Can any WoW refugees explain the exodus to XIV to me?

[SaitoHikari]

Patch cycles moved from 3 months to 4 months? I don't think we ever had 3 months in between patches, besides the short gap between 3.1-3.2. And that was only because there was a 5 month gap between 3.0 and 3.1, which was a -real- content drought.

It's usually always been 3 and a half months. Hell, I distinctly recall 3.5 releasing mid-late January 2017, while 4.5 is going to release early-mid January 2019.

[Sylve]

I've dropped WoW a few times over the years. First quit for real back in Cataclysm, since just been trying each new expansion as it comes out, just to see if they ever manage to bring it back to what I enjoyed in the old game.

BFA is a trainwreck though. I thought I could get into the story, but it turned into some real character butchery (I mean character lore rather than death) with some of the worst story delivery I've suffered through in a game.

People like to poke fun at XIVs "Talk to that NPC, now fly to that zone over there and talk to him, then come talk to me again" questing through the MSQ at times, but for WoW it was literally 3 lines of dialogue and then grind reputation to unlock the next 3 lines of dialogue.
Also, ever since WoD (Talk about some REAL content drought there lol, more store assets added than in game content during that one) introduced Garrisons the game has mostly felt like a mobile game, complete with time gating on practically everything.
The 8.1 Saurfang story that i'd seen snippets of from the PTR almost had me resub just to play through it, and then I found that while the full thing was playable on PTR, it was arbitrarily time locked to force you to wait weeks between "Chapters".
Even the new raid that's been pretty thoroughly tested in PTR is being gated out for 4 weeks, I think it was. Numerous other things that were tested as part of their 8.1 patch is like that too, just getting held back for a weeks/months.

Classic example of done content being cut up into blocks just long enough to force you to keep your sub going for multiple months to finish it, just to really stretch out that sub.
Game has also turned into one giant rep grind.
New races? Grind rep. Not even current expansion rep, rep from the LAST expansion.
Expansion relevant new Races? Keep grinding that rep.
Continue the storyline? Grind that rep some more.

Imagine if SE locked Viera behind Namazu rep. That's basically what they did to the Allied Races. New races for WoW revitalized the game a little for me, I liked switching to the new race and having a slightly fresher experience for it. But yeah no, Blizzard arbitrarily decided that all the new Allied Races would be reputation bound and thusly permanently locked me out of playing as them, since I dislike rep grinding and have since classic. back then it was purely optional though …

Wont surprise me if the next expansion class was bound to some random BFA rep.

[Metalwrath]

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm happy we're getting an influx of players here from another MMO. More players is always a good thing, especially now that a new expansion is just over the horizon. But for someone who has played WoW for all of two hours and then quit, I'm curious what is causing the exodus. Some of the terms I've seen thrown here and there are pretty unfamiliar to me. I know this expansion, BfA has a lot to do with it - but that's about all that I really understand.

Would somebody mind explaining it? And if this helps to serve as a PSA to our own devs about pitfalls to avoid, all the better.

When ff14 2.0 went live droves of WOW players jumped ship to the game.It's not like its something that only recently happened.
A lot of them went back for the last expansion while not much has been going on in FF14 but ive heard they are all comeing back here with friends now after dissapointment with the last expansion WOW got.

[Joe_Schmoe]

Can any WoW refugees explain the exodus to XIV to me?

Not sure about everyone else's, but mine?

A copy and paste from another forum topic, perfectly suited to answer this (my favorite things about this game were also the reasons I left WoW):

• Level/item level sync. It's nice to be able to play my role in instances without being supplanted by some raid-geared jackass who has no business being in there to begin with, forcing me to drop group out of frustration, a la World of Warcraft. In this game, the playing field is much more level (end-game item level sync is too generous though).

• Being able to level all classes on one character. This is a huge quality-of-life feature with me, much less of a logistical nightmare than World of Warcraft, where I had to character hop like crazy just to, say, create and fully upgrade one stinking item. Here, while you still have to "hop", it's much more easier to do.

• Crafting/gathering. Good god, what a feature! A (fairly complicated) game with a game. I can't recall a single other game I've played where they had this. Usually you just click an anvil/forge/menu/etc, select how many you want to make, then AFK until it's all done. Here in this game, you actually craft stuff.

Oh, and to add one more:

• Easier to obtain flying. Just do the main questline in a zone, then get all the aether currents in that zone and boom! You got flying. In WoW, there's a whole song and dance that you have to do, as well as wait until the very end of an expansion in order to get it, after which you'd probably wouldn't give two shits about it anyway since you've already had to explore the entire world from top to bottom, as well as have to wait a year-year and a half. Kinda pointless at that point.

[Liam_Harper]

I'd always been a WoW fan, despite taking a few breaks. I loved MoP, it was amazing. I strongly disliked WoD, but enjoyed the classes enough to stick it through. I mostly enjoyed Legion. BFA was the end of my time with Blizzard though.

I resubbed when the expansion launched, what killed it for me was:

-The ending quest of Legion was removed from the game. Gone. They'd simply erased the final piece of the main storyline because they wanted it to be exclusive content.
-The "Burning of Teldrassil" scenario, a major lore piece introducing BFA was erased, gone.
-In the 2 months I'd taken a break I'd missed 5 mounts that were removed from the game for good, not even moved to cash shop. As a collector, that's a big disincentive.
-GCD's were added to certain cd's. Anyone who's played WoW knows their cd's flow instantly and are even macro'able with zero server lag. Cutting this was baffling.
-Classes were gutted. You can't even fill 2 hotbars anymore. Haste was lowered, tanks less tanky.
-Crafting is completely dead
-Mythic+, a major selling point in Legion was ruined. It takes twice as long, tons of trash and less rewards.
-Initial rep grind. Basically you had to do hundreds of Fates for rep.
-Azerite grind. You had to do hundreds of fates and Island expeditions (sort of like a terrible mini-eureka) to raise the ilv on a necklace.
-RNG rampant. Titanforging (you can randomly gain a bonus 5-95ilv, yes you read correctly, on any piece of gear).

Mostly it was everything we'd done in the previous expansion that was getting boring, in a watered down and grindier form. Combined with the fact classes were no longer fun to play it just wasn't fun. It felt like Blizzard were simply going through the motions and the passion for the game was gone.

Also, I found this very interesting. Judging from the upvotes on some comments, even a good few WoW players prefer ff14 atm.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...xactly/49160/6

[Deceptus]

-GCD's were added to certain cd's. Anyone who's played WoW knows their cd's flow instantly and are even macro'able with zero server lag. Cutting this was baffling.

This was to stop people from hitting said one button macro and one shotting people / things. It was a good intentioned change.

[Liam_Harper]

This was to stop people from hitting said one button macro and one shotting people / things. It was a good intentioned change.

In your opinion, which I respect. In mine, it was a factor in my leaving the game. It felt clunky.

The change was PvP orientated, but implemented in all forms of PvE. There were better ways it could have been implemented too, such as less on-use trinkets and cd's that don't line up. Furthermore, it was added to tanking CD's. What are you going to one-shot with a tank CD?

[ColorOfSakura]

SE is starting to head towards this path so you are definitely in for a treat especially if you want certain "emotes" or "gear" from a certain "content". As a player since 2.0 and even the beta before it, here are the things I've noticed:

-Patch cycles moved from 3 months to 4 months.
-Mogstation no longer consumer friendly; examples include fantasia no longer account wide, emotes increasing in price and locked to one character and expensive mounts with generic music to name a few.
-Content droughts more frequent due to longer cycle patches and content being stretched out.

Admittedly putting different rewards into different content isn't bad design inherently. Especially since 99% of those rewards are added to other new content later (like how all the rare HW dungeon and crafted minions were added to Heaven on High once most of the HW content was not seeing much play anymore or the crafted stuff wasn't as valuable.)

However, I need to address some of your claimed facts about how the game's changed:

First off, Patch cycles haven't moved from 3 months to 4 months though - ever since Patch 2.1, the patch cycle has always been approximately 3 and a half months between patches - not counting the time between a X.5 patch and an expansion. You can go back and look at the release date for all the Patch Notes on the Lodestone and you'll see that's always been the pattern with the exceptions of Patch 3.1 (which was closer to 4 and a half months) and Patch 4.3 (which was closer to 4 months).

The MogStation stuff has definitely changed, but Fantasias were originally limited to a maximum of 9 per account *ever* when the account-wide ones were purchasable (not including the free ones you got as a Veteran Reward or for being a Legacy player). This was changed fairly early into the existence of the MogStation as a means to make it so players could choose to purchase more than that hard limit of 9 because the players asked for this function. Also, as a business decision this makes some sense, given that their competitors charge for race changes per character and XIV charges *way less* (WoW's race change is what? $30 in comparison to the $10 a Fantasia costs?)

I will agree that the change in pricing for emotes and minions being relegated to single characters is simply a monetary decision and doesn't help the players at all.

The third point is related to your first - and since the patch cycles aren't actually longer, this is simply an illusion. However, the feeling of there being content drought is real if there's less and less content that you feel like accomplishing. And the longer you play a game, the less (inevitably) there's going to be for you to do. Content is being stretched out across the patch, but that should result in less of a drought overall, rather than more of one.

[Lauront]

I quit the game 5 years ago and tried it once or twice since then and it just feels ugly and dead. I don't like Blizzard much as a company, so there's little incentive to go back to it.

[TattersailNightwish]

I played WoW for good steady many years, and left during Pandaria. Came back for Legion. It had some good ideas, but everything seemed more of the same. Quit before WoD, and I don't see myself going back.

One of the things I hated was how WoW's talent tree went from really having to think long and hard about what direction you wanted to take. Then overnight it was almost like BAM- You can be A or B.
You know how Wheel Of Fortune now automatically chooses R, L, S, T, N, and E ? Yeah - that's what it felt like.