A lot of pre-WOW players!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GeminiReed

Are you making a huge assumption that most folks want to raid? You'd be sorely mistaken.

Or do you believe that ramping up the difficulty of the rest of the game is going to inspire the masses to step into EX/Savage/Ultimate? While you might get a few more it'll come at a huge cost when those that have no interest up and leave.

When WoW's LFG was introduced the most honest complaint I read was that nobody would want to do the harder difficulties anymore. While it mostly likely drained some of that pool it opened up the raid content to so many more people who in turn did attempt higher tiers.


I have a lot of alts at various stages of the story and there are certain features that are fun for me. For a time I was doing ShB hunt trains. Right now I'm messing around with Squadrons and BLU. Occasionally some of my friends will (finally) log in and we'll mount farm or do maps and maybe do an older ShB EX sync'd.

While I've done a bit of Savage, challenge for the sake of challenge does nothing for me. In fact I'm prone to tendonitis so I have to be very careful how much progression I do. The attraction is entirely social. I find many of the solo instances very irritating and unfun and will tick "Very Easy" on most of them and some of the lengthy ones without a reasonable checkpoint I'll intentionally fail just so I get that option.

---

If done right the player won't notice the game scaling difficulty up. One of the largest driving factors causing players to say they have no interest in trial/raid content is the rift the game design route has caused between them. Rather than a slow gradual incline to reach a higher elevation which was kind of the case with ARR they changed later to a flat level surface leading to a wall they have to climb. Many players see that wall and just sit there staring at it until they choose to walk away either to never come back or to return later when the wall has eroded due to power creep from ilvl inflation or an expansion increasing the lvl cap.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yajnaji

Actually it is... nothing good ever comes with too much success and that applies to everything, including video games.

---

Having almost too many players is a great problem to have right now, especially for SE. Nothing good ever comes with too little success.

I tried to come to FFXIV shortly after ARR released (from WoW) but I got so lost and confused and no one I saw would answer a simple question. Then at some point someone said follow us and do this. SO I hopped on a rental chocobo and tried to follow them and got lost. No idea how to get back to the city and in an area with mobs way to hard for me. Yeah I quit way before my free trial was over and went back to WoW. About Mid-BFA I realized I hadn't actually enjoyed WoW in years. I was playing out of habit and nothing more. So I quit. Tried LOTRO but the cash shop pissed me off to no end (it quite literally is so big a game advantage to use it that at high level it really cannot be avoided). Then I remembered that long ago trial account to FFXIV.

I hunted down my log in credentials. Reactivated the account. Made a new character and started over. All I can say is something clicked this time. Its been around 3 years now and I am still having a blast. No thought at all of going back to WoW.

For those asking I was on Wyrmrest Accord and Steamwheedle Cartel.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by skyfox

I just came back to Eorzea from couple of months break and I noticed there are a lot of WoW players joined/joining our FC recently. I know nothing about WoW but is there anything going on there? Are there not enough contents in WoW anymore? They sometime call themselves wow refuge but I am not sure why they call themselves as a refuge :confused: Regardless, it is good to see so many new players with sprout on top of their head! :)

---

Lots of things going on.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nishira

I’m guessing quite a few of the “FF14 is so much easier than WoW!” crowd are the same as the ones who stated WoW was too easy for ages there :D I have no idea why it is essential that the game you are playing is miles beneath you and your potential, but some are quite invested in this while playing a game for years and consistently paying their sub. One of the mysteries of life. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to it unless they bring an interesting discussion to the table.

---

All the content in XIV that isn't high-end is really easy, with content design in ShB being glaringly dull. Only exception are the Bozja instances and their exp is dragged down by people who refuse to do the bare minimum because all the rest of the game doesn't discourage selfish behavior.

Signed, someone who never spent more than a week in WoW in 2012 and is only comparing XIV's lack of challenge with OFFLINE jRPGs.

For me it was downhill after Ahn'qiraj event. I dunno why I even played WoW so long, it was bad the majority of it's lifespan but we kept crawling back hoping to recapture the initial magic.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Illmaeran

How many Crafter's Scrips did that cost?

---

I'm sure Rowena made an offer that couldn't be refused.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If you use an SSD you should load instantly.

---

I have an SSD but the loading screens still interrupt the gameplay. :)

Cheers

What happened in Shadowlands? Comparing with previous xpac.

- Level squish from 120 to 50 with new level cap of 60.
- Item level squish.
- Time spent using taxi service (Flight Master) is longer
- Flightmaster whistle no longer available on Shadowland zones ("Teleports" you to flight master).
- World Quests is longer.
- Anima and renown grind. Renown up to Lv40 (Up to Lv80 on 9.1). It is time gated.
- Torghast (another mage tower) is boring.
- Legendary is tied to Torghast and requires repeated runs for Ash. Older Mage Tower is an optional content.
- Another round of Torghast grind required on 9.1.
- Alts have to go through Ash, Anima and Renown grind from the scratch.
- Bonus roll for loot is gone on Shadowlands.
- Loot drops from bosses is significantly less.
- Crafting is longer.
- Content updates are ridiculously slow.
- Some older content becomes impossible to solo.

Current issues with Blizzard right now also affects the game. Thats why many players are playing other games right now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myrany

Tried LOTRO but the cash shop pissed me off to no end

All I can say is something clicked this time. Its been around 3 years now and I am still having a blast. No thought at all of going back to WoW.

For those asking I was on Wyrmrest Accord and Steamwheedle Cartel.

---

I went to LOTRO after leaving WoW and loved it. Having to buy all the content I'd previously had access to when subscribed at launch really pissed me off, for sure. Once I realized I could permanently buy content with coins earned in the game that cooled down. I was a broke grad student at the time so the Buy to Play option was a big deal for me. Combined with the coin purchase, getting an expansion here and there for birthdays and Christmas kept me going for a long time without having to pay a subscription. Once I got a real job and could afford a sub, XIV hooked me and I stopped playing. I'll always have a soft spot for the game; it was the right game at the right time.

"Clicking" is so true! It's amazing how the exact same thing isn't interesting at one point, but can be entrancing later on. I'm glad to hear you found your joy with this game and hope it remains.

When did you start on WrA? After server hopping for years, I found my home there and absolutely loved the community. The RP kept things interesting for a long time. I mained an Orc at server opening and founded the Sundered Skull Clan, if you were around at that time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

If done right the player won't notice the game scaling difficulty up. One of the largest driving factors causing players to say they have no interest in trial/raid content is the rift the game design route has caused between them. Rather than a slow gradual incline to reach a higher elevation which was kind of the case with ARR they changed later to a flat level surface leading to a wall they have to climb. Many players see that wall and just sit there staring at it until they choose to walk away either to never come back or to return later when the wall has eroded due to power creep from ilvl inflation or an expansion increasing the lvl cap.

---

The wall is real! I avoided raiding like the plague for the longest time, but now that I'm much higher level, the synching thing has opened up that level of content and I'm enjoying it a lot now. It's amazing how doing them in roulettes makes the process more enjoyable and I've been able to see significant improvement in how I play. It's become a win-win for me. I still don't do Savage or EX, but doing normal difficulty is my Goldilocks Zone. <3

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pells

I'm sure Rowena made an offer that couldn't be refused.

---

No kidding. I found a Chocobo head in my bed when I woke up the other day.....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RobynDaBank

Don't mind me, just setting up the first popcorn stand in this thread!

---

Fair enough! Since I'm just kicking it here eatin' some popcorn, I will point out that "pre-WoW" means "before WoW", not "this player came from WoW."

On topic, I find it egregiously ridiculous that WoW, for whatever reason, cannot make their low-res-portraits of scantily clad females go over well with the public. While here in Final Fantasy, on this same Earth, on the same Internet, with the same IRL social problems, we seem to have zero issues with an event centered around some guy in a B&D/S&M mask that apparently works(?) with a whole gaggle of high-res scantily clad females. Females, I might add, with specific "bend to accentuate lady parts" animations.

We even get brief low-camera-angles so you can see up their skirts, cheerleader style. /shrug

It's friggin' weird. I mean, the whole Earth is weird. You can have sexytime over here, but sexytime over there results in #HASHTAGMOVEMENT. Both T rated games. Both available on PC today for 13-year-olds to sink their teeth into.

Yes, a few of the people behind that game over there that had a smidge of sexytime in it did some bad things. So did many of the artists behind music we still listen to (Michael Jackson still makes dancefloors move), movies we still watch (have you removed anything connected to Harvey Weinstein or Roman Polanski from your collection?), and books we read (Orson Scott Card comes to mind, he of Ender's Game fame, a top 50 fiction writer in 2021, and a horribly homophobic jerk who believes a gay lifestyle should be illegal, and that sodomy laws should still be in effect. Shoot, even Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Witches, the BFG, James and the Giant Peach, etc., etc.) was an anti-Semitic prick, and we still give his books to our children and take our families to watch movies based on his books.)

Separate the art from the artist, publicly. How is it productive to go on Twitter and tweet about social justice for a few hours, then sit down and watch Gangs of New York, the English Patient, Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown? I hesitate to use popular catch-phrases like 'virtue signaling' (/retch) but there's no better phrase to describe our online behavior these days. We'll type a bunch of words online to show how much we frown upon bad behavior, but no one is chucking loads of Weinstein or Polanski Blu-Rays into the trash, and there's no mass cancellation of iTunes accounts because they still sell Michael Jackson albums.

Every single one of us has a piece of music, a movie, a book, or a television show in our possession (collection, online, whatever) that is connected to someone who has done bad things. I know it's hard - apparently really hard - but it would behoove us to learn to appreciate subjective entertainment despite who produced it. Otherwise, if we really decide as a society that we aren't going to separate artist from art, then let's be real about it and go ahead and purge everything off the Earth ever created by someone who once did evil things.

It's pretty convenient to live in modern times where one "version" of a person stands against things, and a different "version" of the same person sits down and consumes what they stand against. One can jump on bandwagons and feel popular and "part of the group" in the morning, then listen to great music or watch really great movies from "evil people" in the evening, with no guilt whatsoever, because no one will call you on the carpet and ask you to explain the two different versions of your life.

Honestly, folks better hope we don't decide to do a purge, because your car, your house, your electricity, your internet, your clothing, and every other possession you own will disappear, should it come to that. You think no one that designs cars or builds homes or sews clothes ever did anything evil? Boy, have I got a revelation for you. Yikes!

The whole 'turning women into fruits' movement you're seeing in WoW was a purely Blizzard-recovery-mode initiative that nobody asked for and pretty much everyone ridicules.

Reforming their workplace ethic represents a far bigger investment (im both time and money) than just changing a few paintings for quick and easy PR.

It's the response to the entire lawsuit debacle that had me leave the game in disgust, not the lawsuit announcement itself. Well, that and the whole 'game stopped being fun a long time ago', but that's another story altogether.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Illmaeran

When did you start on WrA? After server hopping for years, I found my home there and absolutely loved the community. The RP kept things interesting for a long time. I mained an Orc at server opening and founded the Sundered Skull Clan, if you were around at that time.

---

I was alliance on WrA and Horde on Steamwheedle. I am thinking it was during Wrath I rolled on WrA. I think I was on Bronzebeard during classic up to wrath but I don't clearly remember to be certain.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lexis

The whole 'turning women into fruits' movement you're seeing in WoW was a purely Blizzard-recovery-mode initiative that nobody asked for and pretty much everyone ridicules.

Reforming their workplace ethic represents a far bigger investment (im both time and money) than just changing a few paintings for quick and easy PR.

It's the response to the entire lawsuit debacle that had me leave the game in disgust, not the lawsuit announcement itself. Well, that and the whole 'game stopped being fun a long time ago', but that's another story altogether.

---

The bowl of fruit thing has made for excellent meme material though, which is about all Blizzard is good for nowadays. But you know, small victories. Gotta take them as they come, especially when they are far and few between.