A Warcraft player's letter to the FFXIV community

[Caitlyn]

Welcome to Eorzea.

To be honest, FFXIV is not perfect. Some issues are growing over the years, like old systems didnt get a revamp (Jobs, Glamours, Housing, PvP maybe, etc).

But overall, its still the best FF in the series. Name one FF you can play for 6 years or longer ; )
Additionally, there are no alternatives to FFXIV. You may find other MMORPGs fresh or new, but all of them are missing basic features from FFXIV (like story, music or gamepad-controls). There is no other (good) MMORPG where I can play as a Dragon-Girl xD

In conclusion: Take your time, have fun and maybe take a rest, adventurer.

[ReynTime]

The dungeons feels like actual dungeons, with the trash mobs being actual trash and the bosses actually being real bosses.

If that's how you feel I can only assume WoW's dungeon design must be really atrocious.
I can't imagine what would have been worse than the same hallway with 2~3 trashes followed by a boss arena repeated since 2015 in this game... How would that even be possible? Empty short hallways with no trash at all between boss arenas?
Honestly, FFXIV's dungeon design died the moment Heavensward came out, for sake of making everything DF friendly. And then the dead body got kicked and stepped on in the ground when Trusts happened and dungeons became even more shallow.

[Snorky]

Welcome! I find this community amazing. I am a refugee from ESO. As games go it's a great game, it's the lack of customer service and the draconian measures employed by the forum staff on ESO that make it bad. ESO just doesn't communicate with it's players and hasn't for a long time. So I am glad to be here where the level of caring about customers and the game outshines all. As for Asmondgold, I like him at first I was like why this guy is always saying BD's then I realize it's just funny. I'm a older gal so it's refreshing to me to listen to his perspective. I hope he continues with FFXIV and becomes a great partner to the game. Enjoy!

[Puremallace]

Ions obsessions with raid content over all other content is shallow and it shows by how quick you would burn through WoW's current end game with pve vendor for gear. After you get the gear you would quickly find a shallow MMO with no actual end game because everything else has been allowed to whither.

Asmongold is spending multiple hours doing 7+ year content, Annie is going Triple triad/Gold saucer and other streamers like Rich are having a ball playing with housing/rp/glamour.

[texas_boy]

Meatball, you nailed it. Another WoW refugee here and if I could point to a single event that drove home the difference between the FFXIV and WoW communities it would be a 8 man run I did a few days ago.

It was six of us sprouts and 2 veterans. The fight was waaaay up in the sky on an airship fighting a dragon and one of the sprouts thought there was a safety barrier at the edge of the ship and promptly jumped off to their death before the fight even started.

To my jaw-dropping amazement no one went off on the player. No one rage quit the instance. Instead, one of the veterans suggested that we ALL jump off the ship to reset so that the player wouldn't miss out on the content.

We all laughed, jumped off to reset and proceeded to finish up the instance, having a very good time and NO ONE stressing about dps or calling others out.

It's like a weight has been lifted and you can once again enjoy the game for the game itself with like-minded folks.

Thank you Eorzeans for welcoming us WoW refugees.

[Kes13a]

Meatball, you nailed it. Another WoW refugee here and if I could point to a single event that drove home the difference between the FFXIV and WoW communities it would be a 8 man run I did a few days ago.

It was six of us sprouts and 2 veterans. The fight was waaaay up in the sky on an airship fighting a dragon and one of the sprouts thought there was a safety barrier at the edge of the ship and promptly jumped off to their death before the fight even started.

To my jaw-dropping amazement no one went off on the player. No one rage quit the instance. Instead, one of the veterans suggested that we ALL jump off the ship to reset so that the player wouldn't miss out on the content.

We all laughed, jumped off to reset and proceeded to finish up the instance, having a very good time and NO ONE stressing about dps or calling others out.

It's like a weight has been lifted and you can once again enjoy the game for the game itself with like-minded folks.

Thank you Eorzeans for welcoming us WoW refugees.

if it was a dragoon, I would say they learned their class well

that is very funny though, and yes, its a much more relaxed environment here... usually. as with all games, you will have some less than amusing encounters, but its.. people, what can you do?

[GeminiReed]

To my jaw-dropping amazement no one went off on the player. No one rage quit the instance. Instead, one of the veterans suggested that we ALL jump off the ship to reset so that the player wouldn't miss out on the content.

I briefly played WoW 5-6 years ago and my dungeon running experience was very similar. Nobody cared that I was new or that I sucked. A recent reddit post summed up what I think the root cause why things there have become so miserable. The base difficulty level has surpassed what the vast majority of the population is willing or able to complete. Worse if you make any mistakes or take too long you lose progress.

Reading that brought back the horrified feeling I got during Wildstar's "Gold-or-Bust" era. Dungeons there weren't worth running unless you scored Gold (before the timer, no deaths, no failing avoidable mechanics). Carbine eventually fixed that but not until the initial population had bled out. Not in the least surprised WoW is experiencing a similar issue.

Both of these should serve as cautionary tales for those demanding Souls' like difficulty to "teach" people the game. The only thing that teaches people is that they need to find another game.

[Catwho]

I think a lot of it has to do with the only penalty for death in XIV (in most content) being a little bit of wear and tear on your gear. Just visit a mender after the fight, pay a small fee, and you're all fixed up. And omnicrafters have it even easier, with a right click repair all option.

With the penalty for failure reduced to merely having to start over in most regular content, the player base is a lot more forgiving of silly mistakes like jumping off the cliff. Besides, most of us have done it. I famously yeeted myself off the ledge of Titan Ex as a bard when it was at 1% and I was the last party member alive, six years ago. My friends still tease me about it.

Now, in some of the endgame systems, there is a steeper penalty for death. Eureka deaths cost you experience points. Bozja deaths cost you mettle. And in the case of Bozja's big raids, too many wipes means you're going to run out of time, so it's definitely the kind of thing where people will yell at each other for easily avoidable mistakes that can cause a wipe.

But for most daily content? It's not a big deal at all. You wipe, you laugh, you peel yourself off the floor and start over again.

[XabyTimberwolf]

Just a friendly reminder that not all Wow refugees here did it because some streamer we never watched or care about told us to. Honestly if I knew the streamer community was going to show up I probably wouldn't have bothered to start. Though luckily I had an old trial account I never really got started with so I was able to come in on the Goblin server and not with wherever people yelling poggers (whatever that means) polluted, hah

[Theodric]

Ions obsessions with raid content over all other content is shallow and it shows by how quick you would burn through WoW's current end game with pve vendor for gear. After you get the gear you would quickly find a shallow MMO with no actual end game because everything else has been allowed to whither.

Asmongold is spending multiple hours doing 7+ year content, Annie is going Triple triad/Gold saucer and other streamers like Rich are having a ball playing with housing/rp/glamour.

If someone started WoW for the first time, then they would also have a lot of older content to go through...

Meanwhile veteran players in FFXIV arguably lack much content to focus on because so much of it is designed to be a 'one and done' affair.

WoW also has the equivalent of Triple Triad in the form of pet battles and archaeology as well as a toy system to collect weird and wonderful items.

I prefer FFXIV, but I'm not going to pretend as if it consists of sunshine and roses at every turn.