How Cataclysm killed WoW is how Heavensward will kill FFXIV.

[StouterTaru]

Cataclysm streamlined the raid environments to an extreme degree, and ensured that absolutely everyone could experience everything the game had to offer without great investment in one's character or the server's raiding community.

One major difference right there, FFXIV never had a "raiding community." The hardest content took at most 8 people, is instanced, and you were locked out each week after beating it. There's no world boss that takes a full guild to spawn and defeat.

[o3o]

I still got enough stuff going for me to keep me interested.

I got the airships I have to work up for 3.1 airship fun.
Alex 3 savage to wipe and progress slowly on Q_Q
Fc members to get up to speed and peeps to talk to.
Botanist to level (those trees need to die >. >)

But thats just me. I do feel like there should be more dungeons. I'm tired of alwaysweape.

[harpharp]

Personally, the only thing that got me going was the story. In WoW, i would have not played cata if not for raid finder . It was very horrible doing wotlk. Just too much drama raiding with others, time spent doing bosses i would have cleared it solo with npcs. I still remember this boss thaddius. I was in a guild that has many of their own rl friends and we cleared it in one try when it was relevant. Then i logged on to my death knight alt in a large guild in another server. I wasted 4 hrs doing the boss because there were 4 people, who keeps failing to go left when you have to and go right, which is like the only mechanic a dps has really to pay attention.


There was only misery in doing raid bosses for wotlk for me. If the lich king story wasnt epic, i would have unsubbed a long time ago.


And i subbed for heavensward because the story and music is nice . If i knew this game has no duty finder i will instantly chargeback my ffxiv purchase

[hagare]

It wouldn't be a normal day in any game forum without a "Game is dying!!!!" thread on the front page. xD

or a thread that spawns from another thread.
I've seen at least 4 threads including this one that spawned from "that" thread >_>

[rappa]

What could you do?

- Alexander Savage
- Alexander Normal
- Crafting
- Gathering
- Leveling 2.x jobs
- Leveling 3.0 jobs
- PVP
- Triple Triad
- Chocobo Races
- Play the market board game and earn money
- Help friends
- Cap Esoterics
- Others random options.

If you can't check at least one option of the list. What is the reason to play? Are you searching the carrot on the stick? Still there, don't wait for Dev put for you. Grab one and just do it. Don't let dreams be dreams (lol). If you don't enjoy the game, take a break, play another games and come back when you need.

[Khalithar]

The start of Cataclysm was actually marked by an *increase* in difficulty of getting things done, particularly when it came to heroic dungeons (compared to the much easier Wrath iteration). Getting into and completing raids used the same difficulty approach that had been seen previously, except that you now had to choose between sizes (10 or 25, not both). Streamlining of raid content during Cata came with LFR during Dragon Soul - the last raid/content patch, and after the subscriber numbers had already started to decrease.

Very much this. Wrath's raids were very approachable and were fairly regularly pugged (except for Ulduar, but I digress) and at the end of the Wrath cycle the final raid gave everyone a 30% buff to pretty much all of their stats. As a result when players got in to the Cata raids after being used to that, most of them got curbstomped as a result. The dungeons were harder and would destroy you in seconds if your group didn't play perfectly and the wrath way of doing dungeons (pull 5-6 groups and aoe them down) resulted in a very fast death requiring a slower more tactical approach. Until people got geared out from the raids eventually that is, but that's fine, as far as I'm concerned once you have the gear you should be able to ignore mechanics and just brute force things down. Plus the ones that actually had the best gear were players that had been forced to step up and play well, again until Dragon Soul and LFR came out.

I actually enjoyed Cata for actually requiring me to step up and get better at my class if I wanted to do the content. Then Dragon Soul came out with LFR and to me the game went downhill from there, I got my deathwing kill in normal mode (I refused to touch watered down boring LFR stuff) and then I quit the game as I didn't like the direction the game was going in or the changes they made to pld in MoP.

[Magis]

Did I say every player was in their teens or twenties no of course I didn't but even those 50 year olds got older! Yes, and those one percent were much more dedicated so you could field a 40 man. I started just before Wrath but from what I've been told half of the team could AFK but that's not relevant. Today's MMO player isn't as dedicated, or if you like, hardcore so there's more raids groups and those Vanilla one percent are spread around the game so it makes it much harder to field 40 man teams.

A case in point, Blizzard changed their hardest mode from 10 and 25 man to just 20 man - it meant it was easier to tune for one difficulty than it was for 10 and 25 man. The majority of guilds were 10 man and they either merged or completely folded. Even now people struggle to fill a 20 man team because the players just aren't there, or concentrated in one place as they were in vanilla. This is a serious problem with current Mythic raiding in WoW.

Of course "not every", but we are talking about generalizations here and that is exactly what you are doing, you are generalizing it as "Molten Core people were in their teens and early twenties", when that wasn't the case. And so what if the 50 year olds got older? If a person can do high level raiding at 20, 30, 40, or 50 it doesn't matter what their age is. It just depends on their lifestyle and time. If anything, people end up with more free time as they get older cause the kids move out and they (like one FC mate who grinded three relics) retire.

Yes, and those one percent were much more dedicated so you could field a 40 man. I started just before Wrath but from what I've been told half of the team could AFK but that's not relevant. Today's MMO player isn't as dedicated, or if you like, hardcore so there's more raids groups and those Vanilla one percent are spread around the game so it makes it much harder to field 40 man teams.

It's hard to create 40 man teams when the game is redesigned to not support them. Before TBC people were still jumping into and/or creating raid guilds. You can't make the comparison after 40mans were phased out. Also, maybe afking happened in the first dungeon MC, but anything after would just mean you'd wipe the raid.

A case in point, Blizzard changed their hardest mode from 10 and 25 man to just 20 man - it meant it was easier to tune for one difficulty than it was for 10 and 25 man. The majority of guilds were 10 man and they either merged or completely folded. Even now people struggle to fill a 20 man team because the players just aren't there, or concentrated in one place as they were in vanilla. This is a serious problem with current Mythic raiding in WoW.

Changing the raids from 40 to 20 man had nothing to do with making it easier, in fact early Karazhan was quite difficult until people cried for nerfs (like people always do). It was to make the player count requirement easier to beat, but the content itself didn't become easier.

[Ayerinn]

One major difference right there, FFXIV never had a "raiding community." The hardest content took at most 8 people, is instanced, and you were locked out each week after beating it. There's no world boss that takes a full guild to spawn and defeat.

agreed - HW doesn't even have a proper RAID yet...8-man is a large dungeon not a raid - hell, in FF14 it is basically an 8-man boss LOBBY since the "raid" is disjointed into killing a single boss at a time through a queue system. True RAIDS in FF14 are already casual... hate to break it to all the "hardcore raiders."

[Bodicca]

Cata wounded WoW and they've never recovered. They could have but honestly I don't think the developers really understood why Cata was such a disappointment. And I think that stems from the developers not understanding why WoW had been such a huge success. People are fond of saying that Cata's biggest failure was that it followed Wrath, but it's actually more than that.

With WoW, Blizzard succeeded in creating a world. A world that had its own culture, and within that culture, micro cultures. They succeeded in making everyone from the noobie quester to the hard core raiding guild master feel immersed in this world. Server communities were a thing. You had the PvPers, the WPvPers, the raiders, crafters, altoholics, twinks, the "chatters," the RPers and everything in between. There was always something FUN to do and lots of people to do it with. Even just jumping up on the blacksmith in Goldshire and sitting in the night sky chatting with friends felt good.

When I played WoW, it actually felt like I went somewhere.

And then came Cata. The world changed. I remember seeing Auberdine and Southshore for the first time. Gone. These were places I had defended from the Horde, grouped up with friends, and even at level cap had goofed around in. The park was a gaping hole. There were chasms and fires and debris everywhere. To a lot of people this was like seeing your cities and neighborhoods destroyed. The day Cata hit I saw someone I'd run with on occasion standing in Auberdine. He told me "This isn't right. I dunno'...I don't like it." He never logged in again.

Talents changed, healing changed, classes changed. A lot. While you could fly from one end of Outland and Northrend to the next, not so for the new areas. You took portals everywhere. It felt disjointed. Un"worldly." LFR became a thing as did "afking on your mount while waiting for a queue." Mid level world PvP was killed off with guard spam and the destruction of iconic places like Southshore. Deathwing was an obscure and flacid villain compared to Arthas. Dungeon finder, raid finder and eventually CRZ killed off what remained of the server communities. If you play now, you never forget you're playing a game. Which is fine, it is a game. But it isn't WoW. Not the WoW that millions of people fell in love with.

When WoD hit, 10 million people were chomping at the bit to play because, supposedly, WoW "was returning to its roots." Half those people have quit playing already. Half. And it isn't because suddenly they all got older or got families or didn't have time. There have always been people with families and jobs and kids who've played. It's because they were expecting their "world" of warcraft back. And it didn't happen.

I will always respect the developers of FFXIV for loving their own game and trying to make it the best they can. But I don't think they "get" it either.

[rappa]

With 24-man raids, a few FC could handle it.
We killed a4s 2 weeks ago, others fc members still inside a3s.

What will happen with FC like us? we would join to others hardcore groups to kill endgame content.

Atm, it's not viable 24-man raids and prolly never :/.