A question to all WoW players coming to XIV

[Vonleo]

Asmongold hasn't written off FFXIV entirely. He's been watching more FFXIV videos on stream lately, I think he might be slightly (if only a small amount) interested. He actually watched two videos this past week about our game. He has said time and time again though that he is Not a Gamer, only a World of Warcraft player. I think this is the most recent where he reacts to a reaction video about the Shadowbringers trailer where he says that again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfRBOWH4g98 This video he's torn between liking the trailer and that hesitance because of the "Weeb Excuse."

Does not matter I really hope he does not come to FFXIV having a huge streamer play the same game as you comes with more cons then pros IMO. The guy has admitted to being absolutely toxic while playing WoW and his twitch fan base mostly consist of the same mind set. There is even a video of Asmongold admitting to these things now the video is about WoW Classic but the same general thoughts/ideas apply.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSoJNcxqDkc

[Skivvy]

My own personal thoughts as someone who has never played WoW but other MMOs (mostly GW2, Archeage, XI and a sprinkling of WildStar..RIP):

I can sort of see where the comments are coming from regarding XIV being "too cute" and along those lines. I think a big part is that our races generally fall into categories of model-esque, or just super adorable. They're all rather safe looking, nothing too grotesque or ugly about them.

Then the world itself - I personally like XIV's styling, I think it's quite pretty. But you don't really have too many totally wasted areas, or gory scenes scattered about. I was running through AA recently on a new character with a XIV buddy, and I was remarking how this one area I was questing in was rather grim with all the dead bodies and blood scattered about - to which I got a reply along the lines of "that's actually fairly common, just not in XIV".

I can't really speak for the story, but things seem to tie themselves up into neat little packages. AGAIN, I DON"T READ IT SO I COULD BE VERY WRONG HERE. However, it feels like the WoL is untouchable, the "main" players are untouchable. What on earth will it take to finally kill Minfilia?!?

I think those are the main items for me, may be more if I sit here and think about it some.

[galbsadi]

I've been watching youtubers like Sccottzone and Asmongold

Who cares what they have to say?

and the one thing I've noticed is both of their chats mention XIV is too cute for them.

Sounds good. At least I know i won't have to deal with them here (Asmongold plays on the same server as I used to in WoW, it was annoying.)

[Rilifane]

If FFXIV is too cute for them, their choice. Same when people say WoW is too cartoonish or Tera has too much fanservice. Personal preference, nothing more. And nothing that people should pay attention to.
I've started with games like RO and later Flyff and both are pretty much the definition of cute. Not a style I really liked that much but after a few hours I hardly noticed it anymore.

Easier... hmmm. Comparing ff14 to early days wow is unfair because early days wow should be compared to ff11. The solo experience of wow was smoother and easier, but the dungeon experience was about the same (broadly, party dynamics to overcome party problems) but in my opinion, not having played any other early mmo's the ff11 party dynamic was absolutely unique and the loss of the uniqueness is a big part of why I no longer play.

FF14 should be compared to current day wow, and again the similarities are there, and it is a question of choosing which you prefer. Dungeons in both cases are, imo, broadly boring aoe fests with little strategy (Quarn may change this because it's my next level appropriate instance). If you try to control a mob with effects, the avatar next to you will break them, but in ff effects are more like short term interrupts in any case.

The only dungeon pre-50 that requires a little bit of awareness is imo Aurum Vale at 47+. But even there you don't really utilize stuns, let alone ccs.
Regarding level dungeons, WoW is piss-easy which is understandable and makes sense. So I think comparing difficulty by comparing the level phase of both games, as some people here did, is leading nowhere. Nobody cares about level dungeons in WoW, it's just a means to an end to get to the interesting part.
In some fights there is less running around, on the other hand you don't have telegraphs for the most part. A lot of number crunching and resource management going on and while many mechanics don't kill you instantly that doesn't neccessarily mean they are more forgiving because healing is much weaker. So the raid may survive a fuck up, but they'll probably pay the price 1-2min later when the healers either lack mana or raid cds to handle a mechanic. Once outgearing content you can ignore or cheese many mechanics, but the difficulty of a game shouldn't be judged when content is getting outgeared.
I guess difficulty comes down to what someone personally perceives as easier. Otherwise the comparable difficulty levels seem pretty similiar.
And by comparable I don't mean FFXIV level dungeons vs myth+. Or LFR vs. extremes. That's obviously nonsense.

PS: If you're dungeon spamming and want to shorten queue times, I have a little card thrower at about the same level ;D

[Allegor]

My friends tried XIV and said something similar, even now we occasionally have friendly debates about it lol.

It's not so much that the game itself is anime, but some of the character emotes and mannerisms try to imitate it, and to some people it translates as "too cringy". I got to admit, I'm not a lover of 'live action anime' either, so to an extend I agree with them. Hildibrand works because it's comedic and surrealistic in nature, but when a decently realistic character tries to act exaggeratedly in a non satirical scenario, it just end up looking so...fake.

[Spratchet]

I can't really speak for the story, but things seem to tie themselves up into neat little packages. AGAIN, I DON"T READ IT SO I COULD BE VERY WRONG HERE. However, it feels like the WoL is untouchable, the "main" players are untouchable. What on earth will it take to finally kill Minfilia?!?

Yeeeeeah...you really ought to read it...

[Kieren-Dohla]

So I maybe I shouldn't even be commenting on this thread.

My feeling is there is too much whimsy, the cactuar mount is obnoxiously large, many things bug me about FFXIV. It's the only the mmo I've ever played, why is that?

From my perspective I've can't find anything out there better. In a way it's a shame not having variety. And serious competition leaves SE to rest more on it's laurels. But I digress.

Even though there are things I don't *personally* care for, its seems to me to be the best thing out there, at least widely available to ppl in NA.

And I never wanted to play Wow, I heard to many horror stories about toxic behavior. FFXIV is not without it toxicity but I just avoided all mmos till someone got me to try FF because of what I heard from the start with Wow. Of course, that's not the same as actually finding out for myself by any means but it was enough to scare me away.

[Akonyl]

So, is it realistic art style or is it anime art style? I wouldn't call anime art style realistic. I'd call it cartoonish (except Japanese version of cartoon).

I don't think there's anything wrong with preferring a certain art style over another, but I do think terms like "weeb" doesn't really have any good meaning to it and when someone uses it, I don't know if they're just racist or they're too lazy to articulate what it is they actually don't like. It's fine not to like certain things, as long as it's not a matter of not liking it because it's made in this country or by this type of people.

It's more realistic in the model quality and effects and it's not like it's 100% anime, but the aesthetic can be seen pretty decently at times. Though, for gear it might be better to call it fantasy-inspired than anime-inspired, but when the fantasy is sourced from Japanese artists, probably a decent amount of that is infused with anime aesthetic as well. Like going with other mainline FF titles, I'd definitely call Lulu's belt-dress anime-inspired more than fantasy-inspired.

I think it's pretty evident in some faces though, like if you look at Aymeric's face, you could tell someone he came straight out of a Shoujo manga and they'd believe you.

[Skivvy]

Yeeeeeah...you really ought to read it...

It's a combination of factors. I don't really care for how they present the dialogue, combined with the story never really grabbing my attention, and also I have a far greater interest in many things outside of story, but don't have the option to come back to it in my own time. I MIGHT give it a try with NG+, but we'll see.

But yeah, from a non-reader, what I mentioned up above is the general feeling I get from the story. But like I said, I could be very wrong

[Akonyl]

I also switched because the lore (and story) in WoW was coming apart at the seams to the degree that it was starting to be "just another game", among many reasons, but this was a big one for me and reaching level cap in a zone and a half.

My biggest fear, that niggling doubt, is that I have joined FF14 just as it's story starts to come apart at the seams.

If this worry is because Shadowbringers is about going to another world and you're getting PTSD flashbacks to Warlords of Draenor, I wouldn't worry about it. XIV is still in the "main storyline" that was planned from the start of 2.0, and the existence of other worlds has been built up for multiple expansions now (I know it was in HW+SB, but can't 100% remember if it was hinted at much in ARR), so it's not really a shark-jumping moment like in WoW there they used another world as just a way to bring back dead characters (again) so we could kill them.

I think there was an interview a while ago saying that 6.0 was the final expansion planned in the main storyline? So after this Shadowbringers + the expansion after, then I'd start worrying about the story *maybe* coming apart, but I think we're still good for now.

WoW lore was shaky from the start though, with them retconning Eredar way back in the first expansion, so with how long it even took them to get to Warlords levels of jank, I think we're good for a while (since I can't recall any explicit retcons in XIV lore so far).