FFXIV better stop doing what WoW's doing, because its losing millions of subs.

[Nadirah]

The reason WoW is losing subs has to do with the fact that the game isn't as fun as it used to be. Garrisons are horrible. Raiding is as fun as ever. Professions have been gutted and don't even feel like professions anymore. Basically if you don't raid there is NOTHING to do in WoW. The same is not true in FF14. This is why FF14 is better. Gating content has absolutely nothing to do with loss of subs.

Raid or die is also why I left EQ2. Couldn't do the newest dungeons they added when I played last with my friends because I raided, they didn't, and they got trucked because they didn't have the gear for it. My dirge tanked the place with relative ease compared to the SK tank.

I saw the new expansion content thing.. I'm not holding my breath, it looks like something blown through in maybe a month, tops.

[Doki]

WoW will jump back up to 8 million for about 3 months when their new expansion comes out. It's had enough expansions now that much of the subscriber base as learned to not grind as hard for equipment that will be outdated 3 days into the next expansion.

[KingOfAbyss]

Since most MMOs copy-paste stuff from each other, making it close-to-be-clones of WoW,

How about like Ragnarok Online:

1- Make Advanced Jobs! Could be either a Combination of existing jobs. A lenghty Relic-quest-like to 'mend' together Let's Say PLD and WHM to make a Crusader! or PLD-SMN to fight alongside an Angel! *could be WHM-SMN for that one

As we can see here, there would be so many combination possible that those would would want branch-type specs for PLD to become more of a DPS, that would resolve the issue of not changing anything on SE DEV's side.

You want PLD as a DPS? Link it with MONK => New job unlocked: CHAMPION! *This is an example only, so it could be DRG-NIN, NIN-MNK, choose your pick! ^^

So far, PLD could be mixed with 11 other Jobs, so IIRC, that could be another 66 Combinations? Awesome.

2- a Super Novice!

Like the Blue mage (unless they plan to make it alive in here) you could take a limited skillset from each class/jobs (not only the Cross-Class skills), and so you would feel like creating a more unique character, to suit your tastes, until once again people will go with the cookie-cutter and select the specific skills a Super novice should have before getting into Raids or being accepted into PF..

Anyway, I'm sure you guys have more Ideas, I personnally LOVE my number 1 here.

Enjoy the game! ^^

[Ayuhra]

People are leaving WoW for lots of reasons.

-Professions (what's left of them) are time gated. You can only make x of a thing in a day.
-Higher end gear is currently gated behind Apexis dailies if you do not raid
-The ability to fly is gated behind a huge meta achievement that involves, yes, still more Apexis dailies.
-Developers have been very arrogant and refuse to admit that people have a problem. All they seem interested in is their shareholders. "Oh, people are playing WoW less because Diablo III released in China". Honestly. They visibly want their players' money but don't care at all about their players' happiness.
-Content patches are very slow to release. You think this game has a slow cycle you ain't seen nothin'. Siege of Orgrimmar lasted a year, then we got Warlords. A few months into that we got selfies and Twitter integration. About six months in we got Tanaan Jungle and Hellfire Citadel. Since the latest expansion was just announced, and since Hellfire is supposedly the last content patch of the expansion we can expect another year of Hellfire and nothing else.

So it's not so much the gating itself, MMOs will always have gating, it's that in WoW it feels like a very obvious way of slowing us down because if we went through content much faster we'd realize there is none. And the grind to get there is GRINDY. I know people complain about grinds in FFXIV but Apexis dailies are an absolute chore.

On top of this are the facts that one faction's lore is given entirely in tie-in products, all the "cool" mounts are shop only (in game ones are all reskins), garrisons mean never having to go out into the world...except for Apexis dailies, and you can keep your own mine and herb garden which has crippled the economy within the game. Really the expansion is littered with problems. If "Gating" is the last straw, then people mean the gating of flight behind a boring grind fest after an entire expansion of boring grind fests.

[Higashikata]

oh hey, this topic again.

Reminder FF franchise is historically story oriented and OP is complaining about required story.

[Colt47]

The OP is sort of right. The reason WoW had such a big decline is that they had no real content patches planned after the last major raid and all the existing stuff with Garisons and the like were major grinds. In fact, the entire end game was basically mind numbing grinding the likes of which we haven't seen since the beginning of Mists of Pandaria.

The issue in FFXIV is a little different. Here we have fights that are way too high tuned at end game and a bunch of content going to waste from late 2.0 days thanks to not keeping the rewards for doing the content relevant to the expansion, such as Gold Saucer, the Detective Quests, and the Post Moogle stuff. I mean, people can still do the older 2.0 content, it's just that they got to weigh doing those activities against grinding end game currency or some other currency. 9/10 times the daily currency grinder is going to take precedence over the non-rewarding older content.

[Shneibel]

He was talking about Warlords Of Draenor, the last WoW expansion, not Heavensward

I was talking about WoD, the WoW expansion, not HW the XIV expansion. I think you just read one thing and thought another because you even use the acronym WoD in your post to describe HW lol.

my apologize...brain malfunction sometime

[Pentt]

I play both WoW and FFXIV and let me just say that WoD didn't fail due to gated content. It failed thanks to awful dev communication and lack of content. I remember how appalled people were when the WoW Devs tried to label 3.1 a major content patch when all we got was literally Twitter and a selfie cam.

WoW's team has gotten lazy, we were stuck with siege of gorillas for a full year, and only got one content path in draenor, with then only puttin a few hotfixes in between while the kick back with a brewski. Meanwhile yoshi p's team works hard to deliver us actual content patches every 3 months. Not a hard choice what gives nee bang for your buck

[TheFatHousecat]

Losing subs to ff14.....

^ This right here ^

and besides, even if WoW is down to 5M-ish subs, can you name any other game with as many subscribers? Do you even understand how much money they make per month with "only" 5M subs?

[SDaemon]

Well...not everyone knows WoW terms...I also thought WoD myself after reading a bit more.
I didn't even know WoW has another expansion.

They didn't have to know WoW terminology when I literally made mention that it was a WoW expansion in my original comment.
Anyway, like I said they probably just got the situation confused.