP or a non-recharging mana pool
The UI was in no way similar to what most games go with these days.
The class system was more freeform.
They were using some dated ideas you could trace back to a few oldie games, but certainly not WoW's.
the main point i think is that, mmorpg players DONT NEED another wow clone we have enough already.
if u are going to take ideas , take it from FFXI (pre abyssea) , what awesome experience , i miss it everyday.
i wanted FFXIV to be an improved FFXI (more instanced endgame 4 example ,thats a good idea ) , quest based for solo players , but good exp por partys too .
Let's see... crafting was unique, guildleves were the quests, and they were quick and time limited, as well as limited in the amount you could do daily (quests similar to WoW not having been available at launch) and, the way the story was presented is much different than WoW, skills were your main progression at first and levels weren't as big of a deal, until they flipped it later down the road, skill xp was given during the fights rather than after them, and they were never guaranteed from every monster...
No auction house or anything at first, and when something was added, they opted for a system where you had an NPC sitting in rooms with a bunch of other NPC's and you basically just wandrered through and checked each one individually to see if they had an item you wanted, and if your NPC was there, you just had to hope someone wandered by, checked your guy and saw somethign they wanted.
The progression wasn't quite as linear as WoW, and sometimes you'd just wander off into zones near where you were questing and run into stuff you couldn't even come close to handling, and even in places in the zone you WERE questing, there was incredibly tough monsters randomly strewn about that you couldn't kill yourself generally.
This is how the game was at launch. There was also not a TON of content, and it was mostly based on grind, which the amount of xp you could grind was also limited weekly I believe... maybe daily.
So there ya go. There's likely more, but I can't think of everything right now.
The class system and leve quests were unique. The leve system was not fun at all. It can't be traced back to earlier games. A freeform class system can't be traced back to any earlier games either. I'm a fan of multiple classes for one character because it makes that characters more permanent. If you don't have permanence you can't have a community.
All of the major missions and quests were always instanced at some point, for a fight or NPC or something. I can't think of a single world monster that was epic. Older games had world monsters. I was a white mage and my mana would always replenish within a minute after a fight. The TP was kind of unique. Other games have timers. I can't remember the original interface. Now it is very similar to other games.
The crafting was different. I liked it
Because it hasn't worked for any other game in the last 8 years?
WoW isn't a very good game, or its clones would be doing well, wouldn't they? WoW is an outlier.
People want originality. XIV had it, but it wasn't finished. It was still far more interesting than a WoW clone. Instead of fixing their design issues, they just cloned WoW, which is a one way ticket to failure.
As well as a short ladder to the top, lots of solo play, lots of instances, every class bring a hybrid, beind led by the nose from point to point, no world monsters, end game focuse, etc.
Most of that IS in games post WoW.
The only hybrid class in FFXI, pre WoW influence, was Red Mage. FFXI was as much about the journey as the endgame. There was content to do along the way. The Chains of Promathia Expansion pack required mad grouping, story, and hard ass fights to do as you leveled up.
While the implementation was awful, the EQ1 style auction house is 100x more negaging than the WoW style auction house. A good search function is needed but window shoping in the old Luclin Bazaar was a blast
Lets clear this up.
When Yoshi talks about looking to WoW he means that ARR will have the same quality of life, UI, basic world layout, controls and polish that is the standard in fantasy thempark mmorpgs. Even if you intend to do something very different from WoW you still need to be aware of the standard to know what most people are used to, even if it’s something as basic as inventory system, so you don’t re-invent the wheel unnecessary.
Tanaka and his crew where operating in a vacuum, with no idea what the rest of the world had been playing or what devs had been building upon. This isn’t about WoW clones; this is about standards of convenience that FFXIV lacked completely, and for no good reason. It wasn’t a bold new experiment; it was a mess, due to ignorance. The UI had so many awkward and redundant elements, and combat so many stages, the map, NPCs, crafting so convoluted and unhelpful. What few original ideas FFXIV had was lost in the obtuse design, not to mention the technical incompetence.
The mmo world, from Rift's server tech and dynamics, to audio NPC info dumps in DCUO, to the action combat in TERA, to open world and pvp in GW2 and story presentation in SWTOR all have something that Squenix can learn from. Only once they know what other ideas have been tried, what has failed and what has worked can they build upon that with something new. If you look at their latest production diaries they are starting to include ideas I have never seen in an MMO, such as boss drops and class gear for you mount.
People who worry about a WoW clone fail to appreciate just how out of touch the FFXIV devs where for so long, they need to catch up, even if it means sometimes making the same mistakes others have made.
I just don't want to run around killing everything in site while I'm spamming buttons. I don't want to run from map marker to map marker. I don't want to solo to max level so that "the game can start" and I can participate in raids. I have no desire to be max level within a few months of playing. I have no desire to do instanced dungeons. If I wanted to play a game with 6 other people I would play Starcraft or Diablo. If it isn't challenging I don't want to play it. FFXIV 1.0 was most of what I just mentioned. WoW was also this. Sorry about my babbling
Reading threw the thread again there seems to be some confusion as to the order of events.
Tanaka was in charge of FFXIV 1.0 from the start until he was booted off a few months after launch. He and his crew knew of WoW only as a rival, the suits upstairs insisted FFXIV launch before it was ready to beat Cata’s release. (Though the premature release wouldn’t have helped with all the other deeper problems).
Tanaka and Co. Made FFXIV according to what their own ideas as to what would be convenient for them to manage, resulting in stiff penalisations and limitations for players. Tanaka didn’t include many elements from FFXI, or any other game. I’ve played most of his previous projects for Square, none are has badly designed. FFXIV didn’t just lack basic features from WoW, but from just about every rpg or MMO of the last 10-20 yrs. Different but often in a very bad way was the FFXIV experience.
Yoshida took over with his new team and took a great deal of advice and criticism from players from Japan and the West, and found among other things that most were used to certain basics. We didn’t want a WoW clone, or even a total FFXI clone, just an mmo that innovated where it needed to, and didn’t either try new ideas without testing them, or use old ideas that the mmo player and developer community had moved on from.
It is not being derivative to learn from hundreds of other studios and millions of cases of trial and error.
Fare enough, if you could get through the bad design in 1.0 (which was a challenge in itself) I guess there was un-inspired game play, but not due to looking at WoW, just a lack of imagination, (and content). There were more group and crafting focused elements (although very badly done), and open world NMs than WoW had, not to mention story, if the lack of audio didn’t bug you. I can see why instances would be an easier solution. But that was for 1.0, Yoshi was only able to add things on a system he intended to scrap. Only with ARR will we see if he can pull-off good open world, besides given the single player origins, FF does kind of lend itself to instanced dungeons. I also object to any comparison of the guild leaves to WoW style quest hubs, those leaves struck me as a massive step back from even WoW's design.
It sounds like you have a very specialized set of requirements, what mmos out now would you say fill them?
The same person, Komoto, directed FFXI and FFXIV. He played Everquest. How did the game lack basic features of MMORPGs from the last 10-20 years? FFXIV was badly designed. I don't think anyone will dispute that. What are you speaking of when you say "stiff penalisations and limitations?" The point of the thread was how much FFXIV ARR will be like WoW. Yoshida also wrote off the opinions of everyone who played FFXI and FFXIV 1.0. I cna only guess where he is getting his criticisms from.
I never said guild leves were comparable to WoW style quest hubs..........
I know 1.0 was badly designed, everyone knows this. I hated 1.0. FFXIV 1.0 had no more group conent than WoW. None whatsoever. You can solo to max level. I never once encountered a world NM in 1.0. I only played to level 35 (I think). The story was terrible in WoW (look at the introduction movie). I don't see how instanced dungeons are related to Final Fantasy or any MMO. They are for people who want to play with 5 or 6 other people and come back to a massive economy or massive PVP.
The number of games released in the past 10 years that interest me is 0.
The original team said they were using WoW as their model of success. They can admit whatever they want after the fact, it doesn't matter. I don't care anything about FFXIV 1.0. What it lacked, penalties, community, are of no concern.
The entire point of this thread was to address ARR and its relationship to WoW. I don't see much concering that.
I can't read this all and you called FFXIV a sandbox game. I'm getting really tired of pointing things out. I can't do this anymore. This thread was not about FFXIV 1.0. I do not care about it. I'm not talking abiut it anymore.
OK not sure what people mean by WoW clone pure copy of wow?
Ican understand people borrow stuff from eachother in the mmo world but hey so long its working who cares.
But hey wow is still alive and kicking even if its stone age game.
Every mmo has idea from games around. We can take Rift, swtor, even GW2 was blamed for wow clone..
Still people enjoy playing it.
People still like old fashion idea but still something new FFXIV was trying to make something more unique but 1.0 dident work.
Now 2.0 under Yoshi P i believe this game gona be a hit.. Even if its gona be similar Wow but with 100 times better graphic and gameplay.
Atlest i will playing this even if its wow clone who cares about wow haters noone does...