World of Warcraft died because the developers only catered to casuals and world prog

... WoW catered to the casuals?

What?

Have you even played WoW in the last decade, TC? They have been catering solely to the end game raiders at the cost of everything else. WoW currently is the most alt unfriendly it has ever been and has become a so much grindier RNGfest. Heck, you have to unlock Flying multiple times in the same freaking expansion. The immense grinding, WoW Tokens, horrid story, and WoW acting like a second job is why I quit. That and the Devs actively insulting, belittling, and trolling their fanbase. Especially how they treated the Alliance when they asked for years to play as High Elves and the Lead Designer outright LYING and violently flaming Alliance Players then has VoidTrash released which is the extreme end of all the reasons why he said there could be no Alliance High Elves. That and when the Alliance brings up how the Horde gets favored in the story (especially a certain Banshee witch) and always gets excused for war crimes and genocide while the Alliance is treated as they're in the wrong for defending itself in the story always ends up with the Lead story dev and their team attacking said players.

WoW also releases expansions unfinished. You don't see the end of the story till the patches near the end of the expansion. FF14 at least gives you a finished product as Endwalker had a beginning, middle, and an end on launch day.

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

WoW also releases expansions unfinished. You don't see the end of the story till the patches near the end of the expansion. FF14 at least gives you a finished product as Endwalker had a beginning, middle, and an end on launch day.

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On top of that, SE doesn't retcon their story every chance they get, and on the rare occasion that they do, they do so in a way that keeps the narrative consistent. Every plot twist and villian introduced in FFXIV increases our understanding of what came before; it never invalidates it.

WoW's lore was screwy from the beginning. There was honestly no rational reason for the Horde to have elves to begin with. it completely flew in the face of the original game, which was heavily influenced by Tolkien. The alliance was originally an alliance of elves, humans, dwarfs, and gnomes (hobbits) against the orcs, trolls, ogres, and demons. It makes no sense whatsoever for the elves who were defending their forested homeland against a set of invaders from another world to turn around and join up with the invaders. Clearly, the reason Blizzard did that was to balance out the number of races. Another decision in service to that goal was to canonize their one-off WCIII scenario that was a clear tip of the hat to the Diablo cow level rumors in the form of tauren. Even in that context, though, it made no sense for the tauren to join up with the invaders either. The game was originally an Alliance of Azerothians versus an invading Horde of Outlanders. Turning it into a civil war with foreign assistance from the Outlands completey reframed the original setting, as did layering on an additional conflict against the Horde's demon patrons. I'm just surprised that players are just now getting up in arms about the WoW lore. I've always thought that, with the exception of the Arthas/lich king storyline, it was terrible.

WoW also has a bad habit of not only retconing in game but in its novels and comics too. Nearly all the "big events" and the such happen in books 99% of the playerbase never read. Heck, Warlords of Draenor plot starts through a novel and in game the players have no idea what's happening other than they need to go after an escaped Garrosh by jumping into this randomly opened portal. Furthermore, Thrall cheated iin the fight and he put Garrosh in a position he didn't want yet Thrall is never called out on anything.

WoW also treats the player as if they're just... not there. They have no say in anything and in big narrative moments the player is often omitted entirely even after all they did. Like the Siege of Orgrimmar ending where we did ALL THE WORK then Varian and Thrall come in and decide everything and act like THEY did all the work.

What WoW did to Arthas after Wrath is unacceptable as well.

Then there's Sylvanas. She did FAR worse than Arthas did at this point yet it given pass after pass. All her evil is explained that "an evil man made her do it. She's not responsible for ANY of her actions". WoW does this EVERY SINGLE TIME when it comes to their popular female characters. If they do something evil or messed up it's because "they're crazy" or "a man made them crazy". No responsibility or consequences. Ever.

FF14 writes female characters far better and doesn't sugarcoat it. Like Yotusuyu. We're explained WHY she did the things she did and her hatred but the game still doesn't give her a pass. She still did horrible things and owns up it - she wasn't forced to do those things. She wanted to do them. I empathized with her but I also accepted that her victims needed justice too just as much as she had deserved justice but as denied it which twisted her. I like how she doesn't apologize for it or blame Zenos or anyone else for her decisions. That's something WoW would never do with their female characters that actually matter.

There's so much grinding and insane amounts of gold being sunk into raiding too.
The wall you need to get over in order to even begin raiding just seems way higher.

Crafted gear isn't really that expensive in FFXIV most people should be able to afford it at least for their main Job and food buffs also don't go away on a wipe and aren't that expensive.
It's very easy to just basically buy what you need and hop right into Savage.
This also isn't getting into combat ress and how it allows us to get further and see more of the fight and how we don't have to run a billion miles back to the boss.

Obviously the world race is a bit different since it's Mythic right away and overpowered bosses.
But the teams have had to even go out and farm mid-race lol.
There's just so much tedium going on, it's not like in FFXIV where you just wipe and repull in a matter of seconds.

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

... WoW catered to the casuals?

What? Have you even played WoW in the last decade, TC?

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WoW's story is complex. After WotLK, Blizzard went to great lengths to casualize the game and basically turned it into a queue simulator where gear was thrown at you for free. They genuinely believed they would gain more subs this way. Most classes were simplified/pruned in Cataclysm and onward. The core gameplay of pretty much every class is even today extremely boring as a result of that enormous pruning process. There is very little, if any, skill expression left in any of the classes - a chimp could smash buttons and play WoW well.

Blizzard has attempted to band-aid fix this recently by adding some of the old abilities back, but unfortunately this hasn't been enough to undo the damage they inflicted upon the game. Yes. It is true that in terms of end-game progress the WoW of today has gone in the opposite extreme and transformed itself from a casualfest to a hardcore Korean grind MMO simulator. However, the core gameplay still remains extremely easy, casual, convenient, without depth and mind-numbingly boring. This is the direct result of Blizzard not listening to their players and being unable to find a middle ground; instead the game is a mess consisting of the two polar extremes of easymode on the one hand and hardcore on the other. Neither is satisfying.

Then there's of course the garbage tier story and sub-par worldbuilding. Overall, WoW is a terrible game in its current state.

It's because of that that WoW players are so much toxic and burned out. They expect everyone to be a Master on their first time and are cruel towards players that aren't. It's why so many are leaving WoW as they're tired of it.

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Originally Posted by Imoye

WoW's story is complex. After WotLK, Blizzard went to great lengths to casualize the game and basically turned it into a queue simulator where gear was thrown at you for free. They genuinely believed they would gain more subs this way. Most classes were simplified/pruned in Cataclysm and onward. The core gameplay of pretty much every class is even today extremely boring as a result of that enormous pruning process. There is very little, if any, skill expression left in any of the classes - a chimp could smash buttons and play WoW well.

Blizzard has attempted to band-aid fix this recently by adding some of the old abilities back, but unfortunately this hasn't been enough to undo the damage they inflicted upon the game. Yes. It is true that in terms of end-game progress the WoW of today has gone in the opposite extreme and transformed itself from a casualfest to a hardcore Korean grind MMO simulator. However, the core gameplay still remains extremely easy, casual, convenient, without depth and mind-numbingly boring.

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That's the issue.

WoW doesn't know who it's catering to anymore. They're trying to appease everyone and in the end are just angering everyone.

FF14 knows its audience and what its doing is working. FF14 also doesn't expect people to play the game like a second job and encourages cooperation. Meanwhile WoW is the opposite of that.

FF14 also encourages doing content from all expansions while everything before the current expansion doesn't matter to WoW. Heck, once the player hits a certain level the game forces the player into Shadowlands.

The immense grinding also lends towards the game being extremely anti-alt (when in Cataclysm they encouraged Alts), anti-casual, and takes up a ton of time every day. Its burning players out as they have to do all that grinding just to play the content they want.

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Originally Posted by Imoye

WoW's story is complex. After WotLK, Blizzard went to great lengths to casualize the game and basically turned it into a queue simulator where gear was thrown at you for free. They genuinely believed they would gain more subs this way. Most classes were simplified/pruned in Cataclysm and onward. The core gameplay of pretty much every class is even today extremely boring as a result of that enormous pruning process. There is very little, if any, skill expression left in any of the classes - a chimp could smash buttons and play WoW well.

Blizzard has attempted to band-aid fix this recently by adding some of the old abilities back, but unfortunately this hasn't been enough to undo the damage they inflicted upon the game. Yes. It is true that in terms of end-game progress the WoW of today has gone in the opposite extreme and transformed itself from a casualfest to a hardcore Korean grind MMO simulator. However, the core gameplay still remains extremely easy, casual, convenient, without depth and mind-numbingly boring.

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I remember thinking the WotLK story was awesome lol, in hindsight it's a bit dumb.
I do think the Death Knight stuff was really cool tho and the Siege of Undercity scenario, but ultimately it mostly felt like nice set pieces.
Thinking back to it tho it was probably when I paid the most attention to the story in WoW but a lot of that was nostalgia too since I was a huge Warcraft 3 fan.

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

WoW doesn't know who it's catering to anymore. They're trying to appease everyone and in the end are just angering everyone.

FF14 knows its audience and what its doing is working. FF14 also doesn't expect people to play the game like a second job and encourages cooperation. Meanwhile WoW is the opposite of that.

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I wholeheartedly agree with you.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

I remember thinking the WotLK story was awesome lol, in hindsight it's a bit dumb.
I do think the Death Knight stuff was really cool tho and the Siege of Undercity scenario, but ultimately it mostly felt like nice set pieces.
Thinking back to it tho it was probably when I paid the most attention to the story in WoW but a lot of that was nostalgia too since I was a huge Warcraft 3 fan.

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The lore up until and including WotLK was absolutely fantastic. The game itself, however, never presented the lore in a very good way, but it was enough to build a sense of almost unrivaled mystery and fascination.

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Originally Posted by Imoye

The game itself, however, never presented the lore in a very good way, but it was enough to build a sense of almost unrivaled mystery and fascination.

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That's an understatement. WoW players have been blindsided finding out that Sylvannas has a brother lmao.
Kind of the consequence of having the lore from outside materials.

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Originally Posted by Jirah

Define fine? Lol

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I dont care whatever reason what happend to wow.
Those who that a «certain» view before coming to ffxiv should stop expect more.
I came to ffxiv cuse its final fantasy. I can be casual or hardcore or whatever. I love good looking character above > ugly cartoon with «content» of wow used to have that people keep japping about over to this forum. Thats a small extent to my view.

Ive been fine with this game since i started playing this game on my older brothers account.
People are allowed to share opinions about the direction. But i simply dont care about its «state». For me its been stable.