How does FF14 compare to WoW? (And other MMOs)

[Xeltoris]

Also I don't really know what to tell you about the lag as I haven't experienced lags since WOTLK and as I write this message, I sit at 2 ms lag.

I'm not gonna lie, this is just blatantly untrue. Launch weeks regularly destroy the servers, Blizzard randomly gets DDOSed on given weeks for several hours at a time, and latency in general has gotten worse over the years. Sitting at 2ms means nothing if the actual world server latency is high due to an issue on their end. I'm speaking from experience here, given I played Legion and BFA basically most of the day every day of the week.

[MonsutaMan]

Somewhere in the middle, with WoW, ESO and BDO being the cream of the crop, and XIV being somewhere between GW2 and games like that. WoW looks like it will be the mmo king forever lol......
https://altarofgaming.com/all-mmos-s...pulation-2018/

XIV is a top mmo, just not the cream of the crop compared to games like BDO with insane character creation, and Wow just being....WoW.....I feel they seen the mistakes made with XIV, and their next mmo may be the cream, of the crop.



FF fan, but just keeping it 100%

[MilkieTea]

Somewhere in the middle, with WoW, ESO and BDO being the cream of the crop, and XIV being somewhere between GW2 and games like that. WoW looks like it will be the mmo king forever lol......
https://altarofgaming.com/all-mmos-s...pulation-2018/

XIV is a top mmo, just not the cream of the crop compared to games like BDO with insane character creation, and Wow just being....WoW.....I feel they seen the mistakes made with XIV, and their next mmo may be the cream, of the crop.



FF fan, but just keeping it 100%

character creation doesn't really mean much when you can literally ignore every other aspect of the game and brute force your way through it. BDO may have numbers but... the amount of complaints ive seen from players rivals that of WoW

and WoW has been dying a VERY slow, VERY painful death for years at this point. numbers are key in THIS CASE: WoW's numbers drop about a month after expacs, and with no content to keep anyone but the most dedicated entertained, it's going to stay like that. WoW experiences a HUGE spike every single expac, and then a drop worse than the last, every time, with shadowlands being the absolute worse. Having numbers "by your side" doesn't mean much when the numbers show you're bleeding users and you can't even keep 10% of your subscribed playerbase active for longer than the month after your expac drops. WoW has only 2% of it's subscribed playerbase active per month as of writing this - meanwhile FFXIV keeps roughly 8-10% active.


Final Fantasy 14 - Souce: https://mmo-population.com/r/ffxiv


World of Warcraft - Source: https://mmo-population.com/r/wow

[VelKallor]

I don't get the argument regarding scheduled maintenance as people aren't logged in 24/7'.

The fact that Blizzard doesnt refund people the millions of dollars they get from unused gametime? They pay for seven days and get six. UI also note that FRF 14 doesnt shut their servers down every week. Odd, innit?

As for daylight ingame, there is an item to force daylight you can buy in the caverns of times ^^ (even though I live in europe so I have european servers)

Oh you mean the toy with a 24 hour cooldown, doesnt persist through death? Or the potion that cant be bought for gold but requires grinding timewalk dungeons?

Sorry but when an MMO cant or wont manage a basic QoL like a unified time of day system, its broken. Blizzard also has a game calendar that is ALSO tied to US time....like making a calendar that shows events in local time is hard?

I hate to say this, but Blizzards favourite mantra seems to be "this cant be done". It can be done, they just WONT and they dont care.

[Ralph2449]

and WoW has been dying a VERY slow, VERY painful death for years at this point. numbers are key in THIS CASE: WoW's numbers drop about a month after expacs, and with no content to keep anyone but the most dedicated entertained, it's going to stay like that. WoW experiences a HUGE spike every single expac, and then a drop worse than the last, every time, with shadowlands being the absolute worse. Having numbers "by your side" doesn't mean much when the numbers show you're bleeding users and you can't even keep 10% of your subscribed playerbase active for longer than the month after your expac drops. WoW has only 2% of it's subscribed playerbase active per month as of writing this - meanwhile FFXIV keeps roughly 8-10% active.


Final Fantasy 14 - Souce: https://mmo-population.com/r/ffxiv


World of Warcraft - Source: https://mmo-population.com/r/wow

One important point here is how final fantasy has a slow but steady increase of activity over the years even during non xpac launch months which is a sign of a far healthier mmorpg while WoW keeps getting spikes with an xpac launch that quickly vanish after many people who "gonna give it 123th chance" leave again.

WoW doesnt have a playerbase with a future, it is extremely toxic and unfriendly to new players which are pushed away by the ridiculous amounts of elitists, tryhards metaslaves and then you have the addicts and sunk cost fallacy victims who might hate the game but cannot imagine leaving because they ll lose all their manipulative time limited and exclusive rewards from years of playing bad expansions so they wont miss said rewards.

FF14 has a future because it has a better community and casual friendly design, WoW will keep their addicts hooked and elitists around but throughout the years more people leave than join the game.

[Krotoan]

These two seem to be the biggest MMOs on the market right now. I have heard over and over again that FF14 has a nicer community than WoW, and my impression is that WoW is more hardcore. What are the main differences between FF14 and WoW? I would love for someone who has played both games to give us some idea on how the two games are different. (Comparisons with other games are welcome too! Always curious and always willing to learn more!)

When I stopped playing WoW, I got suckered back a couple times by friends who were also feeling the expansion hype and we played a bit.. then they stopped and I was left to grind out whatever sidetrack I felt like pursuing. Lots of that driven by FOMO. Blizzards ever present favorite tactic to keep people playing. These things are in the game and if you don't do them NOW.. you will never have the chance to get them again. Achievements, mounts, toys, you name it there was this list of things that had to be done by whatever date or it was never coming back. Also if I wanted to do any current content I either had to suffer through some of the highest pressure and least helpful PUGs I have ever experienced (this is of course anecdotal, i am introverted and react poorly to pressure with no assistance) or I had to be in an active guild. This happened twice and each time I stopped playing sooner and sooner. I eventually just passed on MoP because I wasn't feeling it and I had started playing FFXIV so I had stuff to do.


Unfortunately this was pre ARR. FFXIV was just awful and I petered out on that too. I ended up just playing shooters and bouncing from trendy MMO to flash in the pan startups.
Then ARR dropped. The hype felt real and I got hardcore sucked in to the story and all the world had to offer for several years. During my FFXIV career I've lapsed for over a month maybe twice and each time I came back it was of my own volition. While I did have friends that surged and ebbed with expansions, just like WoW, it always just felt I enjoyed myself more even alone than I did in WoW trying to drag together people to keep on the front of progression.


So in short, WoW only had value in fear of missing things and having close friends to play with, FFXIV is persistently a world I get to live in by myself and caters to whatever I feel like doing that week even If I never add another "friend".

[KenjoKuro]

I very recently took a break from WoW and am giving FFXIV a try.

Unless I am mistaken, one very big difference between WoW and FFXIV is that WoW is much more solo friendly.

In WoW a player can solo from level 1- 60 (current level cap) and never join a group if that is their wish. Upon reaching level cap, the solo player still has a lot of activities available to them.

In FFXIV, I will apparently be forced to group for a level 15 story quest(dungeon) and then periodically after that just to reach level cap.

I intend to give FFXIV a fair try, but forced grouping is definitely a fly in the ointment.

[Krotoan]

I very recently took a break from WoW and am giving FFXIV a try.

Unless I am mistaken, one very big difference between WoW and FFXIV is that WoW is much more solo friendly.

In WoW a player can solo from level 1- 60 (current level cap) and never join a group if that is their wish. Upon reaching level cap, the solo player still has a lot of activities available to them.

In FFXIV, I will apparently be forced to group for a level 15 story quest(dungeon) and then periodically after that just to reach level cap.

I intend to give FFXIV a fair try, but forced grouping is definitely a fly in the ointment.

I will say right now that the chances of anyone even talking during most of your instance "checkpoints" is pretty low. You can easily ignore any chat as long as you're doing the bare minimums of your job and be fine. So yeah, you have to "group", but at this point everyone is so much on autopilot for anything under 80 content, they might as well be AI.

[Ralph2449]

In WoW a player can solo from level 1- 60 (current level cap) and never join a group if that is their wish

That is a matter of personal definitions really, joining a group through an automated group finder gets you into a group where you dont need to talk or communicate , they might as well be NPCs and you are there to just do what your role requires.

I personally define "forced grouping" when you are actually forced to actively deal with people(talk, explain why you play X) you dont like because it is the only way to get decent rewards, aka WoW, where if you want decent gear you have to deal with the most elitist, tryhard metaslave players in existence which are obsessed over raider IO score and meta specs and FotS combs, and unlike an automated group finder you cant simply ignore them and pretend they are NPCs because there's a good chance of wiping but you have no choice because all the cool rewards and locked behind that content.

Upon reaching level cap, the solo player still has a lot of activities available to them.

I wouldnt really say that for WoW, your main activities would be seeing the story which is timegated at the start, then mindlessly farming world quest to get rep for factions which may or may not have anything interesting and old content.

Gear progression is gone for solo players the moment you reach 200ilvl, and the hilarious part is they literally put recommended ilvl to 225 for layer 8 twisting corridors while no solo players will ever reach that. (And yeah I know you dont rly need that, I did it with 205 but that is still what the average person sees)
You could try professions but they have been gutted to uselessness so honestly, WoW does not respect solo players else we would see actually decent rewards for solo play, the hardest to achieve solo reward would be TC 8 yet half the layers give 0 rewards because blizzard cant even be bothered thinking of good rewards for content that isnt l33t groups, hell the mount you get from layer 8 is only rly useful for making grinds faster.

[VirusOnline]

What makes WoW better:
- Transmog system is superior in only one way: being able to look at and try on any piece of gear in the game regardless if you have it or not.
- Mythic dungeons system.
- Mechanics are always interesting each expansion.
- Mounts and achievements are vast.
- Addons. Mostly UI addons. I don't believe in using addons that give someone advantages. I mean what's the point.
- Classes and battle system feel more engaging and unique.
- Non instanced overworld.
- The idea of belonging to a covenant with special powers is a really great concept.
- The crafting/gathering system has more monetary value due to limitation of professions.
- Not having to treat everyone as if they have some hidden fragility.
- Blood Elves. Real paladins.

What makes XIV better:
- Housing.
- Graphics.
- Story.
- Most content rewards are generally obtainable with minimal to moderate effort. Exceptions being ultimate.
- Character customisation, emotes, cpose, glamour.
- Travel system.
- Content frequency and quality.
- Consolidation of regional/language servers.
- You join a PF, you don't "apply" for it.
- Doesn't pressure you to play, no false constant sense of "missing out on something"
- Easy and cheap to jump into the raid scene.
- More generalized content outside of raiding/keys.
- Reputation gates don't include flying.

Why would I waste time comparing FFXIV to an inferior game?

It's a shame that WoW has fallen so, so, so low. For expansions since MoP, people would say and laugh that WoW is dead. Mentally, WoW has been dead. Only difference now is they're trying to fill a dead horse and make it look alive each iteration.