FFXIV: A Realm Reborn interview: “We took our fanbase for granted. We lacked the knowledge of other titles. We didn’t have the passion.” g21

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is a complete overhaul of Square Enix's much maligned MMO, FFXIV – and, by crikey, it needed it. No one is more convinced of this than A Realm Reborn game director Naoki Yoshida, who we've conveniently just interviewed using a box which captures changes in light and sound across time, as you will see after the jump. He doesn't pull his punches: "We took our fanbase for granted," he says. "We lacked the knowledge of the global standard for MMOs, the knowledge of other titles. We didn't have the heart, the spirit or the passion to challenge the market." Oof. He then goes on to check off a list of the game's gigantic errors – an unpalatable progress structure, inadequate server architecture, a woeful interface – none of which, we can presume, Square Enix will be making in its ground-up renovation. Certainly, Yoshida knows his MMO onions – he's played pretty much all of them, is currently smacked up on Guild Wars 2 and harbours a long-time love of Dark Ages of Camelot's PvP. These are good things by which to be inspired and it all suggests that A Realm Reborn is definitely not to be written off.

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