Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
I disagree. There's a lot of love and care put into the zones in both WoW and ESO that simply isn't present in FFXIV.

For years, I've seen requests about making FFXIV's game world look and feel better to explore - but the bulk of relevance is always in the initial MSQ's and then entire zones are left largely irrelevant after their initial exploration.

Whereas WoW might bring you back to older zones by having a new threat show up and launch an attack that changes the landscape and ESO is constantly adding new features that retroactively apply to older zones such as archaelogy...FFXIV simply isn't particularly bold when it comes to its open world.

If anything, it has slid backwards in some regards. Remember Aleport? You can practically enter every building in many ARR settlements. You can't in later expansion settlements as they're sealed off - which is weird, given the huge amount of role-players that the game has attracted.
Half the game literally doesn't fit with the characters anymore, and have you seen how detailed outland is? I do agree that ARR maps were better than HW and SB maps (especially around gridania), but things are getting better since SHB.

PS: I say this as someone who has played wow, so it's not blind worship.