One of the reasons WoW had 14 million subscribers

[Saii]

This is completely unrelated but, I feel it needs to be said. WoW has been out for close to 10 years now. Why exactly are people comparing subscriber numbers to FFXIV when the game has only been out a month? Just doesn't seem to be a fair comparison.

[samst]

OP's not wrong though. Instant abilities are weird in this game, especially when trying to get them off between non-instant attacks

[Azgarde]

I have to agree with OP's main concern. Instant abilities are not really instant, and even if the GCD has a 2.5 seconds, there's still an inner 1 second CD for instant abilities.

The game itself is really appealing, raid mechanics are honestly awesome, and it definitely has enough potential to be a fierce WoW competitor in the long term.

However, it really feels like SE want to develop an action game where you need to always be on your toes, but don't provide us with the necessary tools.

How many times did I cast Benediction on a tank that had 500hp Left only to realise my Bene has been used but the tank never got healed and died ? There was a 1-1.5 seconds delay between the cast and the tank receiving the heal.

Also, there's always a 0.3 seconds lag on every ability. Example: I am casting Medica, but then people moved and aren't stacked together. Instead of cancelling my cast, running there and re-casting, I just have to start moving at 0.3 seconds left on the cast. My cast will NOT get interrupted.

Even if it's less than a second, in this type of game, it really does matter. 0.5 seconds might be the difference between a win and a wipe.

Square said they didn't want to stress servers and only make a checkup on your location every 0.3 seconds. It will end up not working in the long term.

Make a boss ability where the delay between the visual for the spell effect and the time we have to move is 1.5 seconds. Now, consider the AoE appeared 0.3 seconds later than it really got cast, consider the 0.3 seconds server checkup on our location. You have 0.6 seconds less to move. So a 1.5 seconds time reaction is going down to a 0.9 seconds reaction time.

Crazy isn't it ?

[Reslin]

Making games these days is much more expensive then when FFXI and WoW first came out, businesses have to make their money back otherwise shareholders won't be happy.

SE stated that they aim to have a similar success and subscriber base to FFXI in it's prime. That's 500,000. Rift is not one of the more "successful" mmo's. In fact when they went Free To Play they barely had a jump in numbers. Free to Play isn't necessarily a bad thing. LOTRO had a decent player base even before they went free to play. They went free to play because it made their dying game more profitable (D&D online) so they figured it'd do the same even for their more successful LOTRO. SWTOR wanted 1,000,000 players. This is because they had to pay companies back for the loans they made as well as E.A. to publish the game for them. Note that while Free to Play isn't ideal they have enough players to make their money back it'll just take longer. It's enough to be profitable.

Here's where SE is different, they don't owe anything to anyone because they paid from their own wallet so to speak. They also didn't need to pay a publisher either because they self published the game much like Blizzard does with their own games. In that regard FFXIV is quite a bit cheaper than SWTOR and making back as much money as they need to make back and in the time frame isn't necessary.

[Tomiangu]

I tried WoW for a little while but was put off by the usual '10 of these, 15 of those' mechanics. Also the graphic style was a downer for me.
I was reluctant to try FF14 since I had seen some videos of the 'old' version which seemed almost like a 'turn based' system. Thought I give it a try anyway and was pleasantly surprised. I play an archer which has the most mobility when it comes to battle. I can run and cast at the same time.
Skills in all MMO's have a cooldown time. the only difference in between FF14 and some other 'action' combat MMO's is that in FF, just about all skills cool down at the same time but, the cooldown time can be filled by the skills that are not included in the regular cooldown. Also, don't we get a quicker skill/magic rate at higher levels?

[Dorfentyme]

I can't believe people here are actually defending instant abilities not firing off when they should. Good job, white knights. You've reached a new low.

[Andrys]

I don't think they ever had that many subscribers, think 11.8 or so was their peak, never bothered looking into it though.

I'm pretty sure WoW got that popular because it was released when the MMO genre was still incredibly unpopular and with the name of Blizzard and the IP Warcraft, they managed to pull in many new gamers into the world of MMOs and then it just spread like a wildfire.
The MMO selection back then was incredibly small and limited, so a game like WoW could stand out easily.

There will "never" be another MMO that is released now or in the future that will pull in 11.8m+ subscribers unless it's a revolutionary MMO, so pulling in 1 million is still an incredibly successful MMO.

The most real subscribers they ever had was about 4.5million. The rest are internet cafe logins which they justified as counting as a subscription.

[Tigerwong]

We started playing WoW 7 years ago because it was Blizzard. Blizzard North had the reputation of releasing only GREAT titles at that time. Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Diablo 2. And of course in WoW, we were thrilled to see all Warcraft 3 characters live in front of us, which was alot more interacting than Warcraft 3. I mean you can't visit Thrall anytime you like in Warcraft 3.

Secondary reason was because there was so few MMOs in the western market that everyone knew only WoW. They were lucky to be the first. If it was released in Asia, WoW would have GG'd 7 years ago.

[TankerTanker]

While the argument OP made about subscribers is absolutely ridiculous, I do hate that a silence takes so long to get off.

[HurtigeKarl]

I can't believe people here are actually defending instant abilities not firing off when they should. Good job, white knights. You've reached a new low.

Noone is defending instant abilities not firing off when they should. The problem is though that your "should" and the "should" of the devs are not the same, which one do you think is more important?

Instant cast != instant animation. It is logical and simple. Casting in this game is a mechanic strongly related to being interrupted; if you have 0 casting time, you won't be able to be interrupted by enemy mob or your movement.