FFXIV and SqEnix vs WoW and Blizzard - My Perspective

[Goji1639]

WoW is mostly about the endgame; and it's endgame is far more fleshed out and interesting than FFXIV's will ever be. It has a far greater variety of significant, challenging PvE content and PvP that actually matters. WoW also has more satisfying gear progression.

That said, in almost every other way FFXIV is a superior game. This games world, story, lore, etc. crush WoW's imo, and leave me feeling far more motivated to participate. I never really gave a crap about the world or my character in WoW, and that makes it difficult to push through the more tedious elements of an MMO.

In the end WoW is the better game for long term, hardcore MMO players, and FFXIV is the better game for people who kind of dip between playing MMO's and other games. I play a lot of other games while using FFXIV as a kind of gap filler, so this is the superior game for me.

[Liam_Harper]

I've been on a wait-and-see with WoW after badly regretting paying money for BFA, but I've heard almost nothing about Shadowlands, which is strange. Our FC has both a WoW guild and FF14 side and I expected the WoW side of our discord to explode on release, either negative or positive but it's been mostly the same. People I talk to just say "it seems good but too many chores". They're prepping for their raid and got a few applications, but for a new expansion there's no excitement. It's like the Devs passion finally died entirely and they went into maintenance mode where they keep it running at lukewarm.

For me with ff14, the community is not much different to WoW's. We have our fair share of toxic individuals. But the development is far superior. I do disagree with the devs quite often, I dislike their anti-parser policy, their heal and tank design, their lack of bag space for mats, their simplification of crafting and gathering, not being able to mail alts, their lack of action against bots and feel they made some bad resource management decisions in ShB and so on. But this is just my feedback, they have passion for the game they make and that's what really matters. Overall I have fun playing the game.

At core, WoW is actually a superior game. More customizable engine, a billion quests, lots of fun characters, humor, toys and references, unlimited glamour dresser, tons of bag space, far superior combat, pet battles, raids and so on. That core is what carries the game even today. But the endless bad development decisions have resulted in gameplay that is nowhere near as fun, focusing more on chores, played-time metrics and a "we know best" mentality. Which is sad to see really, but a lesson I hope the ff14 devs pay attention to.

[Puremallace]

The latest expansion is being termed SystemsLands as it should be because instead of going for straight forward MMO things that work they keep trying to reinvent the wheel. I do not and will never understand why Blizzard will spend two years fixing something then throw it in the trash in a new expansion.

I absolutely pity new players to WoW because if they pick the wrong expansion to level through they will have literally NO CLUE who any of these important characters are in Shadowlands. Just play this out in your head. I am new to the game and I pick BC to level through then get forced through BFA into Shadowlands. Now you talk about this guy named Garrosh who main story arc was in Mist of Pandaria??!?

It was like zero consideration was given to introducing new people to the game in a way that makes sense. Instead of just doing what Square Enix did and streamlining the quest they just got rid of it.

Torghast is a blatant rip off of Palace of Dead with literally the same UI but they are so short sighted they did not realize making it gear reliant means it will have to constantly be nerfed and buffed depending on the ilvl of the patch and then they forgot doing it this way utterly screws one class archeatype like tanks and especially healers.

It is just poorly copied across the board.

[Reyketi]

you missed the point that WoW/Blizz under Ion is more of a "my way or the highway" approach.

feedback from testers/community is to be encouraged and subsequently ignored completely if it interferes with the dev "vision"

no one is ever happy in that game, npc's, players, likely even teh coders. the story is lackluster at best, and while they have copied systems from many other games, they have missed getting or being interested in anything resembling a real story that will grab you and make you feel...anything...except frustration and irritation

"no one is ever happy in that game"

You hit the nail on the head for me.

Best Wishes

-Reyketi

[TheMightyMollusk]

My main thought is that FFXIV feels more like a game, while WoW feels more like a job. Here, I can cap out my weekly tomes, maybe hit a raid or two, and be done with the "required" content for the week. On WoW, there's always more grinding to be done if you want to keep up. I left WoW in Legion, so my perspective may be a little dated, but having to work on multiple sets of daily quests, plus rep grinds, plus world quests, plus farming artifact power.....it all feels like an obligation, rather than fun. I've heard that BFA doubled down on all of it, which killed any desire I might've had to go back.

Also, hardly a controversial oppinnion, but WoW's storytelling is an ungodly mess.

[NanaWiloh]

Nope...must resist urge to comment on subject aaah

[NanaWiloh]

I agree with everything you said. I have watched just about every live letter and interview with Yoshi P. The vast majority of the content is in a language I unfortunately do not understand. Regardless of this limitation it is very apparent the passion Yoshi and his developers have for the project. I love that. Its nice to know how plugged into things they are and how much they care about the direction of the game.

Love Yoshi.p love that he is not afriad to troll us and humor us. <3 Just wish he would not work himself so hard..

[Allegor]

That's kind of the thing about WoW though. It's not about the story. Never has been, the people that play it generally don't care about a one and done thing like story. That's why they rush to get level cap so they can start playing the real game. And lol no one is frustrated or irritated by it. It's a joke to the people that play WoW.

I don't know, I'm fairly certain, if bold to say, many "WoW refugees" came to XIV because while BFA was a sinking ship from all sides (no pun intended) the contrived, bias, nonsensical overarching story was one of its biggest flaws. As someone who mains a Tauren Druid, I would've sooner defect to the Alliance than serve that Banshee, specially after playing Jaina's redemption arc.

[MoofiaBossVal]

you missed the point that WoW/Blizz under Ion is more of a "my way or the highway" approach.

feedback from testers/community is to be encouraged and subsequently ignored completely if it interferes with the dev "vision"

Eh, Blizzard was ignoring player feedback as far back as when Greg Street (aka Ghostcrawler) was in charge (there were a lot of complaint threads on the official forums and MMO champion). The difference is that Greg was at least somewhat charismatic and interacted with the community a lot on the forums, whereas Ion might appear in one developer video every two years and he's about as charismatic as a rock.

the story is lackluster at best, and while they have copied systems from many other games, they have missed getting or being interested in anything resembling a real story that will grab you and make you feel...anything...except frustration and irritation

I thought that Cata and MoP told fantastic stories. The invasion of Gilneas, the escalating Horde vs Alliance war, invading Pandaria and meeting Lore-Walker Cho. The Dalaran fiasco, etc. Even WoD, despite the absurd premise, had an amazing questing experience. But ever since Metzen left (aka the man who made the Warcraft lore as we know it), the story went downhill starting in Legion. It's obvious that there isn't anyone like Metzen left who is in charge and really, truly cares about the Warcraft story.

That's kind of the thing about WoW though. It's not about the story. Never has been, the people that play it generally don't care about a one and done thing like story. That's why they rush to get level cap so they can start playing the real game. And lol no one is frustrated or irritated by it. It's a joke to the people that play WoW.

I dunno about that one. I didn't really raid in Cata and MoP all that much. I mainly played for the story. (And the PvP). The game started becoming a chore during MoP, but the story was still good enough that I kept playing. But then after WoD, the story became abysmal and all I was left with was a game that was chore to play, so I stopped.

[Deceptus]

The latest expansion is being termed SystemsLands as it should be because instead of going for straight forward MMO things that work they keep trying to reinvent the wheel. I do not and will never understand why Blizzard will spend two years fixing something then throw it in the trash in a new expansion.

Torghast is a blatant rip off of Palace of Dead with literally the same UI but they are so short sighted they did not realize making it gear reliant means it will have to constantly be nerfed and buffed depending on the ilvl of the patch and then they forgot doing it this way utterly screws one class archeatype like tanks and especially healers.

It is just poorly copied across the board.

For WoW, the dev team has relatively recently determined that every new expansion needs some sort of carrot that the player can power up. Legendaries in WoD, Azerite in BfA, etc.

They're made to be temporary and have zero lasting impact. It's nothing more than a hamster wheel, and IMHO it's lazy design.

FFXIV is guilty of this as well in certain aspects.

Eh, Blizzard was ignoring player feedback as far back as when Greg Street (aka Ghostcrawler) was in charge (there were a lot of complaint threads on the official forums and MMO champion). The difference is that Greg was at least somewhat charismatic and interacted with the community a lot on the forums, whereas Ion might appear in one developer video every two years and he's about as charismatic as a rock.
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'Member Kalgan plays a Mage!

But the endless bad development decisions have resulted in gameplay that is nowhere near as fun, focusing more on chores, played-time metrics and a "we know best" mentality. Which is sad to see really, but a lesson I hope the ff14 devs pay attention to.

This is the best and absolute worst part of WoW. They are willing to make changes relatively quickly but they end up changing things literally every patch and often in between, it becomes a constant roller coaster. 5% up here, 10% down here. When you know they really F*ed up is when you see: 10% increase across the board to spec X.

Resulting in certain class specs that are extremely under and over tuned. Sucks when a spec you love to play becomes un-competitive overnight.