The developers of World of Warcraft have sought inspiration from Final Fantasy XIV. Now the FF chief says: We’re doing that too.
The big MMORPGs all look at each other. If a feature is good in one game, it usually doesn’t take long for other representatives of the genre to adopt it. But few developers are as open about this as Final Fantasy 14 and World of Warcraft. They like to “inspire” each other. Something that at least Naoki Yoshida openly admits.
What was “stolen” from Final Fantasy 14? When the developers of World of Warcraft first spoke extensively about housing, they also openly mentioned which other games they sought inspiration from. They looked at other MMORPGs and how they implemented their housing. In this context, WildStar was mentioned, but also Final Fantasy XIV.
What does the chief of Final Fantasy XIV say? During a conference at the Fan Fest, Naoki Yoshida spoke about housing in Final Fantasy and also about World of Warcraft. When asked whether they wanted to revise the system in FF14, he said (Gamer Escape):
The question you’ve really been wanting to ask is, well: World of Warcraft has its own fantastic housing system. How about FFXIV? […]
I’m sure all these journalists and content creators who have accompanied us throughout this journey – I believe you know that we have immense respect for the World of Warcraft team. When we saw that the WoW team announced an expansion with the new housing system and they said they specifically looked at FFXIV for what could be adopted and where they could surpass us, I believe that just hearing that was already a pretty big honor for us.
But this honor shouldn’t stop there. Because they have taken a closer look at the housing from the competition and found a lot of praise.
Of course, I also took a look at the housing system in WoW myself and I really liked it. It’s fantastic. We always love to take on new challenges, and when I tried WoW’s housing this time, I really thought it was fantastic. That was a good source for research. I can’t say exactly when it will happen, but for the patches of the 8.X series, we are planning two major revisions for housing.
What does this mean for Final Fantasy 14? Concrete information on how the revision will look is of course not yet available. This is usually announced later, when the release of the corresponding patches is closer. However, if you look at the major differences between WoW’s housing and FFXIV’s, some obvious steps can at least be inferred. This could be, for example, the lottery system or the horrendous costs associated with buying a house in the game. In WoW, everyone receives a house for free – making it easy to enter the system.
Cortyn says: I believe that the development of MMORPGs should proceed in exactly this way. Of course, Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft are competitors. But the fact that both sides admit to having taken inspiration from each other and then refining those systems is a nice thing – and one that primarily benefits players, as there is no stagnation. It will be exciting to see how FF14 revises and improves its housing and also what conclusions the developers at Blizzard will draw from it. Because they are also working hard on new features so that soon you can have up to 100 pets in your house.
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