For WoW refugees. What was not announced?

[Unholychinchilla]

Many ex-WoW players seem to act like someone who got out of a relationship that went bad and doesn't want to admit they're not over it, so won't shut up about how over it they are and how much better their lives are now.

Just. Move. On.

Yes they're trying to complete but giving them attention won't magically hurt them. No bad publicity and all that. It's not as if they're going to grab players in Limsa and shove them into vans that take then to WoW if we're not watching them every second.

I'm a former WoW player but I was fed up of not being able to play other MMOs without people going on about how bad WoW was back in 2008.

Just give it a rest, already.

[Manamaru]

I would also mention that the concept and improvement from 1.0 onto 2.0 and onwards comes from YoshiP playing WoW. For better or for worse, he took various concepts and incorporated that to turn it into what FF14 is today. I mean, if we really wanted to jump down the rabbit hole, we could go on a long venture showing how both FFXIV and WoW ultimately stem from the same source of inspiration, just differing routes.

Both have their differences, and both have what attracts players to them. Both will inevitably have their own shortcomings. But that just leaves room for the developers of both games to pull from the cacophony of madness that their various forum feedback and so forth and see what they take out of it.

[LisSquid]

I wouldn't mind the transparency blizzard has
Love or hate their decisions: they tell you what youre going to get. Also ptrs are great!

[Kes13a]

I wouldn't mind the transparency blizzard has
Love or hate their decisions: they tell you what youre going to get. Also ptrs are great!

yeah, transparency. like telling the players for years the basic bag you get could never be expanded because it would break core game functionality.
asking for player input on a class change, and ignoring the 50+ pages of reasoned input after

they are what they are. no game maker is perfect. I left there because their imperfections became too much for me personally to bear. I dont regret my time there any more than my decision to come here instead

[Penthea]

Is it so impossible to simply enjoy a feature or announcement by it's own without going down the "tHiS iS sO mUcH bEtTeR tHaN tHiS oThEr gAmE"?
Some FFXIV players are apparently not confident enough in the game they enjoy to just say "I like this. This is good. Period".

I quit WoW years ago and I still sometimes think "man I like this so much more than WoW" because I played that game for over ten years, and for the latter half of it I was growing tired of Blizzard not fulfilling promises and seeming to dig their heels in with design choices that were widely disliked by the player population. I speak for so many when I say I too often felt Blizzard were telling me what I should like instead of actually introducing changes that I want. I know no one is going to get everything they want in a game but it's not a nice feeling to be painfully aware that you're part of a huge majority unhappy with a very long list of things and the devs appear to be repeatedly ignoring it.

So after the above being the norm for me for so long how FFXIV is handled is still something that makes me feel pleasantly surprised sometimes. There certainly are what I consider to be big problems in FFXIV that I am frustrated about because they aren't being addressed but that list is significantly shorter than my long time grievances with WoW.

Not trying to poop on anyone who prefers WoW. If they do, good for them and I hope they continue to be happy in that game. But for a player like me FFXIV's design philosophy is much more appealing.

I think it's only natural for players who played another game of the same genre for such a long time, go to another and feel "omg they do things so differently...and it works!" especially if that game they played had colossal success on the scale of WoW and they were unhappy while playing it despite its popularity.

It's going to be a very long time before that reaction of "I'm so glad this isn't like that other game" completely goes away for me because for so long I played WoW due to feeling like I had no other good options for my personal needs as a player. I still feel so incredibly fortunate and happy that FFXIV exists and that I don't feel like I have to endure a long list of things I dislike just so I can access that small sliver of content I enjoy.

[Rilifane]

Many ex-WoW players seem to act like someone who got out of a relationship that went bad and doesn't want to admit they're not over it, so won't shut up about how over it they are and how much better their lives are now.

Never thought about it this way but now that you mention it... it really does sound like it.

I always thought the term "WoW refugee" was silly and overdramatic because refugees are people who flee from something serious. If they simply relocate to something/ somewhere because they prefer it, that's not seeking refugee. That's just going with your preferences and people do it all the time.
So why the need to label something so common and natural with such an overdramatic term? Someone liked a game and now doesn't anymore. Big deal. Move on... preferably without going on and on about how it was their "dark phase", that "they're so glad they found a home somewhere better", how they "wasted years with something SO bad" and that they're "SO over it. You hear me? OVER IT!" etc.

I'm not an Aion refugee because I eventually stopped playing it when I didn't like the decisions the devs made anymore. Or a SW:TOR refugee. Or a RO refugee. Plenty of people came over from other games yet only former WoW players deserve a special label because they apparently had to endure so much and their transition is so much more meaningful then someone coming from any other MMO? Okay.

snip

But that's the thing: you're doing it in a good way. You continue to be pleasently surprised by things FFXIV does and that's a good thing. You accept that some people might have different preferences and that you simply found a game that's more to yours. You enjoy the game for what it is and the motivation for you to think like this is that you felt none of the games on the market really catered to your preferences until FFXIV came along.
That's a very positive and open mentality and I wish more people could handle it in such a mature way.

What I was referring to are people who keep chewing everyone's ears off with how much better this is, going on a forum crusade and shit on other games at every chance they're given. That's a completely different thing.

[EtherRose]

FFXIV: Shadow Bringer
WoW: Shadow Lands

FFXIV: Endwalker
WoW: End Traveler

[Jennah]

WoW: "Oh, the new engine gives you motion sickness? TOO BAD. We won't just do nothing about it. We will let the forums relentlessly mock you, with even our paid representatives joining in. We will immediately break any addons that address the issue. And we will add NPCs to the game to mock you as well. Screw you."
FF14: "Our playtesters found that diving underwater gave some of them motion sickness, so here is a setting to turn it off, which we are even announcing before Stormblood's release. Please look forward to it."


While I'd been playing both for awhile and had admittedly come to the conclusion that FF14 was a better game; that alone was enough to get me to uninstall WoW and never look back.

It may not be a big issue for a lot of people; but it's basically a microcosm of the difference between the two companies.

[Penthea]

But that's the thing: you're doing it in a good way. You continue to be pleasently surprised by things FFXIV does and that's a good thing. You accept that some people might have different preferences and that you simply found a game that's more to yours. You enjoy the game for what it is and the motivation for you to think like this is that you felt none of the games on the market really catered to your preferences until FFXIV came along.
That's a very positive and open mentality and I wish more people could handle it in such a mature way.

What I was referring to are people who keep chewing everyone's ears off with how much better this is, going on a forum crusade and shit on other games at every chance they're given. That's a completely different thing.

Thank you for saying my mindset is a good one

And yea I am not fond of the crusades whose sole intention is to severely badmouth another game. Criticism and comparison is fine, but there comes a point in which that begins to become harsh feedback and frankly that feedback is going to do absolutely nothing if you're expressing it in a place that isn't even for the game. I seriously doubt WoW devs and community managers come to this forum to find out how players feel about WoW. Never mind those who don't realise that just because they dislike something it doesn't automatically mean it must be bad. It can simply be because it isn't their jam but it is enjoyable for someone with different taste.

Many mmos in the past marketed themselves as the WoW killer and I think that attitude has crept into the minds of some players when comparing FFXIV and WoW. One of the reasons why I love FFXIV is that it isn't trying to be WoW and it's not trying to kill WoW. It's just doing its own thing, and I truly believe that's a huge part of its success. It's trying to fill a gap in the market instead of trying to shove someone else out. I do wish more players realised this and understand that even games they don't like still fulfill a purpose. More choice is always good and having multiple good mmos is great for the gaming community as a whole. Also many players out there enjoy playing both games.

And of course games having competition does drive them to do better. Monopolies can often make companies complacent and refuse to innovate.

[Nayout]

I wouldn't mind the transparency blizzard has
Love or hate their decisions: they tell you what youre going to get. Also ptrs are great!

Transparency? This "transparency" was non-existent for many years at Wow and it was not until the last expansions that they began to speak more with the community and often with lies or half truths.

We were used to having something announced to us and then canceling it a day before like the dance academy or making changes without any prior information like the nerf to the Zandalari dungeons during Cataclyms.

WoW: "Oh, the new engine gives you motion sickness? TOO BAD. We won't just do nothing about it. We will let the forums relentlessly mock you, with even our paid representatives joining in. We will immediately break any addons that address the issue. And we will add NPCs to the game to mock you as well. Screw you."
FF14: "Our playtesters found that diving underwater gave some of them motion sickness, so here is a setting to turn it off, which we are even announcing before Stormblood's release. Please look forward to it."


While I'd been playing both for awhile and had admittedly come to the conclusion that FF14 was a better game; that alone was enough to get me to uninstall WoW and never look back.

It may not be a big issue for a lot of people; but it's basically a microcosm of the difference between the two companies.

Come on I have to remember how they haven't done anything with the Blacklist system in this game just because the Japanese mentality tells them otherwise while you have a lot of people suffering constant harassment in the game? While practically the presence of GMS in this game or of "blues" are almost non-existent in this forum?

I also have to remember when some Dragoon players in ARR discovered a problem with ice resistance in battles against Shiva and started to delete which post in the official forums regarding these reports even banning people for their mistakes?

None of the "teams" is better than another, both SE and Blizzard have shits in their games