The "Wow Refugee's" impact on the FFXIV Community?

[Altera]

I used to play WOW from 2004-2011 until i dropped it for XIV in 2011.
So I have pretty decent experience in both, but seeing as I havent seen how the WOW community has changed after I quit, I cannot say. But it doesnt matter what game you play or used to play. It all comes down to the person and their attitude towards other fellow players
If someone behaves badly in RL they will bring that into the game, and since videogames comes with anonymity, they also become worse.

I do not care what game you come from. If you are nice to me, ill be nice to you. If you act like a brat, i'll treat you like a brat

Why people would act toxic towards others player who shares the same interest in the game, is beyond me.
I treat every player ingame as if I talk to the player face to face in real life and with respect

[Makeda]

The only impact I am seeing on the community is that Crystal is rapidly filling up with experienced raiders looking to join groups. Mostly because the other teo dataservers are often locked. They just lack FFXIV raid experience.

One other thing I note is that they tend to be super nice because one reason they got burned out on WoW was the community there. They came here because they were told it was friendly, which it generally is, and they know more than most how valuable that is.

So... I am glad for them. We just need to get them to max level before they give up and go to ESO or something...

[Mistyregions]

So far, I haven't noticed much change really. I do notice prior wow players tend to move in a group, like if two friends leave or a large social circle they all leave and come to FF14. That being said a lot more conversations in which I have no idea what they are talking about. Like inside WoW jokes about bad classes. I dont mind, I just listen. Other than that, not much of a difference really.

[PaprikaVorkos]

I'm a 14 year WoW vet healer main and refugee as of 2 months ago. I just want to address the toxicity topic... FYI I'm not hard core I haven't even had a steady raid group in like 7 years. I just ad hoc do stuff with folks on my server.

I personally left WoW due to the toxic nature of people especially in dungeon/raid finder (roulettes). Chat and discord just got hard to function in. I'm a relatively decent healer main so I didn't take too much abuse but I couldn't sit there any longer after a long day of work and see/listen to my fellow community get abused. It's sad because I liked the game. Oh well.

I love FFXIV, the community is generally "unashamed to be nice." I always ask for help because I don't want to spoil the story by looking up fights, etc and I've never had anyone except once be rude. You wouldn't have this in WoW. There is no talking and if you try people just don't respond. Look at the twitch community around WoW lately, it's just extremely toxic spend 5 minutes looking at the top steamer and you'll get a feel for the culture around WoW and why those of us who don't fit in anymore are trying other MMOs. I've dealt with one very toxic group, likely a FC group in in a full party Alexander story raid who kicked me for being a sprout even though I was healing on point and their tank kept wiping because they didn't understand the mechanic.

Shrug... imagine giving up 14 years of glamours, achievements and knowledge because you can't handle the community. It sucks :P. I'm lucky I found a great FC in literally hours after naming my character. I love WHM and the MSQs. I regret I skipped the RR MSQ with a potion to play with my fiance who was a few months ahead of me but I'll do it later on. HW and SB have been a blast to level though!! Can't wait to see what end game is like.

My advice to the OG FF players, if people are toxic call it out, shut it down, don't let anyone change the great culture in this game.

[Diggles]

Shrug... imagine giving up 14 years of glamours, achievements and knowledge because you can't handle the community.

That's called the "sunk cost fallacy" and it's a major reason why so many people still play WoW even though it's an objectively awful game. My WoW account is 13 years old, with titles/items/mounts/glamour/achievements/etc. that have been unavailable for years. It doesn't bother me at all leaving and starting over in a new game... because the old one is not good anymore. I had my fun and enjoyed the items that I had when the game was actually still good. I'm not going to be one of those people still hanging on and refusing to leave because of a bunch of in-game possessions that truthfully no one else even cares about. Sadly, it's a common sentiment on the WoW forums whenever someone discusses a new game - people are dumb and would rather live in the past in a game that's currently bad than start over in a new game that's objectively better.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

That's called the "sunk cost fallacy" and it's a major reason why so many people still play WoW even though it's an objectively awful game. My WoW account is 13 years old, with titles/items/mounts/glamour/achievements/etc. that have been unavailable for years. It doesn't bother me at all leaving and starting over in a new game... because the old one is not good anymore. I had my fun and enjoyed the items that I had when the game was actually still good. I'm not going to be one of those people still hanging on and refusing to leave because of a bunch of in-game possessions that truthfully no one else even cares about. Sadly, it's a common sentiment on the WoW forums whenever someone discusses a new game - people are dumb and would rather live in the past in a game that's currently bad than start over in a new game that's objectively better.

The amount of 'stuff' I have in WoW at this point is definitely the greatest factor- as the only content I've enjoyed in BfA are the raids. It wasn't like that in Legion- some of the zone stories were good, I really liked Suramar, the raids were good, we had class stories and mage tower challenges.

It helps that even in a few months I have glamours, mounts, pets with more charm and better looks than most of what I've collected in WoW- and there's very little left in WoW of old stuff to farm outside of a few <1% raid mounts you can farm once a week.

It does need taking a step back and just looking at it objectively to realize though not only how bad WoW is at this point, but why it still manages to grip us despite being so bad.

[Bongaboi]

You're delusional if you think the WoW and XIV communities are different. If you notice anything, its specifically because there are just more people now. Both games have a good share of dicks and saints. Neither WoW nor XIV make a breed of people, they are all just people, and people will be people.

But our community IS home to the finest people.

[Nixxe]

More active players can only ever be a good thing.

Definitely not true. You can get a flood of new players who change the culture of the game for the worse or who have different priorities, but become so numerous they're now the focus of the devs, and the previous players lose out as a result. Not saying that's the case here, but getting more players certainly isn't an unequivocal good.

[MOZZYSTAR]

Touching post, OP ;;


I think more players to an MMO is a good thing by and large. There will always be toxic people regardless of the avenue or community. More people just means more toxicity, but I wouldn't say that would necessarily overhaul FF's general etiquette because there will always be new people who adapt to their new environment - like you, OP. They see what they like and so they mirror it. Some others won't adapt, or they could just be having a bad day and taking it out on others, et cetera (which isn't a good thing but it happens).


I don't really know WoW. I've never played it, so I can't really comment on WoW players. But I also think it's not good to generalise, because not every WoW player is out of hand, just like not every FF player is generous. The toxicity in FFXIV rises when new expansions and patches come out. Over time, people will generally either leave until next patch or expansion, or chill out.



So, what I would tell to any new player regardless of where they come from is to just try to be polite as a rule of thumb. If there's an issue, don't go pointing the accusatory finger just because something is hard. If people are being rude to you, don't take it personally but also don't roll over and take it. >;3

[Diggles]

It does need taking a step back and just looking at it objectively to realize though not only how bad WoW is at this point, but why it still manages to grip us despite being so bad.

It continues to grip people because it's designed that way. Between the RNG dopamine hits that are strategically spaced out to keep you hooked (seriously, there are theories and anecdotal evidence that people whose subs are close to expiring have better loot luck), the time-gated grinding to give you basic features that should be standard, and the previously mentioned sunk cost fallacy, it's no wonder that people continue to hang on. The game is designed to keep you playing without any regard for actual player enjoyment. Blizzard stopped caring YEARS ago about player enjoyment - they only care now about what they can do to keep those MAU numbers up for the investors. That's why FFXIV has been such a huge breath of fresh air for me - a game where the developers actually care about making an enjoyable game instead of stuffing it with RNG on top of RNG (look up titanforging if you've never played WoW - not only do you have to hope for a particular item to drop, you have to hope that it procs ANOTHER RNG roll on top of that to increase its item level) just to keep you playing.

It really boggles my mind how much better this game is overall. No, it's not perfect, but it may as well be when compared to WoW. I am very grateful to the dev team for actually wanting to make an enjoyable game instead of trying to figure out how to exploit human psychology to keep people mindlessly addicted. Make a great game and people will naturally want to play it.