Finally tried WoW

As someone who only played WoW when it was brand new through shortly after the first expansion, I feel pretty confident in saying almost every one of those except for...I think 3, 4 (subjective), 9, and 11 is literally a quality-of-life improvement as they were added to the game at some point.

Even back when I played, the dev team did add things that were popular enough as mods directly into the game client. Instead of, you know, saying they would do that and then taking a year to add the dumbest one - chat bubbles.

I have absolutely zero interest in playing the game again, but seeing that list of things definitely adds to the frustration over here.

Oh I've seen this before!
Yeah, during the exodus of WoW players during Shadowbringers when everyone was listing all the good stuff in FF and all the shit in WoW!
Guess we're doing the reverse now? :D

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

WoW has some decent QoL that XIV could look at implementing but biggest drawback to me unless they've changed this since I quit in MoP is having to have alts because you're limited to one class (even with specializations, it's still one class) and you're limited in number on crafting and gathering professions. The crafting and gathering systems aren't nearly as robust as XIV. If XIV wanted to crib some ideas there, they should look at EverQuest II instead. It does the system of responding to random events that they tried to do in Expert recipes much more effectively. Gathering is still boring, though. XIV does that much better.

Transmog is probably one of the better systems they could look at integrating. It took a very long time for WoW to fully realize that. I remember we started with something very similar to the Glamour Dresser where we stored items we wanted to use for appearance purposes before things developed over time into the current transmog system. And IIRC there weren't glamour plates so you had to go back to that storage every time you wanted to change something. So it's possible XIV is already working on that slowly like WoW did.

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I'm more of a fan of your characters having identities. If you're a hunter, you're a hunter, being a skinner and leatherworker, or miner and engineer is apart of that. Like your own little story. Much like I stick with Gunbreaker in FFXIV, even if I have all the other jobs leveled. Also this was more evident in classic / actual vanilla / turtle WoW private server. But there tends to be one guy / gal who has the most recipies or some rare ones that they can make as a blacksmith / enchanter / jewelcrafter etc. So you form a relationship with them as a return customer, sometimes maybe getting discounts for repeat business, haggle etc. Bring them rare materials that they can craft your things with.

As opposed to everyone just crafting on their own in one corner.

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Originally Posted by XtremePrime

Oh I've seen this before!
Yeah, during the exodus of WoW players during Shadowbringers when everyone was listing all the good stuff in FF and all the shit in WoW!
Guess we're doing the reverse now? :D

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nah it's more pull your s*** together SE

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

If XIV wanted to crib some ideas there, they should look at EverQuest II instead. It does the system of responding to random events that they tried to do in Expert recipes much more effectively. Gathering is still boring, though. XIV does that much better.

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Huh? The gathering in FFXIV is much better because you click some abilities in an even more rudimentary fashion than its crafting, then that's tied to the same tight, essentially unchanging circle for a few materials? I don't know... but simply not being bound to that dull routine makes EQ2 gathering better (to me). At least you wander about a bit. Some may like the way it's done in here, but imo it makes it unnatural and thus scuppers some immersion, and FFXIV already suffers from dustbowl levels of life in its zones.

You raise the crafting system too, that's the only crafting system in an MMO that made me not want to totally fall asleep, and what was it that made that different? As you said, one had to check for random events and respond appropriately (and on a mild timer). FFXIV's gathering system lacks sufficient randomness there (oh golly the occasional hidden slot, much excite!) even if that is simply finding a node to click on, for that essence that you're foraging for something. Oh yeah, and something else I've not seen since is a crafting station actually killing people, the forge was pretty notorious for that hue hue~

Had to cut in because I really don't see EQ2 being mentioned all that much. Really chronically underappreciated MMO for what novelties it did have, in amongst some issues - almost like anything else, go figure.

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Originally Posted by XtremePrime

Oh I've seen this before!
Yeah, during the exodus of WoW players during Shadowbringers when everyone was listing all the good stuff in FF and all the shit in WoW!
Guess we're doing the reverse now? :D

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Competition would encourage correction in the game's trajectory.

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Originally Posted by XtremePrime

Oh I've seen this before!
Yeah, during the exodus of WoW players during Shadowbringers when everyone was listing all the good stuff in FF and all the shit in WoW!
Guess we're doing the reverse now? :D

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In any given time, you'd have a point. With dawntrail being hated even by SE HQ, both asian, european and north american player bases, and even people that don't play it anymore; no you don't have one. FF14 has been rotting ever since ShB was over, SE was happy to grab in WoW players from the shadowlands days, until they fixed their game, dropped the war within and in the meantime SE did nothing and dropped something even worse than shadowlands.

Only delusional people would think FF14 is in a good state right now. Or people that make combat bots look like top 1% players. Your pick.

I've returned to WoW not long ago, away ever since BfA, and must say, if we overlook the innate differences between both games, WoW does provide more fun right now.

The stuff you can do at level cap have much more replayability, and there you find a much bigger spectrum when it comes to 'too easy' and 'hardcore', which is something that I miss in XIV. Can I do moderately hard stuff in groups? I can join normal raids, mythic + at 7-8. I can do the same thing solo with Delves.

Another point that the game over there beats XIV by a big margin is the OPEN WORLD. There's way more do in each zone: World Quests, zone special objectives, random easter egg findings. Rare hunting while leveling is cool and provides nice items. But most importantly, the world feels alive because they know how to design fauna in a way that isn't just 10 tigers randomly walking. Then 10 birds randomly walking, etc.

WoW's writing isn't top-tier like XIV pre-Endwalker, but I must say it's way better written nowadays than when the game was at its lowest.

Specs in WoW feel much more rich than jobs, I must say. They don't have a strict 2 min meta there, which helps a lot because specs do work 'inwards' with procs, mechanics and calculations. Even if you must adhere to a strict cooldown alignment, it's still on your own zone, not having to align with everybody else's buffs.

Housing is not live yet, but so far from the previews we got it seems to be a direct improvement from XIV's in every aspect.

The game feels more responsive in every aspect: from the menus to the combat pacing.

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Now, to stop with all the praising, I still think XIV got an innate charm to it, stuff in WoW tend to be slightly more generic looking. The story (when good) is way more captivating. The music is light years better. Mounts do look cooler here. If we overlook stylistic preferences, items look objectively better in XIV. WoW tends to always do 'too busy, too big, too much' when it comes to armor sets, but lately they have some few nice outliers.

Availability aside, I like how gearing is more straightforward in XIV, but on the other hand I hate how meaningless melding stat customization is. PVP in WoW has a nice playstyle, but is too sick with structural issues in the rating system and premades sync-queueing for an advantage, and I actually have more fun in XIV's PVP, I just wish we had more modes, because chasing a crystal gets old fast and the large scale PVP is too chaotic to be enjoyable for me. I wish the Feast could return.

WoW may have more interesting races, but even with the current limitations + cosmetics, you can still achieve more unique characters here than there.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

let's try something okay? I see you have joined in 2013 and while it doesn't mean you have been playing non stop for 12 years.. how about this. Play WoW for 5 and then come back and tell me all about those flaws and how the game is dying and how much better X game is.

Deal?

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Played WoW since Vanilla and XIV since 1.0 Beta.

The things he noted as being handled better on WoW are still handled better on WoW and would improve XIV is better handled here. It doesn't take burnout to find more sensible choices regarding UI, QoL, progression, fleshing out an open world, etc., more appealing than less sensible ones.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

When a 20+ year-old game makes all your long-standing frustrations seem easily solvable, it’s hard not to question how much longer I’ll stick around.

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And once the novelty wears off you'll have a whole new list of frustrations with WoW. :p Play whichever you find more fun of course but don't delude yourself into thinking it's Shangri-La over there. Take a look at their community sites and you'll see all the usual doomposting you see here, including "just played (insert game) and it's way better than WoW!"