Yoshida Talks the Problem with Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV has been getting a lot of attention since it closed its doors in preparation for A Realm Reborn. Naoki Yoshida, the mind behind ARR, seems to know exactly what went wrong with the game and wants to make sure its relaunch doesn’t suffer from the same problems.

Speaking with Kotaku, he shares some insight into where and why Final Fantasy XIV went wrong and his dedication to fixing the game with A Realm Reborn.

Where FFXIV went wrong

Yoshida claims that the initial goal of FFXIV was to make it different from Final Fantasy XI with no regard to the fact that MMORPGs had changed quite a bit since FFXI.

“I think it would’ve been good if they tried seeing what happened if they turned World of Warcraft into Final Fantasy,” said Yoshida, “So, because they tried only to make something that was ‘different from FFXI,’ they ended up with not much of anything.”

He then goes on to say they should have told the team to play World of Warcraft for a year for inspiration. The Final Fantasy XI team played Everquest for a year to get a feel for the genre.

Will he be able to do it?

Yoshida seems confident in his team’s ability to bring Final Fantasy XIV up to global MMO standards, but is worried about the time it’s going to take to revamp the game. “We won’t make a mistake like FFXIV again,” he said, “if we did, it would be like at the level of destroying the company.”

He has a lot of work ahead of him, but Naoki Yoshida seems to be on the right track in making Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn the game players expected from the start and more.

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Check out all of the meaty bits of the talk with Yoshida over at Kotaku.