Surprisingly, The outdated MMO is WOW, not FFXI/XIV1.2

[Maeka]

XI is not dying. There are still thousands who play it, Asura alone has at least 2000 players on it which granted isn't near what it used to be it still quite alot. It still get's updated just nothing major anymore.

XI is running on Minimal Life Support.

There's no active development going on, other than the Ambuscade swaps and the occasional copypasta content. They can't really add new artwork or systems to the game, because they have limited access to the source code of the game, because their development team is probably less than a dozen people at this point.

They can add new things, but they are extremely limited as to WHAT they can add due to their limited access to development tools and manpower.

They had to abandon things like the new Windows UI (which would have really REALLY improved the game).

[Vhailor]

No, because the OP says that FFXI questing was good, but WoW's wasn't.

I beg to differ, because FFXI quests, a character gives you the most cryptic and vague dialogue possible so that you have NO idea what you're even supposed to DO without looking it up on a wiki.

And yes, I know FFXI released before WoW did.

As for FFXIV questing vs WoW questing, eh.

Both, game mechanics wise, are almost exactly the same.

I'd give FFXIV the minor advantage of being better at presenting the story through little cutscenes rather than an exposition dump that hardly anybody reads.

Gotcha. In FFXI's case, I'd argue vanilla WoW surpassed it, but FFXI's surpassed it later. On the one hand, it's nice to receive more guidance than FFXI, no doubt; on the other hand, once transportation becomes too efficient and mindless (i.e. later in WoW's lifespan), guided quests are just meaningless fluff. Because FFXI didn't ever implement a stupid-easy button for travel, it didn't face this problem. SE also generally features better writers than Blizzard.

In FFXIV's case, it has all the same problems of modern WoW. The quests are stupidly simple, with too much guidance.

Generally speaking, a nice mix of quests should be the ideal aim. Short and simple quests (kill-a-rat-in-the-cellar type content) should exist to simply add a bit of texture to the world. Moderately complex quests (lasting more than ten minutes) should exist to give the player an honest sense of adventure. Large quests consist mainly of the over-arching storyline, and serve to string everything together.

Both FFXI, WoW, and FFXIV did well with the storylines. The difference comes in the other two areas. FFXIV and WoW have a dearth of mid-size quests. If it doesn't involve large-scale instance(s) or the main storyline, it's paint by numbers. FFXI has a dearth of short and simple quests. Speaking personally, I'd prefer the latter. I can deal with a lack of guidance in an MMO; internet resources can fix that. They can't, however, create a sense of adventure from cookie-cutter quest objectives that take a few minutes to complete.

[Shurrikhan]

1.0 was an absolute disaster on every single front except graphics. (Which even top computers struggled to run well)

This has been blown hugely out of proportion. They were inefficient, and put huge limitations on what could be implemented, but the computer load itself wasn't much worse than what we have now except via a bug that caused SL Glide and other fullscreen features to overtax your CPU, all of which could be fixed by just running the game in borderless instead (in this case through Borderless Gaming, as there was sadly no default option for that). My potato of a computer ran it around 30 frames at mid-low settings (the same sliders positions that now give us laptop-standard). At laptop-standard it also ran ARR at... 30 frames. Both bogged almost equally in shadowed areas or under high player counts. In the open fields, the highest specs could drop Crystal Tools to an even lower frame rate than Luminous (e.g. around 12-16 frames, rather than 16-20, but this may have been equally due to 1.0x max draw distance actually being a bit further than that of ARR's and having greater color depth and ambient lighting in addition to, on average, higher polygon counts.

The thing about WoW, is that I find that combat is far more interesting. It's faster-paced, and you go from enemy to enemy. Sure, each enemy gets cut down fast, but yet you yourself can get cut down if you don't watch it (though this only happens near max-level) until you get geared up.

XIV's combat is a lot slower and, dare I say it? Simpler. I rarely feel like I am in danger of dying in XIV, at least solo questing enemies.

The pinnacle of solo leveling, for me, was around Wrath in World of Warcraft, depending on one's class, though closely followed by Mists for some others. You could get through a given fight almost undamaged, but sometimes that actually required bringing a second enemy into the fight in order to get your necessary mechanics off of to deal with the opposite enemy, and vice versa, or else pulling the first just so as not to draw in the numerous patrols around you. In many areas there was a very rapid difference between what killed you and what uniquely let you live, and sometimes playing as close as you could to the danger was the only thing that would allow you to survive. That was exhilarating. XIV has only had a couple situations like that for me across multiple characters' worth of level-capping. Snappy CC, more numerous self-heals, stealth, etc. -- all these little things that don't streamline directly into raiding but added so much to the open-world experience -- seem to have been considered a waste from the start here in XIV, and I think the combat in many ways has suffered not just because we lack those things, but because we follow a combat design philosophy that cannot imagine a real use for them.

Combat in WoW at many a time (albeit all of them long ago, though perhaps returning with the new scaling) had enough enemy strength to demand rotational understanding, not just offensively but also defensively. We don't generally even include the latter aspect in XIV (or nearly so much in modern WoW, for that matter).

[Rasikko]

FFXI is about 2 years older than WOW.. and both games are outdated when talking in terms of time. I'm 35, I was 20 when I first landed in Vana'diel. Old game is old. However, WOW is still getting major updates, while FFXI is finished and just getting updates to their battle fields. Sure, the producer of FFXI has said if there was demand for it, another expansion etc could happen, but lets face it, FFXI's past its prime, there's no going back, as a long time player of that game, I've come to accept that. Folks of modern mmos can call FFXI whatever they like, but it's very likely they haven't played it during its prime and have no idea what they are talking about..

As for XIV.. game is what.. 5 years old? I guess you can count closed beta too(for anyone that actually was able to download the client.. I sure couldnt lol).

[Gumbercules]

to me wows sweetspot gameplay wise was WotLK. Now it feels like some bastardization of what it was, while trying to dip its toes into being an arpg. FF 14s to me feels nice, its not slow (sans the start, and imo that needs to be addressed sooner than later) and its not motorboat your keyboard fast. FF 14 kinda has an active time feel to it without being actually the active time system so i personally enjoy that. FF 11, well ff 11 is quirky and memorable in its flaws and that ironically lends itself into a unique feel.

[Aronys]

Eh, I'm actually more partial to GW2s questing. No NPC to talk to, just enter the area and do various stuff, don't have to turn anything in, it's just done. Much faster and smoother. XIV questing is very outdated.

[TaleraRistain]

OP, I realize you said that English isn't your native language, but you're using the wrong term I think. When something is outdated, it means it is based on old ideas that are no longer relevant. This describes older games like EQ and XI to a T. The MMO scene has moved past these design decisions. These intentional timesinks that were rooted in Verant Interactive's idea of their "Vision" for EQ made EQ and those that followed its pattern very niche games. MMOs are much more accessible to a wider audience now. Thus, those games are the games that are outdated based on today's idea of MMOs.

[Rinuko]

..
But I quit WOW again after 20 mins,because the gameplay is SO stale by today's standard:
1.Click a npc for a simple quest, of course I didn't read the text,because I don't have to.

2.The quest location is marked in the map, go there and cut something down in few seconds.

3.The enemies mechanics(behavior,aggro method,AI)are too simple.

4.I finished the first quest in 2 or 3 mins? went back to the npc,he gave me some cheap shoes,I know I will throw them away very soon.

5.Because I am a modern man,I don't want to spend too much time on just a quest ok?ok,let's play the next quest.

6.Same thing happened again,everything is simple,easy & fast.

7.After 2 or 3 quests,I started to ask myself: Where is the fun?
yes it's easy & simple, it's very "modern". does it save my time?not really.
because the quest quantity in WOW is huge.I need to do these endless,simple,meaningless,stupid quests until LV100?no sorry,thanks.
Quantity over quality is always not a good way to go.

I have to ask, how is that any different from FFXIV?

XI is running on Minimal Life Support.

There's no active development going on, other than the Ambuscade swaps and the occasional copypasta content. They can't really add new artwork or systems to the game, because they have limited access to the source code of the game, because their development team is probably less than a dozen people at this point.

They can add new things, but they are extremely limited as to WHAT they can add due to their limited access to development tools and manpower.

They had to abandon things like the new Windows UI (which would have really REALLY improved the game).

Most of their limitation lies in the source is based on a PS2 dev kit which is no longer being developed obviously.
If they wanted to keep dev (without copy pasta) they'd have to port/remake the game - which is in development as a mobile game (dunno how they gonna pull that off though).

I personally played XI religiously like many others through high school, for about total 9 years before moved to XIV.

[loreleidiangelo]

Combat in WoW at many a time (albeit all of them long ago, though perhaps returning with the new scaling) had enough enemy strength to demand rotational understanding, not just offensively but also defensively. We don't generally even include the latter aspect in XIV (or nearly so much in modern WoW, for that matter).

I've been leveling a Blood Elf Mage and a Nightborne Rogue for gits and shiggles at the end of Legion's lifespan, and I can say that new leveling definitely requires you to be careful about pats and actually use your toolkit - depending on class, of course. My Frost Mage spammed barrier off CD, had to use Frost Nova if she aggroed something unexpected and frequently had to eat conjured food between trash packs. Meanwhile, the old leveling with heirlooms was basically just throw two Ice Lances on non-frozen enemies and they would just die. I wouldn't say I have to understand the full Frost Mage rotation (the way they handle procs makes it kinda hard to screw up the basics) and I didn't have to use that many CDs outside of the occasional Frozen Orb, but it did require some kiting with Blink in some cases and the odd interrupt here or there. It was kinda engaging, but at the same time kind of tedious because these characters are alts and I felt like I could just read a guide at 110 if I really wanted to understand my class. I'm not sure it really added much to my leveling experience, tbh, but admittedly that's from the perspective of someone who has like 6 level-capped characters already.

It's still infinitely better than FFXIV's leveling where you're mashing the same three buttons until as far as level 50, in a lot of cases - with a glacial GCD, to boot. WoW's changes to zone scaling though, while great for alts, seriously fragment the game's already-fractured narrative and I don't think that's great design. I get that players felt like they were outleveling zones without seeing the entire zone story, but now you can just do introductory quests in basically every old-world zone and still hit 60, and there's not a lot of cohesion as to how the stories tie together. Also, given how tedious I felt leveling was WITH heirlooms, I can't imagine how it feels to a new player in plain ol' whites.

[Remedi]

I'd give FFXIV the minor advantage of being better at presenting the story through little cutscenes rather than an exposition dump that hardly anybody reads.

I think the the journal entries made FFXIV extremely better than wow (cough DRK questchain cough) which is a shame that in SB they decided to cut most of them