3 Reasons Why FFXIV is Positioned as a Serious WoW Rival

In an interview with Develop, Yoichi Wada, Square Enix president, revealed that they are positioning Final Fantasy XIV as a serious rival to Blizzard's World of Warcraft series.

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Titled as WoW rivals, MMOs like Age of Conan and Aion all have awesome gameplay elements. However, that's not enough. The reason for WoW's success is complex. WoW has a strong background – the worldwide successful Warcraft series. WoW can nearly feed every player's need, no matter hardcore players or newbies can find their positions in game. Its graphic, although not the best today, was absolutely an evolution at that time. It sublimed the teamwork which also formed its good community in game. To compete with WoW, one or two special gameplay elements are far from enough.

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Wada also knew "WoW is a tough competitor". "whether you are talking about EverQuest, Ultima or Lineage there has never been a company that has a continuously successful number one and two MMO." he said to Develop.

Final Fantasy XIV will be released on PC and PS3. Player source will compose FFXIV's basement.

"We believe there is a number of people that will stay attached to each title, but we are optimistic in that sense for Final Fantasy," Wada pointed out their second weapon – brand power.

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What's more, Square Enix has learnt fertile experiments from Final Fantasy XI. Wada expressed that they learnt from FFXI that there are a lot of people who want item transaction model, so they would like to introduce more pay-as-you-use items into the game. There were too few items in FFXI, however, they don't want to take it to the other extreme entirely for FFXIV.

Wada also added that unlike FFXI, which was based on parties and playing in group resulted that players couldn't play alone, FFXIV will have a much easier game play mode.

No matter FFXIV will defeat WoW or not, anticipating a new MMORPG with good quality is always exciting.

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Opposite to Wada's optimistic view of Final Fantasy, BioWare co-founder - Zeschuk said: " fall of the JRPG in large part is due to a lack of evolution, a lack of progression". (to learn more from here.)