WoW devs sent a congrats card to the FF14 team

[Theodric]

MMO's in general seem to attract older players. In the case of FFXIV and WoW, I'd attribute a lot of it to the power of nostalgia. Both games came to exist based on what came before them - namely the Warcraft RTS games in WoW's case and the single player Final Fantasy titles predating FFXIV.

With that said, I think that age does not necessarily equal maturity so a lot of players can seem younger than they actually are.

[Kyu-Momo]

D'aaaw that's so cute!
I know yoshi-p said he would love to to do a collab with them and I hope they do someday. I'd love a murloc minion! XD

[Bellegarde]

The Murlocs are soo cute.
Along with the Moogle and chocobos. Tis a nice thing.

[KizuyaKatogami]

To me that reads like "...Can you share your positivity with us? We suck at that. Let us love you so we don't look like the moustache twirling capitalist villains that we are!" But I'm also a somewhat salty ex WoW player. lol It's a nice gesture, but I have a hard time not seeing Blizzard's angle if there is one. I could be wrong and I hope I am.

The same thing could be said for when SE sent a card to Blizzard lol. I typically tend to see the best in people rather than the worst as it’s a very negative way of thinking that everyone has an angle. Don’t really get the constant double standards in regards to the WoW vs 14 where WoW is always the bad one and 14 is the holy child.

[ReynTime]

Post ShB, in an interview with SQEX about the story, they mentioned that the demographic was between 20-30 which is why they opted for a more mature story.

I think that's kinda baffling since ShB was probably the least mature and least dark story since 2.0.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I think that's kinda baffling since ShB was probably the least mature and least dark story since 2.0.

Agreed lol. I find it so weird whenever i see that because i feel like it’s the expansion filled with the most fluff/slice of life story elements lmao.

[LaylaTsarra]

Agreed lol. I find it so weird whenever i see that because i feel like it’s the expansion filled with the most fluff/slice of life story elements lmao.

Obviously you aren't happy with it you continue to say that over and over. Let me say for me at least it was the best xpac to date. Different strokes for different folks as they say. And on topic I think it's pretty neat of the WOW team to send the director that card.

[Puremallace]

I think that's kinda baffling since ShB was probably the least mature and least dark story since 2.0.

Ardbert? Tesleen? Elidibus? Emet? They took comic book villans in ARR with zero depth to them and gave them ridiculously detailed backstories that make you feel bad for them.

[BaconBits]

I think that's kinda baffling since ShB was probably the least mature and least dark story since 2.0.

Honestly with a line like "Become what you must, become the Warrior of Darkness" I thought we would be engaging in some more morally dubious actions like say, slaying a Lightwarden that the Night's Blessed (or Light's Blessed if you will lol) worships as a god, or Vauthry being a reasonable authority figure that we're forced to put down upon discovering that he is also a Lightwarden, instead of a tyrant that feeds his own people ground up sin eaters.

Instead we kinda just did the same thing we normally do on the Source.

[Theodric]

Ardbert? Tesleen? Elidibus? Emet? They took comic book villans in ARR with zero depth to them and gave them ridiculously detailed backstories that make you feel bad for them.

The Warriors of Darkness and the Ascians arguably always had depth to them before Shadowbringers brought it front and centre. It was the same with Yotsuyu before 4.3. A lot of people brushed them off as 'unforgivable' because they reacted emotionally rather than logically and didn't read between the lines to realise there were complex motives and circumstances at play. A more recent of example of that would be Fourchenault. There's a few subtle hints that he's putting on an act and that his hands are likely tied to the point of frustration...but that didn't stop a significant portion of the FFXIV playerbase wishing death on the character and reducing his motives to 'making the twins sad'. (Ignoring the simple fact that personal tastes alone mean a lot of players don't even care for the duo in the first place...)

Tesleen was a character we knew for about five minutes. She suffered a terrible fate, though she was the red shirt trope through and through. It would've been a much bolder statement to see one of the more important characters turn into a Sin Eater because outside of that one scene it was only ever throwaway characters who were subjected to that grim fate.

ARR and HW were a lot higher in terms of their stakes. SB, too, to a lesser degree - mostly because there were more consequences for the protagonists. It's a shame that we'll likely never see anything along the lines of Livia's assault upon the Waking Sands ever again because even minor characters are now encased in a thick layer of plot armour.

There's also been a shift where the antagonists are made sympathetic so that when bad things happen to them there's an illusion of high stakes - but only ever for the antagonists because they're the only ones who actually stand to lose anything for real whereas the protagonists emerge with very few losses of note by comparison.

A consequence of that is a bloated cast where most people can be confident that nothing is actually going to happen to any of the major and many of the minor characters and thus a lot of the concern surrounding such a premise can arguably been seen as just being melodrama.

I'd say that Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy VIIR do a better job at nuance where Final Fantasy narratives are concerned.

We'll see what Endwalker brings on that front. It's supposed to be a second coming of the so called apocalypse but it's already looking like all the lasting damage will conveniently be limited to regions we're exploring for the first time. I'll be very impressed if we see a major character on the level of Y'shtola or Raubahn perish, though.