FFXIV and SqEnix vs WoW and Blizzard - My Perspective

[Puremallace]

XIV community is better than WoW in ever conceivable way. I tried WoW recently. That game is in very sorry shape and the community is bottom of the barrel.

The WoW community is constantly angry because of Blizzard. There are very few decisions coming from Blizzard that even resemble common sense. From loot being extremely rare screwing casuals with no alternatives paths...classes just being in a horrible spot with no attempts to fix them....aoe caps.....last minute nerfs/buffs...systems on top of systems combined with RNG...RNG loot with secondary and tertiary stats that make no sense.... crafting professions that serve no purpose

In WoW the content is chasing the gear and not overcoming the content but in FF14 the gear is not heavily gated so people try other classes and raid content is actually a choice you choose to do for fun.

No matter how much time passes I will NEVER understand why Blizzard spends two years fixing something just to smash it to pieces in the next expansion or make it completely irrelevant. I could not imagine being a developer at that company.

[Ayuhra]

The WoW community is constantly angry because of Blizzard. There are very few decisions coming from Blizzard that even resemble common sense. From loot being extremely rare screwing casuals with no alternatives paths...classes just being in a horrible spot with no attempts to fix them....aoe caps.....last minute nerfs/buffs...systems on top of systems combined with RNG...RNG loot with secondary and tertiary stats that make no sense.... crafting professions that serve no purpose

In WoW the content is chasing the gear and not overcoming the content but in FF14 the gear is not heavily gated so people try other classes and raid content is actually a choice you choose to do for fun.

No matter how much time passes I will NEVER understand why Blizzard spends two years fixing something just to smash it to pieces in the next expansion or make it completely irrelevant. I could not imagine being a developer at that company.

Blizzard's current problem in regards to WoW is Ion Hazzikostas.

I am not on the Ion hate train anywhere NEAR as much as most people who frequent forums seem to be but his problem is he really only caters the game to hardcore players.

That doesn't mean there is no easy content, mind you, or that things are inaccessible... It means that if you really want to get the most out of your experience you are going to feel yourself get pushed towards raiding. Everything you do in that game gives something that grants power, too, which means you feel you do things because the game wants you to instead of YOU wanting to do them... And you get stronger with the ultimate end goal of raiding.

Vanilla WoW was a bit "raid or die" but the raids were very easy. Getting a group was the only hard part. In Legion we got Mythic Dungeons but they mostly boil down to doing speed runs in order to get the best gear in a week which mostly people do for, you guessed it, raids.

Ion was the guild leader of the Elitist Jerks back when the game came out. Basically, he was the community's top theorycrafter and he made guides for builds and boss fights. Then he was recruited as a lead raid designer in late Burning Crusade. So the guy's whole WoW experience has been raid-centric. That he is particularly focused on the endgame progression systems and less interested things people might want to do just for fun isn't very surprising.

(To his credit though, he is a VERY GOOD raid designer. We can dunk on WoW all day but that is definitely an area it continues to be strong in)

[Vahlnir]

(To his credit though, he is a VERY GOOD raid designer. We can dunk on WoW all day but that is definitely an area it continues to be strong in)

I loathe the man with every fabric of my being, but I am not afraid to give credit where it is due. Raids are usually pretty fun. Only one of them was fun in BfA to me though, and that was the Battle of Dazar'alor. The others were rushed, along with the stories tied to them. I didn't stick around to find out whether I would enjoy Castle Nathria. I was gone about 2 weeks into Shadowlands. Ion's reliance on endgame progression systems and their associated grinds and time gates really turned me off to WoW in ways I never thought possible. I'll go back to it eventually, I always do, but it's going to be awhile. Probably the longest break I'm ever gonna take from WoW so far. I've been playing for about 11 years and have taken plenty of breaks. I think the longest I was gone from WoW before was 6 months, but that was because of FF XIV's ARR launch. lol I think I knew back then that I would be falling back on this game hard eventually, and boy was I right. I might not always agree with the decisions being made with FF XIV, but it has a heart and soul, and that is something that WoW has been lacking for a long, LONG time. I actually WANT to log in to FF XIV. I had to force myself to log into WoW more times than I'd care to admit the last few years.

[Ayuhra]

I loathe the man with every fabric of my being, but I am not afraid to give credit where it is due. Raids are usually pretty fun. Only one of them was fun in BfA to me though, and that was the Battle of Dazar'alor. The others were rushed, along with the stories tied to them. I didn't stick around to find out whether I would enjoy Castle Nathria. I was gone about 2 weeks into Shadowlands. Ion's reliance on endgame progression systems and their associated grinds and time gates really turned me off to WoW in ways I never thought possible. I'll go back to it eventually, I always do, but it's going to be awhile. Probably the longest break I'm ever gonna take from WoW so far. I've been playing for about 11 years and have taken plenty of breaks. I think the longest I was gone from WoW before was 6 months, but that was because of FF XIV's ARR launch. lol I think I knew back then that I would be falling back on this game hard eventually, and boy was I right. I might not always agree with the decisions being made with FF XIV, but it has a heart and soul, and that is something that WoW has been lacking for a long, LONG time. I actually WANT to log in to FF XIV. I had to force myself to log into WoW more times than I'd care to admit the last few years.

Battle of Dazar'alor will go down as one of the all time best raids. I think the other raids were all great too, though. The stories were not, I'll grant you that (Ny'alotha being a raid instead of an entire expansion of content is something I'll never not be bitter about) but the encounters were good.

I really hope someday Ion sees the game through a non-raider's eyes and recognizes how many of us want to like...play a roleplaying game. Shadowlands shows hints he sees that a bit but it still ended up drowned in systems despite the community asking for it NOT to be at....basically every step of development.

I will go back too, of course. I always bounce between WoW and FFXIV.

FFXIV: Fewer endgame systems makes it more casual friendly. Side content is there for fun. Great story, pretty aesthetic.

WoW: Less rigid than FFXIV in playstyle. Also very pretty. Decent but still comic book story as of Shadowlands. Much more intuitive than FFXIV.

.........................My ideal MMO would be a mix of the two with Elder Scrolls Online's overworld. Please, nerd deities, I want it...

In more serious raiding, WoW back around TBC/Wotlk was generally more ‘hardcore’ than extreme and savage content. Ultimates are more on par with what WoW used to have.

Also what we have as alliance raids is more the set up of WoW, it’s like a long instance with multiple bosses. The FF14 raids are single instanced bosses.

Raiding in FF is more accessible than WoW used to be, but I haven’t played for a long time and I do remember they were starting to make it so more people raided in WoW when I stopped playing.

WoW tries to filter people towards raiding and has more settings of difficulty than before but as a note WoW's raids have only gotten harder in time. There were fights in Burning Crusade that were legit actually broken at a mathematical level, sure, but in terms of complexity they are NOTHING compared to what the current game throws at people.