FFXIV and SqEnix vs WoW and Blizzard - My Perspective

[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)