FF14 devs just keep doing your thing because my god

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Originally Posted by MPK

Sounds like to me that people who like FFXIV more are people who want the easier game.

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Not really but it is dramatically clear that one design philosophy based around not upsetting things that work is definitely the way to go. The sheer amount of systems that WoW devs have embraced have cost a significant amount of dev time fixing those systems.

It draws out their content patch cycles to an extreme degree and also causes a lot of player frustration as they have to wait for those systems to be fixed and when they finally are you find yourself 2 years into an expansion where the cycle literally is about to restart again.

The good thing about the FF14 event and Blizzcon being close together is it was fairly easy to compare the 2 developers side by side and see what their focus was on. I think the FF14 devs are looking around for how they can maybe spice up the game and I hope I speak for a lot of people when I say those systems are not welcome here as they are a money pit of wasted development resources.

Best example would be instead of getting Island Sanctuaries imagine instead we got some type of time sink system that was thrown out with the next expansion. So instead of actual content we get something that is disposable. That is where these two mmo's really vary right now.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

I completely agree with that. To put things into perspective, I tried WoW three times over a couple of years and always left after like a week because I was severely bored. Not my focus. I didn't see any story and the quests felt anaemic. With Guild Wars 2 I stuck like 2 years, but I've been playing XIV since 1.0 closed alpha so SE must be doing something right. lol

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Sounds exactly like me! I gave it a week (actually probably less). I didn't like it. I also didn't have that nostalgia of playing it since my childhood like many have. I went in both FFXIV, and WoW without any true bias. Well, I shouldn't say that, I played FFXIV before I played WoW. FFXIV simply was, and is, the better game.

As for story in WoW, I honestly can't tell you what was even happening. It felt.. disjointed. I had pretty much no clue what was going on, the few dungeons I did do, I again had no clue what was going on - also they sucked, they weren't fun. There was no real sense of an overarching plot, while leveling. It's probably why most of my time was spent in lowbie PvP queue. There was no real sense of direction, not only was I overwhelmed, I was bored.

FFXIV does it all for me - EXCEPT PvP. I like the story, characters, villains, the game play, glamour, and the list goes on.. Despite many of my arguments on these forums, I actually personally liked ARR - this was before the cuts. Maybe, it's because I have never really done high end PvE (in any game), that a lot of what all's going on there, that it doesn't effect my personal opinion on the game. If I had my way, and SE acutally put some time and effort making PvP fun, I would sit all day and just queue for PvP, and glamour!

I should say, I'd love to do open world PvP. When available in EVERY single mmorpg I've tried, I always play on PvP servers, but apparently nobody does that anymore. People can say what they want about PvErs, but PvPers are the REAL dying breed, and are the ones who MOST get left behind!

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Originally Posted by Penthea

The only way they can feel good about themselves is to let everyone know that they enjoy high end content. As if it's somehow special.

And that sort of attitude is among the list of things that made me leave WoW. Lots of lovely people there but too many divas who are more interested in looking good than anything else. I rarely have to deal with them in FFXIV by comparison and that's nice.

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And as a person who has played WoW for many years I can confirm this attitude has only gotten worse, actually has become way worse in the latest expansion because it has become crystal clear that they removed all rewards from casual content so their elite high end tryhard class doesnt feel "forced" to actually play the rest of the game.

When the devs repeatedly focus on high end content and try to push it down everyone's throat because it is the only play to get gear progression/actually cool rewards it attracts more and more unhealthy gamers who like telling themselves they are some great person for beating scripted content with a group of 19 similar people whose self worth depends on the ingame prestige blizzard gives to high end players. (Which is ironic due to how badly balanced the game is, if you put 20 people who play fotm to beat most mythic bosses the challenge becomes a cakewalk which is why you see world first raid bosses dropping down like flies bar the last 2-3, the skill required to beat with a more balanced and fun comb is far higher but these people dont care about challenge, they care about beating a boss for prestige because their ego depends on it which is why you see them obsess over fotm/stacking broken specs and classes and metaslaving like crazy)

Not only that but because they refuse to balance their game frequently, said players know that they will get away by rerolling to most broken fotm meta class/covenant/legendary/build since blizzard wont nerf it for months which makes these people try to push their metaslave mentality on everyone else and we are talking "everyone else", not only on high end (Mythic guild players are expected to metaslave) which has lead to a community that whines about what other people play in group content.

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Originally Posted by SavishSalacious

Wow is for boomers

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Considering the average age of WoW players this wouldnt be so innacurate xD

Some people have sadly been addicted heavily because of the manipulative design of non stop exclusive/time limited rewards and removed content, they ve been taught that if they ever miss a patch or xpac they will forever lose all those rewards that make you feel special, and sadly many WoW players have their self esteem connected to said rewards which is why you see a huge outburst every a new player asks to bring back some previous time limited/exclusive appearance simply because they like the appearance.

They are an extremely unhealthy community.

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Originally Posted by MPK

Sounds like to me that people who like FFXIV more are people who want the easier game.

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So for people who are unfamiliar with WoW, this is the background.

For a long time now Blizzard has been focusing on making the game accessible to casual players while also making the game extremely challenging for endgame raiders. Because of this what they decided to do was reduce the button count (in BFA my warrior hotbar, before borrowed power, maybe filled one and a half hotbars ... maybe) and make overworld content really easy (except for perhaps Nazjatar but everybody hated Nazjatar so maybe that says something about the playerbase.)

There has been push back against the button "pruning" to the extent that Blizzard has chucked back a few useless abilities to the public to expand button count without actually expanding button count.

But the way Blizzard balances this for raids is to make the encounters extremely challenging. So your rotation is actually simple, it's a simple priority list that isn't very long because small button count, but the mythic encounters themselves are incredibly difficult.

The hard content in WoW is really, really difficult.

But when people say that WoW is the harder game, unless they're talking about mythic content (raids and dungeons), they either don't know what they're talking about or are just trolling. Because the casual content in WoW is extremely simple, too simple honestly.

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Originally Posted by Rae88

S

But when people say that WoW is the harder game, unless they're talking about mythic content (raids and dungeons), they either don't know what they're talking about or are just trolling. Because the casual content in WoW is extremely simple, too simple honestly.

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MPK is a known troll

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

MPK is a known troll

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I know, and it's stupid. Like, none of these companies have enough of a budget to make a game that's amazing in every regard. WoW has an amazing endgame grind system and mythic dungeons and raids which take days, yes, but they have no housing, their gathering and crafting systems are a joke, their overworld and leveling content are terrible, and there's very little variety in their transmog. Blizzard spends all their budget tearing down their endgame systems and rebuilding it every expansion. FFXIV is similar to WoW but with much more of a focus on everything Blizzard ignores and less of a focus on endgame. I mean, these two games compliment each other really well, you can swap between the two quite easily. But FFXIV will never have the mythic dungeons or WoW, and WoW will never have the content FFXIV focuses on.

And I'm perfectly at peace with that :)

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Originally Posted by MPK

Sounds like to me that people who like FFXIV more are people who want the easier game.

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Sounds to me like you don't understand why most people play games.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Sounds to me like you don't understand why most people play games.

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Very true but it would depend on what kind of people one surrounds themselves with.

Coming from WoW where many player's egos depend on clearing high end content as soon and as fast as possible for prestige that kind of attitude is sadly the accepted norm. (No matter how much they might trivialize the challenge by stacking the most broken combs and specs)

That is why that community is so terrible over there, a huge % of them have forgotten it is a VIDEO GAME and not their main source of self worth.

People play wow because they’re addicted to it . It’s ugly, dated, and was actually never that great to begin with, but had a lot of addictive elements and a lot of people got sucked into it.

They since removed those elements which has upset them, yet they still play because it’s pretty much their life and they don’t know what else to do. It’s a 3/10 in 2021.

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Originally Posted by Vickii

was actually never that great to begin with

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To each their own I guess. 12 million active subs at its peak says otherwise though!

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

A lot of the WoW hate is just resentment. For many people, WoW used to be a brilliant game. I personally enjoyed it and spend countless hours there which I don't regret. However over time they removed or ruined a significant number of things that people liked, to the point that millions who enjoyed the game finally had enough and had to move elsewhere.

People are just angry at the devs for wrecking something they loved. That's why they take satisfaction at seeing Blizzard struggle, wish for them to do badly or ramble on about how FF14 is superior. Secretly I imagine a good number of players would actually prefer to be playing WoW right now, just a version where all the old things they enjoyed and praised the game for still existed and were built on. Classic barely scratched that itch, as good as it might be, it's outdated content that's been seen and done and new story, zones, classes, ect keep things exciting. I love FF14 but in all honesty if WoW was as good as it has been in the past, I wouldn't be here.

The anger mindset is very unhealthy though. It's that abusive relationship syndrome, where even after you've moved past it, you cling to that resentment. WoW isn't going to die or the devs "learn their lesson" anytime soon, nor is it likely to improve when the old team is long gone. They'll probably have millions of subscribers for years to come. It's just how it is. Best to just look back at the good times and memories and look forward to more to come in FF14 or other MMO's.

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This is generally my feeling, and it's true. People will sour to things that they feel have wronged them and I have seen and experienced a level of schadenfreude directed at Blizzard (particularly when it comes to quality assurance, which sometimes >>feels<< completely absent from WoW). Overtime though, I let it go. I understand that devs aren't static, people retire or move on, and from there an enduring franchise will continue and evolve. But just as it changes, a player's interest will change with it. For me, personally, my interests no longer align enough with what WoW is continuing with to keep being subbed.

I still keep up with WoW news to see if there's anything to look forward to enough for me to return. Since BfA there hasn't been. I had in the past unsubbed between expansions from burnout, but the big tipping point for me was the continuation of Titanforging and the return of ham-fisted faction conflict as the main plot driver. On the side of gearing, I was generally pretty lucky, but I still didn't like Titanforging as a concept. For story, the cold war style faction conflict in vanilla and it being an undercurrent in WotLK was fine, but I didn't fancy it in MoP and BfA seemed forced. The way it got narratively pushed in BfA with weird characterizations of different notable NPCs, and a strange plot retread that made it feel like MoP 2 Electric Boogaloo, on top of the recurring burnout on the established systems made it an easy pass for me.

SL seemed like things have since improved, but it didn't spark any interest in me. Continued issues regarding class balance and responses to reported bugs/concerns on PTR and beta are relatively the same as I have experienced before, which is to say not fantastic. Story beats were, well, WoW was never going to win accolades on narrative anyway. Ironically, my mainspec was doing quite well (though my off-spec appears to be doing mediocre at best), but raiding itself isn't enough justification for me to return. For now, I'll continue to reminisce about the bygone days of my WoW career, and keep being entertained by the likes of Rextroy.

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Originally Posted by MPK

Sounds like to me that people who like FFXIV more are people who want the easier game.

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Not quite.
They're actually here for the (e)RP and social scenes.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

To each their own I guess. 12 million active subs at its peak says otherwise though!

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Keep in mind that it's a peak that was achieved with not much competition, and I don't just mean other MMOs. Classic in modern time, for example, only managed to double (or more than double depending on what you read) subscriber count during BfA. That means that Classic is only a little bit more if not as popular as BfA.

With that said, they've finally announced TBC Classic. So I'm waiting for WotLK Classic and specifically the phase where dungeon finder is available since I have no interest in playing WoW without dungeon finder.

As for retail WoW in general, I think playing both WoW and FFXIV as a casual is really great. A lot of problems that some people seem to have with either or both games just don't affect me, though I do have my own problems with both games, but certainly not as big as some others seem to have.

i dont like the current wow and has been stop playing after legion.

their principle just make me shake my head, ever since legion expansion they have this almost endless grind when you reach max level, they said its a new feature so people can enjoy the game and so on. then they introduce so many kind of "tokens", this token for this reward that token for that reward this token to get THAT token and so on

the wow now is basically demand you to pour your time and commitment if you want to stay "relevant" to the game. the whole "system" is just the game way to tell you to keep subbing

Wow during burning crusade and early wrath before duty finder was it's finest it's ever been imo. But retail wow is fun too in it's own way. Not as fun but still fun.

14 and current wow both have their own issues and they're both good in their own ways. They could both use less pride from development side though. I do think 14's issues are less obvious though to players unless you're a current player who plays patches as they're released.

I've always had mixed feelings for WoW. I've tried getting into the game 3 times by now, but it never really worked out.
The first time that I actually booted up the game was at the start of TBC, but I was young, got to around level 10ish and was just bored and lost (and my English wasn't great either back then), so I don't count that one but it is where I started.

The first time I gave it an honest try was during Legion. I started mid-expansion with some friends, decided to boost a character as I couldn't get through the level grind to save my own life. I did enjoy the Legion storyline even though I only understood about 25% of it. But all the dailies and grinds didn't really hook me so I noped out after a month.

Then the next try would be BfA, which I've done in two phases: The first part as a Dwarven Shaman, and the last part as a Vulpera Shaman when they got released. I again, enjoyed the first story bit but I hated the Horde story in the later arcs of the expansion. Despite surviving the grind for Vulpera I was pretty burned out afterwards, but I decided to stick around for a bit and try some more high-end content. So I managed to do a few Mythic+ dungeons and I actually enjoyed doing them. But it wasn't enough to keep me hooked and so I bailed out again.

My most recent attempt would be SL, where I was actually there on day 1 of the expansion. I again, enjoyed the overall story. Some zones were really hit-or-miss for me and others I really, really loved. And despite the grind not feeling that forced in SL it just didn't keep me hooked either. Played it for 2 weeks and I just didn't feel... Rewarded? My biggest concern was actually getting gear. It was really tedious to get gear (for me) to even try and attempt Heroic dungeons, let alone Mythics. Oh, and being yelled at for not knowing a new dungeon's mechanics day 1 was also a thing and didn't sit well with me. All in all, I loved the "single-player" time of SL, not so much what came afterwards.

I'd say that my biggest gripe with WoW is the community/mentallity. Not saying they're all bad, not at all! But as a whole I felt like no matter what you did, unless you brought x spec with y traits and z gear you'd get laughed at, yelled at or just get scolded. I've had to endure multiple people berating me for playing Arcane Mage throughout multiple expansions. I love it because it kinda reminds me of XIV's Black Mage, and it fills that niche for me. Another thing that always bugged me was that you needed (example) ilvl 100 to enter a party for a certain type of content. Said content dropped ilvl 90 gear. How was I supposed to get to ilvl 100 if it was locked by the community to 10 ilvls above it? Joined mutiple guilds where I would be rejected from doing x content with them for not having high enough ilvl (even though on average I would have been fine for said content), but their friends having an even lower ilvl than I had were more than welcome to tag along. Sadly this was not an one-and-done kinda deal, it happened in multiple guilds.

All in all, I just felt I wasn't welcome and that drove me away in the end. I do believe there are plenty of people willing to help new players in WoW, but I feel (and I hope I am wrong) the majority doesn't care. I have a lot of friends who play WoW and tried getting me back in the game, but when it gets to it even they'd drop me in a heartbeat to do their end-game raids.

I don't think WoW is a bad game. I think it can be fun and there is an appeal if you like what content they bring. I for one know that I love their Mythic+ dungeons. However I feel it's the overall community not really helping the newer players and/or pushing them away even, that hurts the game the most. In XIV it's the total opposite. If you need help, you can shout in the City States, put up a PF for it or just ask a few random people and more likely than not you'll find someone willing to help you, and most of the time just because they can or want to help newer people.

So, no I don't think either game is better than the other. I am just biased because one community has helped me out and the other let me drop off a cliff. That doesn't mean that I won't try WoW again when their new expansion will eventually hit. I'll probably give it a shot and see what the new story is. But I just don't think I will even get hooked to the game because... The lure is being eaten by other people rapidly.

Anyway, that's my two cents and a bit of a rant.

I just returned to FFXIV since I really love the FF world here. I still love shadowlands though. Both game have pros and cons

For me the biggest cons of FFXIV is its website, forums and account management service UI. It is so archaic that it can turn new players off by being frustrated in navigating it just to create an account etc. Overall though FFXIV in the game is awesome, except for pvp and again certain UI, it has awesome characters visuals stories and animations.

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Originally Posted by Ralph2449

Very true but it would depend on what kind of people one surrounds themselves with.

Coming from WoW where many player's egos depend on clearing high end content as soon and as fast as possible for prestige that kind of attitude is sadly the accepted norm. (No matter how much they might trivialize the challenge by stacking the most broken combs and specs)

That is why that community is so terrible over there, a huge % of them have forgotten it is a VIDEO GAME and not their main source of self worth.

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This is a design decision that the game director actively makes to have professions be next to useless, content outside of raiding be useless and have incredibly strange ways of allowing casuals to progress. You do not see this in FF14 because on day 1 of the new patch you could get 510 ilvl penta melded crafted gear, on day 1 tokens for 510 gear, in a few weeks of not going near a raid get 520 gear doing dailies and if you wanted to push 530 gear then do the Savage tier.

The main difference between the two games is you can take a day off and go at a casual pace to get geared without some huge grind. The elites still get gear capped on MULTIPLE characters before the casual gets a full 520 set but where is the forum rage that you see on WoW vs FF14 on this issue?

My main fascination with the FF14 dev team is they have not done what every single other dev has done and follow Blizzard blindly into the abyss. The thread is really not hating on WoW but pointing out to the forum mods and whatever dev reads this that I agree with your design philosophy.

There was NEVER a single day playing WoW where I thought of buying a 6 month bundle but in FF14 it is common practice for me to do just that. I don't even think about it because I do not have to fear the FF14 devs going off their meds and radically changing the game from 1 patch to the next much less what they do with an expansion.

What is truly sad about WoW is if you listen to J. Allen Brak it sounds like he truly wants to make an enjoyable experience but continues to let Ion HazExcuses tell him everything is fine and the players are just complaining for the sake of complaining.

I buy the 6 month subscriptions too. There is not even a question about it. Everything is highly consistent and you know exactly how basic things like patch cycles and gearing will work as far into the future as you need to know.

I think for me as I did watch Blizzcon and the WoW Q&A with a friend, we both were rather unimpressed all around about anything related to WoW. Their big announcements had been the first major patch of Shadowlands with an in game cinematic for 9.1 and the most predictable Burning Crusade Classic.

Moving onto their Q&A they really needed to figure out what the heck a push to talk button was because man without it would could just see how...unhappy the Shadowlands team seemed to be and how nonsensical their answers to easy questions were when you hear the BC team laugh a ton at failed answers. After that Q&A I don't think anyone working on Shadowlands is excited about it and that really hurts the product when the people representing it aren't excited. Say what you will about Yoshi P. but the man clearly loves 14 and is almost always happy to share information about it, I do not get the same feeling form Ion Hazzikostas who always seems exhausted talking about the game.

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Originally Posted by Xeronia

Say what you will about Yoshi P. but the man clearly loves 14 and is almost always happy to share information about it, I do not get the same feeling form Ion Hazzikostas who always seems exhausted talking about the game.

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The problem is and it is in direct contradiction to FF14 design philosophy is the focus on new systems. Either their developers are in one hell of a bubble or even they realize they are using more development resources reinventing the wheel then creating content.

That is why the Burning Crusade guys are laughing because all they did was majority carry over Vanilla systems and make actual improvements without changing the game dramatically. FF14 took the TBC formula and ran with and has not see a good reason to change it while making it work for this multi job system.

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Originally Posted by Garet

I just returned to FFXIV since I really love the FF world here. I still love shadowlands though. Both game have pros and cons

For me the biggest cons of FFXIV is its website, forums and account management service UI. It is so archaic that it can turn new players off by being frustrated in navigating it just to create an account etc. Overall though FFXIV in the game is awesome, except for pvp and again certain UI, it has awesome characters visuals stories and animations.

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Blizzard's authenticator is crazy easy to use.... Please look into it SE lol.


On the whole FFXIV vs WoW thing of course I like FFXIV more, that's why I'm here- but I've no desire to make huge sweeping statements on WoW either to prove my enjoyment of FFXIV (some are more specific on what issues or reasons and that's fair and useful, but I feel it's popular here to make a show out of your dislike of wow to look like a better fan, well it's popular to do in general for all hobbies but I don't think it makes for the best feedback). The games often have similarities and could learn from each other (I encourage SE to look not just at WoW but it's a great way to see ideas in action and have others do your research for you- of course do your own too but you can take advantage of others homework lol, learn from history).



An example of something I wish FFXIV tried a bit more of is the roleplay and whimsy items. Like engineer in wow can do so many absolutely awesome things that are not strictly related to battle content. The race and 'jobs' of wow getting loads of flavor skills and passives, not just that but to critters, fires that burn, camps, and more (although for FFXIV I'm not suggesting we get racials, it would be super messy this late in the game). I feel FFXIV doesn't do the flavor / roleplay as well. That stuff is 'fluff' so if someone was like "you can have fluff or good story" you'd of course pick the later, but to me it's really fun fluff that adds to the immersive experience (and with the job system I think is pretty friendly fluff too).

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Originally Posted by Puremallace

This is a design decision that the game director actively makes to have professions be next to useless, content outside of raiding be useless and have incredibly strange ways of allowing casuals to progress. You do not see this in FF14 because on day 1 of the new patch you could get 510 ilvl penta melded crafted gear, on day 1 tokens for 510 gear

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Oh yeah it is clear it is a dev problem, especially after an interview with a pvp dev that left blizzard that revealed their process in many decisions including refusing to balance for months on end which is why I dont believe the problem is simply one dev, they argue and agree together on things so there's a big number of devs who hold the similar mentality of seeing casual content as something "inferior" or simply focusing and protecting their "elite" high end players above all which has the same result really.

The issue with WoW right now is that even if the dev team completely changes from the ground up, the community has degenerated far too much in all levels of play, the amount of tryhards, meta slaves and elitists are everywhere even in low end content, and mythic is even worse because you are expected to be a complete metaslave tryhard, they have completely forgotten what was meant to be play a class or spec for fun or even the challenge of trying to think and figure out how your own comb could deal with a boss' mechanics, all those have been abandoned for their pursuit of prestige and we are talking about guilds that are very very far from World first so it doesnt matter how fast they clear, they wont lose anything other than prestige which sadly their self worth and ego lies on.


The devs nurtured that attitude and unhealthy mentality by repeatedly focusing and pushing high end content at the expense of everything else, by refusing to balance classes leading to broken specs that last and are being abused for 6 months or more, by never really doing much about toxic behavior so their community knows there's no point to even report anything since nothing would happen anyway unless 30 people reported them at the same time.

And when a community is so unhealthy I dont think there's any way to fix it because the way things are now people either accept that mentality or leave which of course makes the game pretty unfriendly to new or casual players. You can always subtly influence a community as a game dev but once you created a monster it is almost impossible to control without extreme measures. (And seeing how they completely dropped the ball on faction balance and let it go out of control I doubt they ll do anything for this)

FF14 has WoW beat in most areas design wise, especially on casual content and the few positives that are left in WoW are completely overshadowed by a terrible community which you cant avoid because they are everywhere, and it gets even worse if you want to do high end content.

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Originally Posted by Ralph2449

Oh yeah it is clear it is a dev problem, especially after an interview with a pvp dev that left blizzard that revealed their process in many decisions including refusing to balance for months on end which is why I dont believe the problem is simply one dev, they argue and agree together on things so there's a big number of devs who hold the similar mentality of seeing casual content as something "inferior" or simply focusing and protecting their "elite" high end players above all which has the same result really.

The issue with WoW right now is that even if the dev team completely changes from the ground up, the community has degenerated far too much in all levels of play, the amount of tryhards, meta slaves and elitists are everywhere even in low end content, and mythic is even worse because you are expected to be a complete metaslave tryhard, they have completely forgotten what was meant to be play a class or spec for fun or even the challenge of trying to think and figure out how your own comb could deal with a boss' mechanics, all those have been abandoned for their pursuit of prestige and we are talking about guilds that are very very far from World first so it doesnt matter how fast they clear, they wont lose anything other than prestige which sadly their self worth and ego lies on.

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I've seen that in too many mmorpgs; Wakfu and Blade and Soul to name just two. The "elite" or high level community grabs the developers by the hand and do everything short of threatening to cater to them only. Any casual player suggests making the majority of the game accessible by normal/casual players and you get chopped to bits before your voice ever reaches the devs. I'm glad YoshiP set a tone from the beginning that he will listen to those of us who value accessibility of content before all else. Difficulty only gets you so far, accessibility gets you a healthy community who believe in you because you believe in them in return. In return those who want harder content are rarely if ever challenged or criticized. Want more difficulty? Go ahead and ask it, you won't see too many casuals berate you for asking for harder content, as long as it's not required for the casual crowd.

So yes, world of warcraft is a decades-long experiment on sadism and masochism. You lose so many years hoping blizzard will ever listen to the casuals, you'll get old as hell waiting on blizzard to stop catering to hardcore streamers. FFXIV is one of the few last standing accessible mmorpgs.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

So yes, world of warcraft is a decades-long experiment on sadism and masochism. You lose so many years hoping blizzard will ever listen to the casuals, you'll get old as hell waiting on blizzard to stop catering to hardcore streamers. FFXIV is one of the few last standing accessible mmorpgs.

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Love your post and agree :) But I think most of the top RPGs these days are really accessible. FFXIV, ESO, and GW2 are all really nice and casual and chill :) I think really only WoW and BDO are pretty elitist, with WoW holding the top raiders attention and endgame PvP in BDO being dominated by pay to win players I think

Having played Wow From Burning Crusade to Cataclysm, the only thing WoW struck me as superior to FFXIV that appealed to me personally was the vast distances of the land. Most classes could not teleport so you really had to travel far to get to places, many zones had inns in villages because you were expected to log out far from a city after a gaming session. You had the hearthstone that could return you to a single location and it had a long cooldown. The FFXIV teleporting network really kills the overworld in many ways in FFXIV for me. Add to that, the zones are arranged for convivence, most of the zones in Shadowbringers can be accessed from Lakeland, it makes the world feel small. But this small thing isn't worth playing WoW for. It amazed me in 2007, but in 2021 I feel it should be standard with all these open-world games being released.

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Originally Posted by Garet

For me the biggest cons of FFXIV is its website, forums and account management service UI. It is so archaic that it can turn new players off by being frustrated in navigating it just to create an account etc.

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While I agree, the truly terrifying thing is that this account management system is a vast improvement on what there used to be with FFXI.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Blizzard's authenticator is crazy easy to use.... Please look into it SE lol.

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I just want them to use standard RFC 4226 (HOTP) or RFC 6238 (TOTP) authentication keys. If they are already (I don't think they are, since the timeout on the OTP seems much longer than the standard), I want them to expose the key generation process so you can use normal HOTP/TOTP auth software. If they don't... I realize it's hard to retrofit given that there are hardware tokens out there they don't want to make obsolete, yes. But it would be so much nicer if people could keep their OTP in Google Authenticator or Authy or 1Password or wherever else they keep all their software authentication keys.

During that Blizzconline mess, i heard/read from some of my WoW friends that their twitter feeds were full of people commenting things like: "Might check out FFXIV now" or: "Final Fantasy XIV is looking like a tasty snack right about now."

I couldn't find those tweets, as Blizzard may have deleted them or they simply got lost/buried, but I'm not surprised at all. I watched Day one and two, and I feel like Blizzard is really misconstruing the wants and desires and just the overall culture of their own fanbase.

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Originally Posted by Ralph2449

Oh yeah it is clear it is a dev problem, especially after an interview with a pvp dev that left blizzard that revealed their process in many decisions including refusing to balance for months on end which is why I dont believe the problem is simply one dev, they argue and agree together on things so there's a big number of devs who hold the similar mentality of seeing casual content as something "inferior" or simply focusing and protecting their "elite" high end players above all which has the same result really.

The issue with WoW right now is that even if the dev team completely changes from the ground up, the community has degenerated far too much in all levels of play, the amount of tryhards, meta slaves and elitists are everywhere even in low end content, and mythic is even worse because you are expected to be a complete metaslave tryhard, they have completely forgotten what was meant to be play a class or spec for fun or even the challenge of trying to think and figure out how your own comb could deal with a boss' mechanics, all those have been abandoned for their pursuit of prestige and we are talking about guilds that are very very far from World first so it doesnt matter how fast they clear, they wont lose anything other than prestige which sadly their self worth and ego lies on.

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Oh man you just reminded me of something that is equal parts hilarious and deeply depressing.

I remember back in Cataclysm when the second tier of that expansion had its release date announced, Blizzard also announced they would nerf what would become the previous tier. I didn't care because at that point it was already considered to be outdated content because it was out for sooo long already (tiers were super long, much much longer than in FF). Any halfway decent raid team had already cleared it at least several weeks before the announcement, and when a new tier released the older tier always ended up being abandoned because frankly no one cares about kills from when the content was already old. If a tier got nerfs during when the content was relevant then having your kill dated before the nerf was considered very noteworthy, and a kill after the nerf often considered as not very strong depending on the nature of the nerf and when it came in the tier. The raiding community was so strict on what was seen as a demonstration of skill. I expect it's still like this today.

Anyway while I didn't think nerfing outdated content was a problem, all the tryhards came out of the woodwork and complained about how Blizzard were ruining the game to appease filthy casuals. No amount of explaining that it's outdated content calmed them down. All they were interested in was bashing the supposed casual monster that was out of control spreading its disease in content it had no right to touch. Meanwhile myself and others who were actual hardcore raiders were looking upon this thinking "omg what is wrong with you...". I never forgot how ridiculous that situation was. And spoiler alert: nerfing that tier didn't magically turn the entire raiding scene into a faceroll. It literally had zero impact on it.

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Originally Posted by Ralph2449

And when a community is so unhealthy I dont think there's any way to fix it because the way things are now people either accept that mentality or leave which of course makes the game pretty unfriendly to new or casual players. You can always subtly influence a community as a game dev but once you created a monster it is almost impossible to control without extreme measures. (And seeing how they completely dropped the ball on faction balance and let it go out of control I doubt they ll do anything for this)

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Fixing a community problem like this is extremely difficult in a game as old as WoW. It would require a very definitive shift in design choices and players who have been playing the same game for over a decade often don't like being taken out of their comfort zone, even when they're not happy where they are now. Many would be very concerned that the little they like of the game would disappear if too much change happened.

I think WoW is long passed the point of being able to do anything about the community without risking enormous backlash. It's been like this for so long that the state of the community is almost a type of content in itself. It's completely interwoven with the experience of playing the game. It's not impossible to unravel it but doing it correctly would mean playing the long game of gradually introducing content that encourages change over the course of several years. And honestly, I don't think Blizzard can be bothered to do that because WoW already makes millions as it is. It won't be seen as a worthy investment.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

So yes, world of warcraft is a decades-long experiment on sadism and masochism. You lose so many years hoping blizzard will ever listen to the casuals, you'll get old as hell waiting on blizzard to stop catering to hardcore streamers.

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I can't believe I'm saying this right now but...I kind of agree. It certainly feels that way. I guess the only difference between me and those who remain is that I walked away.

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Originally Posted by Xeronia

I think for me as I did watch Blizzcon and the WoW Q&A with a friend, we both were rather unimpressed all around about anything related to WoW. Their big announcements had been the first major patch of Shadowlands with an in game cinematic for 9.1 and the most predictable Burning Crusade Classic.

Moving onto their Q&A they really needed to figure out what the heck a push to talk button was because man without it would could just see how...unhappy the Shadowlands team seemed to be and how nonsensical their answers to easy questions were when you hear the BC team laugh a ton at failed answers. After that Q&A I don't think anyone working on Shadowlands is excited about it and that really hurts the product when the people representing it aren't excited. Say what you will about Yoshi P. but the man clearly loves 14 and is almost always happy to share information about it, I do not get the same feeling form Ion Hazzikostas who always seems exhausted talking about the game.

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You speak the truth. I think Ion likes World of Warcraft just as Yoshi P does FFXIV but is under immense pressure.

Yoshi P is probably surrounded more by fellow passionate gamers than Ion probably is, and I believe Yoshi P has a more "free-hand" on the direction of FFXIV than Ion does on WoW.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Blizzard's authenticator is crazy easy to use.... Please look into it SE lol.


On the whole FFXIV vs WoW thing of course I like FFXIV more, that's why I'm here- but I've no desire to make huge sweeping statements on WoW either to prove my enjoyment of FFXIV (some are more specific on what issues or reasons and that's fair and useful, but I feel it's popular here to make a show out of your dislike of wow to look like a better fan, well it's popular to do in general for all hobbies but I don't think it makes for the best feedback). The games often have similarities and could learn from each other (I encourage SE to look not just at WoW but it's a great way to see ideas in action and have others do your research for you- of course do your own too but you can take advantage of others homework lol, learn from history).

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Yes SE should learn from Blizzard website, accounts management UIs etc. It is vastly superior in its ease of use and navigating.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

Fixing a community problem like this is extremely difficult in a game as old as WoW. It would require a very definitive shift in design choices and players who have been playing the same game for over a decade often don't like being taken out of their comfort zone, even when they're not happy where they are now. Many would be very concerned that the little they like of the game would disappear if too much change happened.

I think WoW is long passed the point of being able to do anything about the community without risking enormous backlash. It's been like this for so long that the state of the community is almost a type of content in itself. It's completely interwoven with the experience of playing the game. It's not impossible to unravel it but doing it correctly would mean playing the long game of gradually introducing content that encourages change over the course of several years. And honestly, I don't think Blizzard can be bothered to do that because WoW already makes millions as it is. It won't be seen as a worthy investment.

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Ion admitted as much when asked about how they plan to address the faction imbalance regarding hardcore mythic players and raider in horde and alliance. He said that although they do think about it and are trying to find way to encourage more hardcore players to move back to alliance, that it will take a long time unless they do something excessive in buffing alliance traits etc which is something they obviously do not want to do.

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Originally Posted by Garet

Ion admitted as much when asked about how they plan to address the faction imbalance regarding hardcore mythic players and raider in horde and alliance. He said that although they do think about it and are trying to find way to encourage more hardcore players to move back to alliance, that it will take a long time unless they do something excessive in buffing alliance traits etc which is something they obviously do not want to do.

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They gave Horde ridiculously overpowered racials, allowed the lead singer of a band at Blizzcon to slander Alliance players using anti-LGBT insults, and wonder why the alliance raiding scene is ... non-existent.

"We are trying to address the inbalance, and have been trying for the past 3 years, but it's a social thing, it's all on you". Not interested in your bullshit Ion

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Originally Posted by Rae88

They gave Horde ridiculously overpowered racials

"We are trying to address the inbalance, and have been trying for the past 3 years, but it's a social thing, it's all on you". Not interested in your bullshit Ion

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I can't comment on now, even though I played again recently I paid little attention to the racials as I had no intention of raiding. However years ago when I did raid horde was most times seen as the stronger choice for racials. Some very hardcore raiding guilds would even make it mandatory that you played the best race for your class even if the difference was minimal.

I do think though that even if they abolished racials tomorrow it wouldn't fix much because the raiding communities have been established where they are for too long to change faction. There's also this silly idea that some have that the alliance is the pansy faction because the races there are more often conventionally good looking.

It is in part a social issue that there is faction imbalance, but that issue started because of development decisions by Blizzard making one faction a clear choice above the other in the cases of many classes. And don't even get me started on racials in pvp...god some were so stupidly good in that content.

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Originally Posted by Rae88

allowed the lead singer of a band at Blizzcon to slander Alliance players using anti-LGBT insult

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Oh wow, what is this? Can you please elaborate on what happened?

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Originally Posted by Garet

Yes SE should learn from Blizzard website, accounts management UIs etc. It is vastly superior in its ease of use and navigating.

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Who cares?

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Originally Posted by Reap00

Who cares?

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New players care. A lot gets frustrated just setting up account and gives up? And old players would not mind a more efficient and more friendly UI as well lolz

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Originally Posted by Reap00

Who cares?

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just recently i had a friend nearly give up on figuring out how to download ffxiv, just because it's SO HARD to navigate downloading it for the first time. he also had to use a new email as the site wouldn't give him an activation page for his old email, like it just... wouldn't load it.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

Oh wow, what is this? Can you please elaborate on what happened?

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Yeah that one was crazy, imagine you are in charge of Blizzcon, you see a video where a horde edgelord starts throwing out insults and use derogatory terms for half your playerbase and think "yeah we should totes upload that to blizzcon for everyone to see". It goes to show what kind of people work and influence things in blizzard.

Starts at 5 seconds, they had to non top spam the censoring beep with all the things he said, uncertain if it was censored in the actual blizzcon 2011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2yvZM1wn04
Uncensored version: his rant starts at 1 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW_Lv0r-l4c

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Originally Posted by Reap00

Who cares?

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They definitely to to improve things in that area, getting my registration mail took so long I ended up closing the "insert registration code here" window assuming there would be a way to get back to that window from the email.

Ended up needing to wait 24 hours to create my account, they def could update the registration process.

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Originally Posted by Ralph2449

Yeah that one was crazy, imagine you are in charge of Blizzcon, you see a video where a horde edgelord starts throwing out insults and use derogatory terms for half your playerbase and think "yeah we should totes upload that to blizzcon for everyone to see". It goes to show what kind of people work and influence things in blizzard.

Starts at 5 seconds, they had to non top spam the censoring beep with all the things he said, uncertain if it was censored in the actual blizzcon 2011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2yvZM1wn04
Uncensored version: his rant starts at 1 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW_Lv0r-l4c

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Oh my god. I'm actually shocked. He was very explicit in his language. No subtlety at all. Full blown highly offensive insults, and he said them with so much arrogant pride. And Blizzard thought this was fine to promote...what?????? Even with the censorship it comes across as cringey at best.

I wonder how this passed me by, I was still playing WoW back then and had already been for many years. Maybe Blizzard somehow managed to insulate the EU playerbase from the controversy? Good god. I'm actually feeling really uncomfortable now. This is all so nasty.