[Off-topic] WoW discussion - What should I do?

Hello there!

And before saying anything else i have to apologize, i understand that what I'm about to say is very personal stuff non-related with a FF forums, so my post does not only not belong here but it's also likely to be uninteresting for most of you, hope you guys could forgive me but i really needed to talk about this with someone, since my wow subscription is cancelled and i don't know where else could i post this.

The thing is, I'm rather depressed right now, I'm someone who has been playing wow over the past 13 years with a couple of breaks in between when i got tired, had nothing else to do in-game or simply wanted to play other stuff, so far, managed to meet many different people, some remained as close friends others just as some cool people that happened to be there when i most enjoyed the game, i would be lying if i said that it wasn't because of the people that i met that my interest for wow was there even when i didn't really like playing the game anymore the social environment was a strong appeal, but since nothing last forever those people eventually grew up, had better things to do with their life, some responsibilities or they simply got bored of the game and quit.

People quitting the game wasn't really a problem for me since i was constantly meeting new players due to my interest in PvP but specially Arenas, but with the release of BFA and i could say way earlier before that, meeting new players and socializing with them became something rather hard, since people wasn't really forced to interact with other players for neither an elite quest, nor a dungeon, nor a raid, nor a bg, nor even arenas; the social aspect of the game became to fade and now unless you were part of a guild meeting other players with a talkative mood was a true challenge.

That made me wish i could travel back in time, and wow classic kinda made this a reality, and although i did not like the vanilla experience that much since my main interest on the game remained on arenas, it was still nice to have that social aspect back and meeting other players on a old school fashion.

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So you guys can guess how hyped i was when Blizzard announced TBC classic, not only was that the first expansion i played but also was for me the best PvP experience i had (or at least i still remember it like that) with all the social features the game still had before the Dungeon Finder bullshit appeared.

And then, for whatever reason Blizzard decided to fuck it up and bring the microtransactions back, level boosts, bots, hacks and all that lovely stuff.

My heart broke to the point were even tho i had not that much interest in FF14 I still wanted to give it a try since many people started playing it as well, and ho boi, I'm really enjoying the game, maybe i was just lucky but I've never met a more wholesome community in any online game on my whole life, since day 1 people have been nothing but helpful, many people has given their time to explain bosses mechanics and no one got mad if someone messed up, on the contrary they were rather cheerful, for no reason other than me being a new player some other players have given me many gifts in the form of minions or some other items.

And not to mention the feeling of meeting a bard in Limsa Lominsa playing a theme that you recognize and that alone becoming the reason for a long chat and a new friend :)

But even with all that positivity I still miss wow, pvp in FF14 lacks not only in deepness but also in complexity, is very straightforward and when i compare it to wow arenas it really shows that this game wasn't really made for it.

Which brings me to me making this post, I really want to play TBC again, but i refuse to support Blizzard anymore, specially after what has recently happened, i have no words to describe what this company is other than saying that is being managed by a bunch of scumbags who have turned it in probably the worst videogame company.

I've also considered starting anew on a private server, but the reason why i have never done it before is because an mmo is something about time investment and progression, and i don't like the idea of expending 1 or 2 years of my life on a character when i have no certainty that he's not gonna disappear one day either because they decide to reset the server or it closes, i truly don't know how they operate or do things.

So, if anyone has managed to read me up until here, what would be your advice? I'm really opened to any suggestions or comments that you may have and i will really appreciate them.

With not much else to say, thanks for reading me :)

Since PvP is important to you, I would actually suggest looking for PvP in a place where you're going to be satisfied by it. If you're happy with FF14 other than the PvP then continue playing FF14 but find a separate PvP game that you will enjoy as many non-MMOs PvP dedicated games have better PvP than any MMO does anyway.

And much respect for deciding to not support Blizzard anymore despite having a clear emotional attachment to one of their games.

I'd recommend not hoping right from one game to another.
Take a break, decompress a bit, and then reassess.
Otherwise you might find yourself unhappy and with a game that just picked you up on the rebound, but now you're established and it's hard to get away from that one too.

Well, first, welcome to FFXIV! I hope you enjoy your time here.

For actual PvP play, FFXIV might not scratch that itch very well- Guild Wars 2 does a better job of that in an MMO setting and is pretty fun/challenging over all.

Both FFXIV and Guild Wars 2 are pretty good about on/off play, in that you can play them as much as you want and take a break whenever. It will not take long to get back to functional endgame status in either..so there's no feeling of being FORCED to play or you'll get left behind.


I'd say give them both a try; they both have pretty decent free trials and you can settle into whichever you like best.

I'd echo others here. If PvP is your bliss, you can't support the company that does PvP the way you like, and your current game isn't scratching that itch, try to find a game with PvP the way you like it. That doesn't mean you can't keep playing XIV for the aspects of it that you enjoy. XIV, outside of the mandatory MSQ that applies to everyone, is designed so players can engage with what they like, ignore what they don't, take a break if necessary, and not have to worry about falling behind and not being able to catch up. So it works very well to play other games while enjoying the parts of XIV that one likes.

I'm not much of a PvPer myself so I can't speak for that aspect of the game, be it in WoW or FFXIV, but as a fellow long-time WoW player who reluctantly quit TBCC despite still enjoying the game, I can relate with your plight on an emotional level.

I started my journey with Blizzard with Starcraft 1 and played WoW since the days of old, the Vanilla Era. The recent developpements have me completely heart broken and while I can't justify supporting that company, part of me still misses the game (TBC that is, I wouldn't touch retail with a ten foot pole, unless it was to beat it senseless using said pole).

Some of my WoW raid team transfered here, to FFXIV, and it's been a fantastic experience so far. It made me realize how I haven't allowed myself to fully enjoy games other than WoW, as if I'd always be bidding my time before my innevitable return to the king of MMOs. My personal recommendation, assuming the lack of good PvP content is a sacrifice you're willing to make, would be to just... give FFXIV an honest try. Join an FC, interract with the community, make yourself a nice bowl of popcorn and enjoy the phenomenal story told through quality cutscenes. This game has been a breath of fresh air for me after subsisting on WoW's stale oxygen for far too long, maybe it'll be the same for you.

And of it isn't, don't despair! There's plenty of games out there, old and new, that you now have the freedom to try and enjoy.

Hold onto the memories you made in WoW, but don't deny yourself the pleasure of making new ones!

you can remember all of the good times you had but the goal should not be to relive or recreate memories but to go forth and create new ones

Think of it this way - there's probably games you used to play a lot when you were younger but haven't touched for years. Just like there's restaurants or coffee shops you might have enjoyed going to that have since closed down or you can no longer get to easily due to moving far away.

FFXIV isn't going to be around forever or even necessarily keep you interested for as long as it does exist. So with that in mind, I think it's best to be careful and not just replace one time sink with another time sink purely on the basis of wanting something to fill your free time with.

If you enjoy FFXIV? Great! Play it. Don't force it to 'fit' if it doesn't click with you, though - there's other potential options on the market that you could try. Some of them MMO's, others single player.

Above all else, no matter what controversies a company is involved in...the fond memories aren't necessarily invalidated. I stopped supporting Blizzard when racist and sexist comments were made by writers hired by the company. It was shocking to me that such horrible things were being written on Twitter and so I voted with my wallet and haven't looked back since.

Yet I still made some friends during my time playing WoW and I'm in touch with some of them to this very day.

Might not be the best take but I personally do think that you can enjoy the product and not condone their behavior. If you have such attachment to the game's then enjoy all tye hard work they put into the game even under those circumstances.

Though to get my PvP in terms of arena I have been playing more ToR as of late you maybe could look into that game to get your pvp fix. That said I do understand cause WoW classic did bring a lot of that old freshness back into my life ranking up was annoying to say the least but the energy around it more then made up for it. Getting ranking 14 was something I was not able to do when the game was released I was too young and I am sure my experience differed greatly from those in the past but the meeting of new people was great and I made many friends on my journeys to rank 14 and gates.

I was looking forward to TBC but sadly it felt more like retail then classic. Though I will say if TBC is something you want to play and enjoy do not let the actions of the company prevent you from experiencing a period of the game you may find enjoyable.

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Originally Posted by Xathyr

2/2

So you guys can guess how hyped i was when Blizzard announced TBC classic, not only was that the first expansion i played but also was for me the best PvP experience i had (or at least i still remember it like that) with all the social features the game still had before the Dungeon Finder bullshit appeared.

And then, for whatever reason Blizzard decided to fuck it up and bring the microtransactions back, level boosts, bots, hacks and all that lovely stuff.

My heart broke to the point were even tho i had not that much interest in FF14 I still wanted to give it a try since many people started playing it as well, and ho boi, I'm really enjoying the game, maybe i was just lucky but I've never met a more wholesome community in any online game on my whole life, since day 1 people have been nothing but helpful, many people has given their time to explain bosses mechanics and no one got mad if someone messed up, on the contrary they were rather cheerful, for no reason other than me being a new player some other players have given me many gifts in the form of minions or some other items.

And not to mention the feeling of meeting a bard in Limsa Lominsa playing a theme that you recognize and that alone becoming the reason for a long chat and a new friend :)

But even with all that positivity I still miss wow, pvp in FF14 lacks not only in deepness but also in complexity, is very straightforward and when i compare it to wow arenas it really shows that this game wasn't really made for it.

Which brings me to me making this post, I really want to play TBC again, but i refuse to support Blizzard anymore, specially after what has recently happened, i have no words to describe what this company is other than saying that is being managed by a bunch of scumbags who have turned it in probably the worst videogame company.

I've also considered starting anew on a private server, but the reason why i have never done it before is because an mmo is something about time investment and progression, and i don't like the idea of expending 1 or 2 years of my life on a character when i have no certainty that he's not gonna disappear one day either because they decide to reset the server or it closes, i truly don't know how they operate or do things.

So, if anyone has managed to read me up until here, what would be your advice? I'm really opened to any suggestions or comments that you may have and i will really appreciate them.

With not much else to say, thanks for reading me :)

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If PvP is a big thing for you, you might want to consider New World when it comes out. A lot of ex-wow players have been singing it's praises from a pvp standpoint and a forced necessity to group and socialize for mutual survival and benefit.

This isn't a game for open world PvP but the instanced PvP is good. There is objective PvP in frontline and rival wings and direct PvP with the feast and plenty of rewards like mounts and glamour to work towards. I don't know what you mean about depth because there are a lot of abilities you can get creative with including shields, heals, lifesteal, stuns, sleeps, silences, binds, knockbacks, pullbacks, gap closers, damage downs, healing downs, AoE (which yes is useful if there is a crowd of people because it can change the course of which team wins) and I find it all interesting.

What you may not have considered is there are other forms of PvP in this game such as Chocobo Racing, Triple Triad tournaments, Lord of Verminion and rankings for certain things like deep dungeons, which although soloable the top players are listed.

One angle I wanted to note is the feeling isn't all that weird, and not one you should be disturbed by, more in, I think, just accept it as a natural phase.

13. 13 years. That's roughly the life span of a pet. When your loved pet passes, you mourn. WoW has been your good friend and company for many years, even for people who are naturally growing apart from the game might feel some weird sense of separation.

My suggestion is to think of it like stages of grief and work to acceptance, your friend, pet, what have your confidant of fun.

You know what they say though. The king is dead, long live the king. Which I don't mean to say FFXIV has won, or whatever, I mean in so much that when something gives way it makes room for something else.

The other angle just being, at least personally, THIRTEEN YEARS !! lol That's a lot of value, just think you've had a great time but now you need a new book. Rather than rereading the same book, rewatching the same movie, remix 49 of batman, maybe you want to try something else- that's okay that doesn't mean you can't come back later, it's alright to try another thing for a while. I like pizza but I dont want to eat it for the rest of my life :p. 13 years is great value for a game, some game companies, or really dedicated players, may expect more but seriously 13 years of value is just awesome, it's okay to be like "okay I've been at this dinner table long enough, it's time to go try something different, maybe I'll come back and it'll taste like my childhood memories again, maybe it wont, but I know I don't have to eat at this table forever". While I believe in giving devs a chance, they're human and deserve human respect, it's also important not to give companies (not the human, but the machine at large) the impression that you'll eat at that table no matter what... because they may take complete utter advantage of you and that's going to be awful.

I think everything is natural and sometimes a natural process of life is the entire cycle- it's quite unusual to be stuck in spring the entire time. At some point winter comes.

Metaphors aside, advise reads as your feelings are completely normal and I think it's going to just be part of a process- dabble your feet into a bunch of things (and do what you're doing, by asking for advise) to see what might be other interesting things to try. As for being more helpful on that aspect of recommendations, ... I suck lol. The most PvP I've done is MOBAs and WoW, so my recommendations are long pauses :p. I just wanted to note the value and natural aspect of your feelings, both including and even excluding some of the issues Blizzard has been embroiled around.

If you feel like putting the time into two MMOs at once I'd say play 14 for the community u enjoy and whatever else content u find enjoyable in this game, try out alot of stuff in 14, u may find something u really like.

For your PVP desires I'd say try Elder Scrolls Online, I hear they have a fantastic PVP mode, I didn't PVP when I played it but I sure enjoyed being a argoanian lizard dude and a khajiit cat dude.

Don't give Blizzard money right now. Simple as that. Exercise some small amount of self control where your reservations govern your desires.

As an eternal gamehopper, let me give you the ultimate advice: just don't try to replace your favorite. 90% of the fun of trying a new game is seeing how the new games does things differently, not how it does the same.

For instance, I love FFXIV for the story and great community (by the way), but I love BDO for the Seige/pvp drama and (apparently) toxic community. You don't need to maintain the same tastes across games, nor do you need to be attracted to only one type of game or any particular playstyle.

You can meet great people no matter what game you play, and you can keep in touch with those great people from outside of the games you play.

A large thing MMO players (in particular) have problems with is learning how to play a new game. While some enjoy playing the same game for 10+ years, it's easy to forget how to get into a new game in that time. Just use this time to relearn discovery, and the people will fall into place over time.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Think of it this way - there's probably games you used to play a lot when you were younger but haven't touched for years. Just like there's restaurants or coffee shops you might have enjoyed going to that have since closed down or you can no longer get to easily due to moving far away.

FFXIV isn't going to be around forever or even necessarily keep you interested for as long as it does exist. So with that in mind, I think it's best to be careful and not just replace one time sink with another time sink purely on the basis of wanting something to fill your free time with.

If you enjoy FFXIV? Great! Play it. Don't force it to 'fit' if it doesn't click with you, though - there's other potential options on the market that you could try. Some of them MMO's, others single player.

Above all else, no matter what controversies a company is involved in...the fond memories aren't necessarily invalidated. I stopped supporting Blizzard when racist and sexist comments were made by writers hired by the company. It was shocking to me that such horrible things were being written on Twitter and so I voted with my wallet and haven't looked back since.

Yet I still made some friends during my time playing WoW and I'm in touch with some of them to this very day.

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The decay in its story/lore quality did not help, either. There are still aspects of that that I consider it did much better than other MMOs, but the game has become too much of a mess for me to ever return to it, and that's without even considering Blizzard's bizarre state. As you say, it's best not to replace one addiction with another, and so I keep an open eye even while playing 14.

If you stay with FF14, I'd recommend not focusing too hard on what FF14 doesn't have that WoW does. Those sort of comparisons dampen your enjoyment of a game because you're always thinking of that thing WoW does better and how much you miss it. It makes you lose track of all the great things FF14 has. For me, there's all sorts of things WoW does better, from the toybox to pet battles to smooth combat and so on, but this game has become my home all the same because the good points make it a game worth playing. I love having passionate devs, no treadmills, great storyline, decent graphics, a nice community and so on. I simply like the game. It's fun. WoW wasn't any more.

No game can be a true WoW replacement. Every game is unique in its own way. You're simply putting down one hobby and taking the chance to try a new one. It's a new opportunity with its own adventure and countless great memories ahead, there's no reason to stay back trying to resurrect fragments of old memories. FF14 is not the only option, there are a number of new MMO's out there that are shaping up to be promising. It's not a bad time to be gaming.

I heard Guild Wars 2 pvp is good so maybe you want to try that.

Hi there again and woah i surely did not expect that many replies.

Ok so, I've been reading all of your comments, and so far trying new games has been the most common reply, and... sure I've been considering a few options for PvP alone like New World, although the game's still on beta and it kinda looks more like a Dark Souls or a Guild Wars 2 than a mmorpg replacement, i probably will still give it a shot eventually.

Is just that right now I'm still trying to overcome the fact that i will probably end up not playing TBCC even tho i've been wanting to do so for over a decade, and sure, not everyone working at Blizzard is a scumbag, and sure, refusing to give them any more money will probably end up damaging more the average workers than the ones i want to make them pay for all they've done since they have so much money that even if wow had to close servers their wallet won't even notice, but still, right now, giving them any money will make me feel like shit and unless i see come true changes being done (which seems unlikely tbh) i will remain away from any Blizzard game for now.

Still considering joining a private server only for arenas, but probably what i need right now is to move on and see what else could i enjoy.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I don't know what you mean about depth because there are a lot of abilities you can get creative with

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From what I've seen so far the main difference between wow and ff14 regarding pvp is the built up for characters which can be listed:

-In wow you have like 5 to 10 damaging/healing skills and everything else are resources for survival and utility whereas in FF14 you have like 10 to over 20 damaging/healing skills and everything else is for survival and utility.
-In wow every class has a few means to apply CC whereas in FF14 classes only have 1 spell (either stun, sleep, etc...) and is mostly irrelevant since it only last for 2 seconds in pvp and if i'm not mistaken there are 2 classes with no CC at all, and sure there are diminishing returns and chaining CC still needs "some" consideration since spamming stun on a target will render the duration on that target after every application, but same goes for wow with more different types to keep in mind for every class.
-In wow you have 1.5 seconds of GCD whereas in FF14 you start with 2.5 seconds to make it playable for console players i guess, which makes the game way less reactive and demands much less attention to stuff like burst damage.

It may seem like very minor changes at glance, but i felt the amount of thinking and considerations to be way less in FF14 than it was for wow and also much less demanding in reflexes and coordination.

And of course there are some other factors that makes the game to feel less demanding than wow in pvp but that would require a pretty long in depth explanation.

Insofar as MMO's are concerned, in my opinion there's three major options on the market right now in the form of Final Fantasy XIV, Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2.

In addition, there's upcoming MMO's set to be released at some point over the few years. There's New World, as mentioned already, but also Pantheon, Blue Protocol and Ashes of Creation. With any luck at least one of them will prove successful and serve as a major rival to FFXIV so that things do not stagnate in the industry.

As far as PvP is concerned, I hope to see more focus on it within FFXIV. We're supposedly getting a new mode in Endwalker, so I guess we'll see how that fares in terms of popularity and staying power.

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Originally Posted by FreeJeebus

Blizzard did no wrong. Snowflake. If he wants to go play WoW let him. Go cry somewhere else.

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So you are okay with rape? Got it.

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Originally Posted by Xathyr

From what I've seen so far the main difference between wow and ff14 regarding pvp is the built up for characters which can be listed:

-In wow you have like 5 to 10 damaging/healing skills and everything else are resources for survival and utility whereas in FF14 you have like 10 to over 20 damaging/healing skills and everything else is for survival and utility.

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I'm assuming you've done some PvP in FFXIV so I'm not meaning to talk down to you by any means.

The skill bar in PvP is quite different from PvE, in that most of the base-rotations are 1 button. You might not even have 10 abilities on your PvP bar depending on the job.

Utility PvP skills are much more useful than PvP overall (things like Holmgang, stuns or slows for example). And a lot of the jobs have access to skills that are quite different from PvE.

In my very limited experience it's those kind of lock abilities and burst damage that are the big deal in PvP for DPS. Basically everyone pouncing on a target harder than the healers can heal.

It's fun, but if you wanted more skill-based or nuanced play for PVP, Guild Wars 2 PVP is quite fun, especially World Vs. World.

If Arena is your thing, is looking into other MMORPGs really the right choice? Arena itself doesn't have the massively multi-player aspect. It's essentially lobby co-op content.

It could be what you really need is 2 separate games - one for when you want your MMORPG fix then a second for when you want your Arena-style PvP.

Not personally knowing you and what you enjoy, it's difficult to make good suggestions.

I am in the same boat honestly I play ffxiv for over while not bad pvp isn't great I get that itch scratched in another game namely eso ffxiv is pretty chill in regards you can play other games and not be to terribly behind.

Hey OP, big feels for you. I'm in the same boat with WoW. 14+ years there. Played every expansion launch, and so on. Only missed a few patches at launch, bought the books, watched the lore videos. I'm the same in thought about Blizzard and their disgusting behaviors.

I do diverge from you in that I'm big into PvE, RP, story, and lore. But my suggestion is about the same. You should reach out to your old PvP friends and see what they're playing. Maybe go join them there? It sounds like you have a lot of fun getting together with the boys and rolling some noobs.

You might have to do what I did and just step away from the MMO genre for a hot minute. I did after I saw what a train wreck SL was after launch. It might be worthwhile to just spend time on some IRL hobbies and enjoy them, help you work out your thoughts and what you're wanting from these games?