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

[Penthea]

I quit WoW at the end of WoD, which was two expansions ago. I had already bought a physical copy of the collector's edition of Legion and it's still sealed in plastic. By the time that expansion launched I had no energy left for WoW.

I could go on for a very long while about my grievances with WoW and how FFXIV ended up being the game I should have been playing all along. The mass exodus from WoW really boils down to how players are fed-up that Blizzard are riding on an outdated reputation, and players' difficulty of letting go of characters they worked on for over a decade. They're sick of having hope and promises dangled in front of them only to be disappointed. Again and again and again. I ended up migrating to FFXIV because I found the unfulfilled promises Blizzard made to be already fulfilled in FFXIV.

Some of the most talented game developers in the world work for Blizzard and they're one of the wealthiest game companies in the world...and for years they have managed to repeatedly produce ill-thought out content despite the copious amount of feedback and resources they have. Why? Because the Blizzard that set the standard for mmorpgs for a decade has grown cocky. They don't take feedback seriously, and for a long time it worked because there was no other mmorpg on the market that could even vaguely compete. Why bother working hard to maintain a great standard when you still make billions even when you don't? But times have changed. There are more options now, and patience has become thinner with time.

On top of that almost all the other Blizzard franchises are suffering from neglect in some manner. It's very difficult to have faith in Blizzard's ability to fix WoW when you're also watching their other games suffer a similar fate.

I think it's very telling that not only have most of the founders of Blizzard left, but also Bungie are ending their partnership with Activision (Blizzard are still partnered merged with Activision). That is not to say that I absolve Blizzard of all guilt, because they definitely grew very cocky. Activision just made things worse. They're likely responsible for the push towards microtransactions, as well as leaving Diablo's loyal pc gamer fanbase (that existed for 20 years) behind in favour of chinese mobile gamers.

Things really don't look good for Blizzard on multiple fronts. There is a messy combination of a company outgrowing its outdated reputation being swallowed up by another company that makes content for shareholders instead of gamers.