Final Fantasy 14 Players trying WOW?

I am playing WOW Classic Season of Mastery and it's a lot of fun. Better than wasting time waiting to log in.

My limit is 25 in Q. Over that I bail and log into WOW Classic.

I am in a great guild and it's been a really good experience. Endwalker is not going anywhere so I plan to try it once things get back to normal.

I played WOW from Beta until the end of WOTLK and loved it, but Cataclysm took all the areas I liked, the NPCs I was familiar with, and threw them in the trash, so I skipped that expansion. Then came the Pandas, and that's when I knew WOW wasn't for me anymore.

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Originally Posted by Kyrj

Do we tell them about SE?

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No. They need their innocence that broad-stroke, singular vilification affords them.

If we talk loudly enough about the bad people outside our walls, surely that means there aren't any within.

(At least we haven't heard of anything like that specifically within CBU3, to my knowledge, though the same could be said with the OW team, which didn't stop their losing a majority of sponsors when parts of the Warcraft and Diablo teams fell under long-overdue criticism. Hopefully any backlash against the larger company won't affect CBU3 too badly.)

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Originally Posted by PaulH

Trying WoW?

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Uh, you want to try an oldschool MMO that's dying after a long and honorable life, that only has its art direction left, so dated?

The WoW of today is a shadow of its former self, Blizzard doesn't know what to do to innovate anymore, even breaking the long-established lore.

It's no more a great game since at least Heavensward.

SWTOR is really great for a story focused game that has multiplayer elements. Tbh, I didn't really enjoy the mmo parts of the game enough to want to play it over ffxiv, but I actually had a ton of fun playing through the story, to the point that I rolled like 7 different characters just to play through their stories (each class has it's own entire voice acted story, complete with bioware-style choices and an alignment system that affects the ending of your story). I really do not think it's a great mmo in regards to endgame content, but I also found the msq/sidequests really really fun and had a great time doing them. +from what I remember, it's also all voice acted and the voice acting is good.

ESO is fun for pvp, imho. I didn't get too far into pve content, so I can't speak on that, but the pvp was super fun. It's less of a linear storyline (like swtor and ffxiv), and more of a elder scrolls singleplayer game thing, where there's a ton of questlines with their own stories. There's more of a focus on just exploring all the zones and doing whatever quests you want, but as I personally prefer more linear storylines I did like swtor more in that aspect. But the pvp is seriously super fun. There's a lot of freedom in how you build your character. Obviously, there's meta optimal builds, but I had a lot of fun doing stupid builds that were definitely less strong, but still really fun to play in the open world pvp zone.

Those are the only two non-wow mmos (I'm not talking about wow, because I'm done with supporting blizzard at all) I've played to endgame, so I can't speak on the others. also Lost Ark is getting a western release pretty soon, and (imho) it looks really fun. It's more of a top-down diablo style game, though.

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Originally Posted by EzekielBook

One thing you'll notice pretty quickly is how little instancing there is. You can pretty much get through the entire intro scenario, without ever having to wait for a loading screen once you're in. WoW flows.

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Well, at least until you use your Hearthstone set for Stormwind and spend 7 minutes flying to Booty Bay. Long distances on the world of Azeroth are not shortened by travel by Aetheryte. When I remember flight in WoW and compare that time to loading screens in FFXIV, I am no longer dazzled by rose-colored memories of "but there's no loading screen".

If you enjoy crafting and gathering in FFXIV, you may find the profession limits to be a bit meh. I enjoyed crafting and gathering in WoW, but I also created 14 alts (one for each battle class) on both Alliance and Horde side, each with the ability to send mail containing mats and funds to the other characters, but only on Alliance or Horde side - no sending your Horde character mats from your Alliance character, for example. Also, market boards were separated into Horde and Alliance, so on an Alliance-heavy server you might find things much more expensive in Horde auction houses.

Also, bags. You'll need to purchase/craft soooo many bags.

If you think the Relic Weapon grind is bad in FFXIV, wait until you try to get the appropriate reputations in WoW in order to fly in expansion zones. Or wait until you finish grinding [current expansion McGuffin] for gear upgrades .. it makes materia in FFXIV look like mana flowing from the heavens. I don't miss that.

By all means, go try out WoW. It isn't super-expensive, and you may enjoy the playstyle more. I spent over a decade playing the game, starting with Burning Crusade, and it only got really boring and grindy when Battle for Azeroth came out.

Don't believe the hype that "Classic" WoW is better. I played it when it was current in-game, and it became a slog running alt-class-character #10 through the content. Mists of Panderia is where I started losing interest, but I kept up through a few more expansions because, well, I had a lot of time to spend on the game after <insert major life change here>, and I hadn't found FFXIV at the time.

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Originally Posted by Baconeater

My limit is 25 in Q. Over that I bail and log into WOW Classic.

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So, 30 seconds to a minute is too long? I haven't run into a queue in the morning (5:30 am to 10 am CST) longer than 87, and that took less than a minute to get through.

Less time from queue to in-game than firing up the Blizzard launcher and starting a game in WoW.

I remember that when a lot of WoW streamers started trying out FF14 their chats and comment sections were full of people telling them that FF14 is not WoW. And then I stumbled upon a FF14 player trying out WoW video where the person spent half the video complaining about how WoW is not like FF14 and the comments were like "yeah this is why I can't play that game". The duality of this community has been the most amusing part for me so far.

Ok, long distance travel in WoW is a problem, especially at low levels when you discover a quest that takes you across the continent. And long Flight Paths are definitely a thing (think only being able to travel by Porter). But that's a design decision you, and everyone has to decide how important it is to them. I think of it as a chance to use the bathroom.

Bags yes. Fortunately on most servers, bags are cheap - they've made it among the first things you get in the latest expansion with tailoring, so everyone makes lots of bags. The intro quest (which I think the demo takes you through) leaves you with 4 10-slot bags, which is usually enough for a low level character.

And while you can't transfer items (in most cases) between Horde and Alliance characters, the Auction House has been shared for a few expansions now. So that's a lot less of an issue.

WoW is similar enough to FF that you'll be able to play nearly immediately. The combat system will take the greatest getting used to - the global cooldown in WoW is a lot less than in FF. Combat moves *much* faster, and there's less telegraphing of blows.

what it really comes down to is a style thing. Go in with an open mind. You may find that you prefer some of WoW's design choices. And also keep in mind that the game has evolved over 17 years, and they have not retroactively fixed everything, so there are continuity issues, and you may be confused about the overall plot when you start from scratch. It's up to everyone to decide for themself.

Modern WoW is a game that lives in a patch by patch cycle. When I say this, a content patch might bring us a new zone and that area will become your primary source of content for the next few months until a new one comes around. Given the current design of WoW, it's taking them 6 months to shove out content patches. Shadowlands released in late 2020 (November), it took them until June to drop 9.1. 9.2 is presently on the testing server and probably will see a shipping date of February. They basically went an entire year with a single content patch through 2021. The moment 9.2 hits the servers, everything from 9.1 is utterly irrelevant. All the grinding you did in that zone, pointless. 9.2 zone will have new catch up gear from quests to speed you past ever needing to touch 9.1. Now while this is nice in theory, it gives you a feeling of perpetually being on a hamster wheel, running forever but going ultimately nowhere. While XIV does the same with raid tiers, it's all still relevant to a degree. The gear maybe not, but the dungeons and all that still see action. Once Shadowlands ends, those dungeons will have no significance. There is no way to sync things, unless it's what they call "Timewalking" which are limited events that happen infrequently, and only for an expansion. On top of that, you don't get all of the dungeons. They exclude ones that people deemed "too hard" or "too annoying". The Burning Crusade had in total 16 dungeons. During Timewalking, you'll queue into one of six. When it comes to raids, there is also no sync feature, timewalking lets you replay two raids you utterly trounce because classes retain abilities that content wasn't designed around you having. If you want to experience a raid as it was, you need to arbitrarily limit yourself and it's still not enough. XIV has potency changes and maybe ability reworks here and there. WoW just straight up unlevels you, but you keep all the abilities during Timewalking. Think of it like warrior having access to Bloodwhetting in EVERY SINGLE DUNGEON. They'd be even more of a joke than they already are. That is WoW timewalking.

Back onto other things with WoW. It feels good, it's very easy to get into and very fun. . . for about a month or two to a new player. Once you get to max level which can be done in like two days if you're completely fresh (it's been made that easy and quick) and playing like 6 hours a day. It'll feel cool, until you get to the end point. Here's where it gets fun. . . not. Blizzard themselves has designated tasks for you, or chores if you will. You must do these otherwise your character is arbitrarily weaker than everyone else. That's all well and good right, just enjoy the other stuff? Question is. . . WHAT other stuff? If you don't hardcore PvP, hardcore PvE, or hardcore spam dungeons in m+ you're SOL.