Originally Posted by
Destinye
I think some people want to believe this so badly because they really can't fathom the idea that some people have legit praise for FFXI/its design and the good points of it otherwise. For example people love to say "well XI was your first MMO!" even though for me personally my first MMO was actually back during the MUD days, you know, before they became what MMOs are today. XI was essentially how you should actually handle a clone.
You can tell it was inspired by EQ, but it wasn't a half-assed EQ clone nor did it clone it to the letter, it took the basis and slapped on FF properties (properly) - whereas supposedly Yoshida had the team play WoW for a year and when it came time for production....didn't even half-ass it, it was just a ...weird clone without a lot of the good features that even made WoW good. Either they played a old school WoW emulator/private server or they simply chose to copy the "older" style WoW.
In the end though, Wada (biggest reason for 1.0's failure though people place 100% of the blame of the game who still had to answer to his bosses) learned a lesson and the main suits in SE won't interfere with a lot of directors anymore, which even Tabata mentioned during XV's reworking, so 1.0 ended up doing a lot of good for SE as well. It's no secret SE has a weird way of dong some things but being ran by and invested in by extremely old fashioned people really does show when it comes to some projects. I mean, you don't hear people swearing on Sakaguchi's name and calling him a colossal failure because of Spirit's Within when you know he could and has done so much better..however I bet people still think he "quit" on his own accord.
Yep, Yoshida even said 2.0 they played it safe and will take risks/do more in HW...never happened unless you called making instanced Hunts a risk. Storblood is offering the same promises Heavensward offered, so we'll definitely see if 4.0 is different from 2.0 again. I mean their failsafe is "more inventory" which you know will require having SB registered to your account similar to you can only hit 60 if HW is registered to your account.