FFXIV has some serious competition with WoW: Legion

[Duelle]

We played for 2 weeks, kept leveling up and hoping to see something that would make the game worth playing. In the end we noticed we were always just waiting for the "next thing" (expansion content, dungeons, areas, unlocking raid finder just to see there were no raid we could even do) to be something better, but from a newbie perspective at least it was all just one boring quest or dungeon after another.

I understand mileage varies, but I have to ask if you were actually read the text for the quests and piecing stuff together as you did them. I can agree that some were very lackluster (post-Cataclysm Westfall in particular was absolutely ridiculous), but progression generally goes from you being a random yahoo that's helping the local authorities to being sent to various places and doing more dangerous things as you get stronger.

We didn't find the world interesting or explorable at all and the dungeons were just about running after a tank and rushing through stuff.

Which means it ain't that different than FFXIV, specially in the case of the latter.

The battle system was overly simplified (especially compared to FFXIV) and there were practically no mechanics.

There are mechanics. They're simply not as pronounced and involve things we don't do here. Some bosses have buffs that need to be removed (either Purged by shaman, or Mass Dispelled by priests, or Spellstolen by mages). There's also the matter of interrupts, which is something this game almost never uses. Bosses usually have abilities that are inconveniences or can potentially lead to a wipe if not interrupted, and it's generally on the DPS and the tank to make sure those abilities never go off. WoW also uses debuffs that must be removed by the healer a lot more than this game does.

I guess there's a story somewhere in there, but with the current leveling speed we were just rushing from one thing to another.

This is a legit concern. I started a shaman just to see what enhance is like at later levels (for research purposes) and I was surprised at how much the exp requirements for leveling have been nerfed. It's very alt-friendly, but I can see how newbies would have difficulty keeping up with the story if you're going solely for the current-level quests that give the best exp reward.

As an aside, I want FFXIV do to its own version of an under-water zone. SE's artists are top notch so I'd think they would do such a zone justice.

I don't even want to get started on butchering WoW's complexity, from "rotations" so simple an Ice Mage could do high DPS in WoW to making dungeons effortless with even mythic being easy if you're playing with people you know are alright.

Anything said on that is subjective at best. I enjoy simple design and combat, so some of the changes have not bothered me that much. Ret being a mess (judgment mechanic, turned from a holy knight into a not-so-strong knight that gives away their damage potential to other people) notwithstanding.

With Yoshida saying FFXIV rotations are too complex in 3.x, I sure hope he doesn't look to WoW for inspiration as he just seems to pick up their worst ideas and somehow make them more lackluster, such as Garrisons/Squadrons.

To be fair, Everything they've implemented with this patch goes back to the thing about making max level players do old content.

I like to think I suggested a decent blueprint for squadrons. Too bad they didn't use any of it.