FFXIV/WOW cross over event?

[linay]

Keep in mind the spike near the end was BFA launching since it came out August 14th 2018 while XIV was currently in 4.3 during that time with 4.4 coming out in early Sept. I don't know the exact month spread looking at the graph but it does seem like BFA gained more interest over 4.4 but that's a whole expac compared to a single patch.

Actually, that's probably the spike when you add WoW Classic (and maybe patch 8.2 and end of war campaign in 8.2.5) as the date goes to today (October 3, 2019). The spike for BfA is the much smaller bump right above the "August 2018" mark.

The spike for FFXIV in between the two is for Shadowbringers.

Also, just for fun, but wow (not the game, lol):

[Lium]

That is really not every RPG in the history of RPGs. I can think of a lot of games that do not follow it. Speaking in MMOs, Asheron's Call, Final Fantasy XI, and EverQuest were all not like that; you went zone to zone but it was more mob grinding without any real quest options (in fact, since we're here, WoW was the first game that moved away from mob grinding to questing as the main source of leveling up). WoW was the first MMO who said, "OK, let's hide the grind behind quests and zone story," which the other MMOs did not do. At all. So, again, in this particular instance, this is not "polishing what was done before," but instead radically changing the way a particular facet (leveling) was done in the genre.

Mob grinding was a huge part of vanilla WoW. You would go to a quest hub, pick up all the quests which were all variants of "Kill 10 bears," and there was never enough quests to get you to the next level, so you would have to grind mobs to level up. This was particularly the case in the Arathi Highlands as Alliance. I remember grinding for days on my holy pally to level. What made it fun, though, was that I was on a PvP server, which kept things lively and entertaining.

There was no main story or even real zone stories in vanilla WoW. There was some quest chains here and there, but that was about it. (At least from an Alliance perspective. I've heard there was more of a story on Horde side in zones like Ashenvale and Hillsbrad Foothills, or in the Forsaken starting zones.) The game was entirely (and still is, for the most part) centered on raiding. "Stories" were associated with, and locked behind, raid content. Like classic Onyxia and Blackwing Lair. AQ 20/40 and Naxx. That was especially the case in the expansions. I remember when TBC came out and there were many complaints on the forums because such a small percentage of the playerbase would actually ever see Illidan and the inside of The Black Temple because you had to be in a high-end progression guild to even see it. It really wasn't until Wrath (which I loved immensely) that there was some semblance of a cohesive story, and players were able to interact with Arthas at varying points while leveling.

The release of Cataclysm is when you REALLY started seeing more of a focus on a main story. And that was no coincidence because in 2011, SWTOR was launching and BioWare's entire pitch for that game was "STORY, STORY, STORY", so Blizzard had to keep pace with what they thought was going to be their main competition.

Understand, I am not in any way knocking WoW. I played it (with some breaks) from 2005 - 2016. It was a great game and it's impact on the video game industry cannot be overstated. I just think you are equating many RPG standards to WoW, and that simply is not the case.

[frostmagemari]

So do the exceptionally toxic players in FFXIV desecrate what they come in contact with. The FFXIV player base isn't pure. I was running into jerks here back when I first started playing around Heavensward's launch.

I mean, i imagine they would? I don't think she was actually making that as an argument though, Jojoya; her post was pretty clearly mocking how the more visible XIV cheerleader acts when speaking to a person coming into the MMO.

If you want to explain that, we can discuss it. If you're just gonna keep that condescending tone, I'm just gonna shrug and walk away. I don't find them to be any more alike than any given pair of MMOs, and WoW wasn't the first, so giving them credit for that is factually incorrect.

I mean.. perhaps WoW didn't create the new standard for MMO's as a whole, but it sure decide on how ARR would be modeled. Given the fact that the dev team was told to go play WoW during the recreation of XIV in order to have first hand knowledge of what they were shooting for in the relaunch.

[linay]

I mean.. perhaps WoW didn't create the new standard for MMO's as a whole, but it sure decide on how ARR would be modeled. Given the fact that the dev team was told to go play WoW during the recreation of XIV in order to have first hand knowledge of what they were shooting for in the relaunch.

It still doesn't make them the same game. You can love one and hate the other because of the differences that exist between the two.

[frostmagemari]

It still doesn't make them the same game. You can love one and hate the other because of the differences that exist between the two.

I was responding to the end of a chain where the person in question was laughing at the thought that xiv was in any way a wow clone... to which, i pointed out that the dev team was told to play WoW and then subsequently told to "Do that!" in regards to designing the game.
I never said there weren't differences, but the game was created by using WoW as an almost literal template, so it's a lot more similar to WoW than it is to other games in the genre.

[JackHatchet]

One of the reasons why I loved ARR so much, was because Yoshi P saw how terrible 1.0 was, and literally remade ARR 2.0 based around WoW's core elements. That's why ARR is so much more like WoW than it was like FF11.

FFXIV ARR is literally the closest MMO to a WoW Clone as one can get. It's more WoW clone than literally any other MMO, and yet people hate on WoW as if the two were vastly different games.

[Edax]

FFXIV ARR is literally the closest MMO to a WoW Clone as one can get. It's more WoW clone than literally any other MMO, and yet people hate on WoW as if the two were vastly different games.

Because they are vastly different games. Yes, FFXIV has many WoW elements like most other hot bar MMORPGs, but it is also different enough to not be a clone. If FFXIV truly copied WoW to the point of being a clone, I wouldn't be playing FFXIV because I left WoW for very specific game-play reasons.

[linay]

I was responding to the end of a chain where the person in question was laughing at the thought that xiv was in any way a wow clone... to which, i pointed out that the dev team was told to play WoW and then subsequently told to "Do that!" in regards to designing the game.
I never said there weren't differences, but the game was created by using WoW as an almost literal template, so it's a lot more similar to WoW than it is to other games in the genre.

That doesn't make it a WoW clone, at least not in the way used to discredit people playing FFXIV while disliking WoW.

[HappyHealer]

One of the reasons why I loved ARR so much, was because Yoshi P saw how terrible 1.0 was, and literally remade ARR 2.0 based around WoW's core elements. That's why ARR is so much more like WoW than it was like FF11.

FFXIV ARR is literally the closest MMO to a WoW Clone as one can get. It's more WoW clone than literally any other MMO, and yet people hate on WoW as if the two were vastly different games.

They are different. If we're putting down being a clone to having a hotbar, an automated group finder, and dungeons then yeah it's a clone. Many of us are telling you that we are former WoW players who dislike the game for our own reasons, yet like this one. For whatever reason the "WoW and XIV are the same game!" crowd simply can't believe this. Frankly it strikes me as having a real lack of imagination to be unable to see any appreciable differences between the two games.

[Jojoya]

They are different. If we're putting down being a clone to having a hotbar, an automated group finder, and dungeons then yeah it's a clone. Many of us are telling you that we are former WoW players who dislike the game for our own reasons, yet like this one. For whatever reason the "WoW and XIV are the same game!" crowd simply can't believe this. Frankly it strikes me as having a real lack of imagination to be unable to see any appreciable differences between the two games.

When people talk about the basic components of a MMORPG, FFXIV is strikingly similar to Burning Crusade WoW. Both have quests, instanced dungeons, instanced raids, instanced PvP. Group content and class/job design are built around the holy trinity role system. Tomestones are WoW's old Badges of Heroism and Justice that later became Justice and Valor Points. Levequests and beast tribes are WoW's old dailies that were abandoned at the start of WoD. Yes, there are still some differences because no game can be a complete clone of another without running into IP copyright issues but the core components are essentially the same.

I think where FFXIV stands out from WoW is current game philosophy. FFXIV wants us to play the game but also feel like we have time to enjoy other games. WoW wants us to dedicate our lives to its game to inflate the MAU/DAU metrics it presents to investors. FFXIV gives players some measure of agency that WoW has taken away from its players over the years. Grinds in FFXIV are created to feel optional (you don't have to have that relic weapon to progress in the game). Grinds in WoW are made to feel mandatory (your character has to grind out that AP to progress).

Another key difference is FFXIV puts a lot of thought into its story and builds the content to support it. You get a lot more out of the game if you're following the story. Story feels like an afterthought in WoW, something added after the fact to try to tie content together. You can ignore the story and it won't make any difference to your game experience.