Let’s just say Square-Enix had a rough time getting Final Fantasy XIV to work. I personally have never played it, but reports state that the game was paralyzed by an Uninuitive User Interface, had bugs, and had a shoddy combat mechanic.

Naoki Yoshida, the new game director for Final Fantasy XIV: Realm Reborn, knows that the game shouldn’t have even gone on sale, especially since a majority of beta testers were not happy with it.

Yoshida states that he feels the team only focused on making something different than FF XI and did not look elsewhere for inspiration. Perhaps spending time playing the World leader in MMO’s, World of Warcraft, might have helped.

“I think it would’ve been good if they tried seeing what happened if they turned World of Warcraft into Final Fantasy. So, because they tried only to make something that was ‘different from FFXI,’ they ended up with not much of anything. Unless you are a genius, you cannot make something completely out of nothing.”

Yoshida then makes a very critical statement about what another epic catastrophe might do to the company.

“We won’t make a mistake like FFXIV again…If we did, it would be like at the level of destroying the company.”

I’m sure those who did play are in total agreement with Yoshida’s statements.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is scheduled to ship sometime in 2013, with the PS3 version to release within the same timespan as the PC version.