There is no phrase I hate more than "WoW refugee." I mean, come on. Refugee? As if they're fleeing some horribly broken game that's ruined MMOs for them? Come on. You may not like modern WoW, you may think it's the worst game in the world, but the fact is that it is still enjoyed by a lot more people than this game currently is.

There has been little to no observable difference between this community and WoW's community, at least not since I started playing in 2015. I still play WoW so I get to see how the communities act real time and, well, everyone's the same, why? Because there's nothing special or unique about XIV players, most of us have played other MMOs, most of us play other games, many of those games the same ones we deride constantly as being super toxic, so why should I expect the players of XIV to be different when they're pulling from the same pool of people?

I will say there is one, and only one, difference I've seen between the two communities: XIV players sure do care a lot if you admit to liking WoW, usually in a negative way. But nobody who plays WoW cares if you like FFXIV. Of course, I will put in here that these are my own personal observations and so generally meaningless when it comes to proving anything.

I have seen people say that the DDoS attacks we've had in the past were orchestrated by angry World of Warcraft players who were mad that this game is successful (false). A number of people here actually believed a fake "leaked" internal Blizzard document supposedly saying that FFXIV was a banned discussion topic at work because it had a negative effect on "employee morale." Nobody on WoW forums is making threads obsessing over the impact XIV or the players of XIV has on their game. Nobody who plays WoW gets up in arms when an XIV player expresses interest in the game, yet for some reason here on these forums you get told to stay in WoW or go back to WoW as if we can't have these filthy WoW players clogging up our great game.

Which is unfortunate, because I'd wager a HUGE chunk of the playerbase consists of former WoW players.

There are people here claiming they have hard, factual evidence that the community is worse, and yet I don't see it. Your stories don't count, and have you considered that there are a lot more people playing the game now, and therefore, a lot more chances to run into an ahole?

You hate WoW? Fine. But why treat WoW players like they're some kind of bogeyman? They are different games, people will enjoy different things about them, and some people won't enjoy them at all.