How Cataclysm killed WoW is how Heavensward will kill FFXIV.

[Ayuhra]

Heavensward is suffering from delayed content at the moment due to the developers taking a (in my opinion well deserved) vacation but I don't think it's dull. Granted I am a new player and I don't even bother capping esoterics each week. Sometimes I play alt characters, level alt jobs, tool around with Triple Triad...I feel like FFXIV is not designed to be consumed in a week and if you do consume it in a week you will burn yourself out.

The problem Cataclysm had is SIMILAR. A ton of effort was put into the world, the quests, the leveling experience, and once you got to cap you realized there wasn't as much there as there was in Wrath (although I did still enjoy some of the content patches like Rage of the Firelands). However the issue of the year-long patch cycle didn't come in until Dragon Soul which was the end of that expansion's life. We're still at the beginning of Heavensward's life so I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. From what I understand 2.0 was bare bones compared to 2.x so it will be interesting to see what comes down the pipeline.

[Khalithar]

The problem Cataclysm had is SIMILAR. A ton of effort was put into the world, the quests, the leveling experience, and once you got to cap you realized there wasn't as much there as there was in Wrath (although I did still enjoy some of the content patches like Rage of the Firelands).

I did enjoy the whole Rage of the Firelands patch, I'm not generally one to believe that adding daily quests/daily hubs is real content, but at least Firelands had that base and various factions you recruited which gave a definite sense of progression to the whole place that I really appreciated. Getting the different druids on your side, the home base gaining more NPC's, etc. That was awesome. I just hope that SE doesn't go the daily hub route and call it content.

[Dree-Elle]

Why can't people just let WoW be WoW and let FF be FF? Keep comparing apples and oranges and all you'll get in the end is jelly.

[Khalithar]

Why can't people just let WoW be WoW and let FF be FF? Keep comparing apples and oranges and all you'll get in the end is jelly.

Because MMO's don't exist in a vacuum. It's worth paying attention to what other MMO's are doing, if only as an example of what not to do. If one game is making the same mistake as another game (not that I necessarily agree with the OP in this specific thread mind) then it's worth pointing out. If one MMO has a really good system that players like, it's a good idea to look in to it. I will say that just because one game does it doesn't mean this game should, but sometimes popular features and mechanics are popular for a reason, because they're good.

[Velox]

What ever happened to that thousand deaths of FFXIV thread from a while back, that was hilarious.

I had many laughs over that thread. Truth be told, as much as players don't want to admit it, they have no idea what doom-n-gloom really is. They like to think they do, and act like they do, but what I found out from working for a certain "organization" over the years, people in general are dumb and/or ignorant and don't really know what's best for them without a little handholding (which I had to do for so many years).

These types of threads are endless sources of amusement for those who can see with eyes opened.

[midnitdragoon]

Bring back final fantasy xiv 1.0. I think people miss that world.

[Wildsprite]

to the OP, you know it is only the start of the expansion. I would wait with your paranoid ideas till we get a bit more into it.

[Ayuhra]

The only thing I miss from WoW is the very smooth feeling of actually physically playing it and the superb encounter design in the raids (and horizontal progression, I guess, but WoW has been all over the map with that lately). Those are important factors no doubt but everything outside those died in Warlords of Draenor. To me Warlords is what is killing WoW. Maybe not financially but certainly in terms of player enthusiasm. I do not see Yoshida going down the same path WoW has gone down. Activision got greedy and decided from now on WoW would have yearly expansions with little content once you've gotten to level cap. Warlords is an iPad game with weirdly good MMO raiding in it. Legion could be good but everything so far looks like "Amazing leveling experience, nothing at level cap" again.

FFXIV has some real passion behind it still. The developers seem to WANT to provide a meaningful experience and, unlike the Blizzard devs, they do a good job communicating with the players... Even despite the language barrier. I think people see the delayed content here and think we're going to end up with a WoW-esque 6 month-year long patch cycle and that's not the case. SE has already said that after this patch the cycles will go back to their usual schedule. It's important to point out one single design decision did not kill WoW, there's been a build up of bad karma over there for years. Mists I think was genuinely great (I liked it more than Cat) but they handled the end of the expansion badly and used it to lead us into the worst expansion yet. All Activision wants is their players' money, not their respect. It's never been more obvious. People are seeing the strings and they are leaving. The monster that is World of WarCraft is eating itself. Square Enix would have to TRY to sink that low so quickly.

So I am going to stick with FFXIV for a while yet because I think it WON'T die as WoW has: in a spectacular flaming wreckage of greed and ego.

[KaedrianLiang]

"Raid" only perspective. Less than a 3rd of the WoW player population devoted themselves to raiding. Lackluster raiding is not the downfall of WoW. 50% of WoW subscriptions are mainland china, MMORPG genre is up and down there with countless competitors. Lately WoW has been suffering in China because of the new and innovative mmorpg's being released, FFXIV being one of them. So what is the real downfall of WoW? Not entertaining the China player base. When wow peaked at 15million users worldwide during WotLK 7 million of those users were from Mainland china, 2.5mil in the US, 3mil in europe the rest split between south america, taiwan, korea, and everywhere else.

One of the largest contributor to WoW's decline is the golden age of F2P MOBA games (more specifically League of Legends).

As an MMORPG ages, so does it's player base. mid-late cataclysm just happened to be that point where the fan base that began with WC3 and went on to play WoW during their late HS-college years were starting to graduate and enter their life long career. WoW requires too much time investment to stay in the alpha list of raiders for a guild. My guild prioritized players that were available to raid the most and kept an active subscription during declining months. So what game to fill the gaps between working, gf/wife/family, IRL social stuff? MOBA.

For me, WoW was done with the death of Arthas, he had to answer for his crimes in WC3, which is one of the best and longest running platter of story i've ever experienced to date. Since then i just took a laid back WoW engagement, staying in touch with my raid guild, who are also friends that i grew up with and going through expansion story and getting a taste for the features are they are released. My main game of focus is FFXIV because its been very successful at keeping me entertained with an extreme variety of content and its compelling storyline.

How do i feel about cataclysm? They perfected questing in WoW. WotLK questing was pretty damn good, but the cataclysm questing from 80 to 85 was amazing, as you progressed through the story bound questing you just wanted more and more.

Are "Raid only" types of players ever going to learn that they make up less than a third of the player population? OP is invalid.

[OPneedNerfs]

People like to forget that WoW is a VERY long running game which launched in 2004 and has had a growing,steady playerbase for a good 6+years before Cataclysm and even now after Cataclysm was released, their subs did not plummet to a crazy low amount that the game is "dead".

People like to blame content patches and game changes for drop in subscriptions but its definitely more of the pioneers who have played and enjoyed the game for 6+ years have moved on to a different phase of their life and that an old game, no matter how much content is added, won't attract as many newer players as it did on launch.

Same thing is happening here in XIV Reborn, but it being still relatively new since launch (2 years+) subs definitely aren't dropping in numbers overall as there are still a sizeable amount of people who have not heard/played XIV yet even with the pioneers dropping their subs.

This argument that the "game is dying just like WoW" might hold water if this game was about as old or coming close to age in years but in its current state, it is nowhere near.