To those that say FF14 is not a big dog in MMO's

[Y2K21]

Bending the knee is one thing. Lying about bending the knee is another altogether. Especially when said lie also ruins others that had no connection to the issue.

They didnt even lie about bending the knee -- they tried to play it off and downplay it which didnt work.

This is the problem when you do business with China. China controls everything -- anything associated with foreign business gets heavily vetted and if anything violates policy, it has to be fixed. You simply just cannot work with China these days and be an international company anymore.

It was a bad situation, and theres nothing were going to do about it because China is China.

[Raelsar]

While I agree there are a few very concerning issues here for WoW players.

- First is the serious lack of detail not even three weeks ago when asked multiple times.
- Second they seemed to have no idea what to do with the multiple systems they created.
- Third even the most experienced WoW players were not expecting this and it seems very sudden.

Given the extended length this might be in testing it will be old content for a lot of very bored people by the time it is actually released. My guess they are going to have a release date for this and Burning Crusade lined up to try and preempt any good news/reviews of Endwalker.

The fact this PTR is directly lined up with the 5.5 release date is certainly not an accident and I seriously doubt their expansion being called Shadowlands when the biggest competitor is called ShadowBringers was an accident either. It is 100% designed to confuse the google algorithm and recommendations on Google and Youtube when searching for an MMO. Activision is known for scummy business practices and this is just one of them.

They sounded extremely confident at the time that this expansion would be easy competition for FF14 and it is turning into a trainwreck. One MMO has very straight forward systems based on classic MMO design and the other is a convoluted mess of systems designed more for grinding vs fun.

Launching a PTR, quite possibly lacking content initially, against an end-of-expansion patch for FFXIV just seems like a bad idea. Trying for a near-simultaneous release can be disastrous when you're competing for attention, especially when it looks like you're going to be the one coming up short.

That being said, I don't think they're trying to draw players away from FFXIV; in all likelihood, they know those players are gone (at least under the current state of affairs). Distracting the remaining players who are thinking about leaving and might be eyeing another MMORPG? That makes a bit more sense.

In other words... it's damage control.

Cramming more time-sinks and announcing half-baked content is only to stem the bleeding, which appears to be getting worse by the day at this point. Anything and everything to try and prevent the situation from deteriorating further, but it's just treating the symptoms and not the disease at the root of the problem.

---

That being said, I'm expecting either the next patch for WoW and/or TBC Classic to try and line up their releases to compete against Endwalker.

If it's the former, they're doomed to failure; the issues are too systemic to go up against the grand finale. The latter has something of a shot... but I don't think it'll be as successful as the first Classic, the community issues (the habits of the modern community rather than players exploring) put a bit of a damper on that experience and you'll only have the genuine fanatics hopping on board right away for the second.

[Y2K21]

That being said, I'm expecting either the next patch for WoW and/or TBC Classic to try and line up their releases to compete against Endwalker.

According to a rumor and then some string details, TBC is coming out in early-mid May. TBC is going to have its usual fan-fair and power until it burns out in popularity after a few months.

9.1 is mostly coming out June based upon the PTR cycle (6 weeks average). 9.1 is all dependent on what Blizzard does. Either they do nothing to change the course or pull off something.

Its a mixed bag.

[ItMe]

WoW continues to live rent-free in every FFXIV players head.

What does this mean?

[LittleImp]

What does this mean?

A lot of FFXIV players obsess over WoW to an unhealthily excessive degree, even though it should be almost completely irrelevant to their ability to enjoy this game.

It's most common among people that migrated from WoW to this game a long time ago; It's kind of like when someone still has feelings for an ex that they have trouble admitting to, and compensate by disparaging their ex or trying to make them jealous.

It materializes in a lot of extremely negative ways in the FFXIV community, including people using 'WoW refugee' as an insult, or attacking people unprovoked for mentioning coming from / playing WoW.

I've seen sprouts harassed straight off of the game by the 'anti-wow' crowd, including some personal friends who were so turned off by the way they were treated in the Novice Network that they dropped the game.

[Alaray]

Launching a PTR, quite possibly lacking content initially, against an end-of-expansion patch for FFXIV just seems like a bad idea. Trying for a near-simultaneous release can be disastrous when you're competing for attention, especially when it looks like you're going to be the one coming up short.

To be fair on this point, 9.1 will have a raid in it. 5.5 will have... 1 trial.

[ItMe]

A lot of FFXIV players [...]

Ooooh I see.
Thanks for clearing that up for me~

Man, I seem to be asking for people to clarify a lot lately.
I apologize if I'm annoying anyone.

[Ralph2449]

Based on mmo-population data ff14 will overtake WoW within a couple of years in popularity/numbers because it has been constantly increasing which is a sigh of a healthy mmo who hasn’t reached its peak unlike WoW which has reached its peak and can’t hold people more than a few months after an expansion launch.

WoW is only getting worse throughout the years, extreme focus on esport content, gutting casual content and rewards so their elite protected class raiders don’t feel ‘forced’ to do anything other than raid log, even gear progression is locked behind achievements now, and of course a community that is so bad it is rivaling lol.

WoW is surviving on addicts, people who seem to hate WoW at times yet are unable to leave because their ego depends on all those time limited and exclusive rewards they have gathered over the years so they can’t even imagine to stop playing no matter how much they don’t have fun, it is also surviving because it has doubled down on using tokens for profit, with achievement focused gearing casuals or latecomers are forced to buy boosts if they ever want to play the endgame because either they never get invited for pug groups or they get stomped in pvp by high rates carry sellers that happily stream boosting where they 1-2 shot players because they have mythic gear.

That is neither healthy or sustainable. And because the community is so elitist, tryhard and metaslave to the point you are gonna suffer if you don’t play meta spec with meta build because the devs don’t want to be too ‘disruptive’ to their protected class that changes to fotm anyway so don’t expect even a semblance of balance. It is change to fotm for 6months then jump to the next fotm and that has made the community’s metaslaving even worse

I honestly I feel WoW isn’t real competition to ff14, it has always been degrading but it took a nosedive in their latest xpac and the devs clearly share the same mentality since they were tryhard elitist raiders themselves so no surprise casual content is trash and rewards have been removed while ff14 keeps a healthy increase and focuses on the content the majority playing instead of focusing on a minority at the expense of literwlly everything else.

WoW will always remain profitable due to its manipulative time limited, exclusive and elitist focus design but that can’t keep the game going long term which is why it has failed to attract new players and it is always old players with a history in WoW that ‘give it a chance’ o ly to leave after a few months

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

A lot of FFXIV players obsess over WoW to an unhealthily excessive degree,

It doesn't help when Pro WoW players occasionally come into FFXIV and keep pushing for WoW systems to be put in XIV, and talk about how great and superior the game is by comparison. (A guy tried to use Paragraphs of lore on a race as an example of WoW being better)
So its more of a Defensive/Reactionary thing, FFXIV players are not worried about WoW taking down their game, They just hate being told by WoW players to be like WoW

[Igneous]

I use to say the same thing, then SL hit and Covenants turned Arenas into a clown fiesta and I deleted all my characters. Can’t go back when there’s nothing left. Prolly the best decision I made