After 7 months of FFXIV Journey i went back to WoW..

[KaijinRhada]

No shame in loving a game such as WoW, and I know that feeling all too well. I played from 2005 to 2018 (with two breaks in between) with FFXIV running from early 2015 to present. I started writing RP on the forums with some friends during BC. WoW does world building quite well, and having a character be a blank slate worked perfectly in that setting. Even after all of these years, there's still a lot of things I love about it, however my love for it waned from BfA onward and with various debacles related to Blizzard as a company.

It sucks because I'm a WoW veteran, playing for a healthy amount of years. Seeing the game become twisted into a miserable grind with some of the worst storytelling and character development in recent years made it so difficult to keep playing, especially if you were an RPer. Especially especially if you played one of the races who remained untouched or, worse, were victims of atrocities just to further the stories of others. (Night Elves, which were my favorite race)

Tyrande was one of my favorite characters and the lore behind Elune was so mysterious and interesting...Just for Shadowlands to dump something so dumb I wish I could spoil it here.

So many great characters turned into mockeries into their former selves, especially Sylvanus.

...Kinda sad to think about it honestly. Dunno if I wanna relive the frustration again.

Ferra nicely summed up my current feelings on the game. It's hard to want to go back to all of the systems and time-wasting gameplay. It's particularly hard when the lore is... just what it is. I still keep up with it, but found myself facepalming at the plot and character direction more often than not, and as a long time Night Elf fan I can't say I've enjoyed how they handled things.

Despite the ongoing issues (for me) in WoW, it is hard to just leave OCs and stories abandoned, so some of my friends still explore the stories of our OCs on a free forum. Similar avenues might be available to you, or if you're subbed to WoW, try jumping into World's End Tavern on their official forums (just make sure it isn't the Lore forum since that's for discussion of the story and related items).

I do not ever see why a player should need to buy anywhere near 17 books to get the lore of a game that should actually BE in the game.

This is one of my biggest complaints about WoW. Anything that is important in the story of a game should take place in said game. Outside media should be purely supplementary. If people need to read the books and comics to understand important plotpoints, then, in my opinion, the game has failed to properly portray the story.

[VelKallor]

Oh almost forgot.....there was also a load of lore on a legendary ring...Blizzard obliterated THAT as well.

WOW is a litany of deleted content en masse, replaced by "buy this book for $40.00 USD" to read lore we should have have removed in the first place."..which is another reason I left WOW. I got sick to death of seeing each expansion becoming a list of "what we are taking away from you". The equivalent is Square wiping out Coils from the game.

WOW's 'lore" is the equivalent of a smashed mirror put together with duct tape and superglue. None of it makes any sense...seeing as half the background no longer exists.

It's a dog's breakfast of bad, disjointed cut and paste, deleted content, content out of sequence, deleted quests, deleted questlines, deleted zones, content that had any number of uses thrown aside and consigned to the scrapheap, not to mention entire character developement.

Order Halls anyone?

By the way, I know Blizzard doesnt care, or has forgotten, but has anyone else noticed theres this humongous sword sticking out of Silithus and halfway into orbit? Where is Khadgar? What happened to the Vindicaar? What happened to Farondis and his people? Highmountain? The Valarjar? The Broken isles? New Dalaran? is is still sitting there, abandoned and alone?

All of it..tossed aside and forgotten as "old content". The entire tapestry of Legion, the artifact weapons and their lore and history. Is Argus still in orbit of Azeroth, within striking distance?

There is NO continuity. None.

You cant even stay and play that content ( what there is of it ) anymore, at a certain point you are FORCED to go to the Shadowlands when levelling.

..and dont even get me started on what I think of Mary Sue Sylvanus.

[VelKallor]

All I hear from WoW vets is how bad the story is and how they just ripped off End Game.

Dont you mean Lord of the Rings?

[IshAle]

Yes that game has a strong feeling to me, but it is only nostalgia for me at this point. I still will see Arthas as a tragic hero from my childhood and think it likely due to *fan* reasons he will feature later within the Shadowlands.

Outside of that feeling the game is well and truely dead to me. After coming to FFXIV it feels like I’ve reached the shores of an adventure I was destined to take and I haven’t looked back. There are a few gameplay changes that I am still getting used to but those will pass.

[KitKatnip]

Sadly Blizzard removed so much from WoW it isn't the game I remember playing back when it was at it's peak (WotLK). You can't get that back. Not even with their legacy servers because even that isn't the same as it was.

Playing FFXIV makes me wonder if Blizzard even knows what they are doing anymore.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

Some of the posts in this thread are difficult for me to comprehend. I played WoW in late 04 at the very start of vanilla. I played for 16 years. I came to Final Fantasy in June with the idea that I would just try it and probably wouldn't like it. Then it became Ill just play this until they fix WoW (and yes WoW is very broken). But honestly every single experience I have in Final Fantasy is superior in every way to what I went through in WoW. The statement that it feels like getting out of an abusive relationship and into a good one is overrused in this case but thats really what it feels like. They can "fix" every single issue I had with WoW and I dont care anymore. Their ship has sailed and failed for me, after playing the game for the majority of my time on earth.

Ion Hazzikostas (wow main developer) can sit down with me take notes on every single change I would make to WoW and implement them all today and I wouldn't care. To me, Final Fantasy does absolutely everything better. The art, the character models, the dungeons, the raids, the story telling, the music, the leveling, the one character all jobs, the community, the golden saucer, the option to play on PS5, the RP. Every-single-thing suits my playstyle in what I want from an MMO better. The ground up foundation of everything I think an MMO should be, is just better and I feel dumb daily for ever having played WoW as long as I did. Should have left in WoD and never looked back.

If someone is still enjoying WoW im happy for you I really am. But I truly dont get it.

[Liam_Harper]

WoW had great lore. I had those years of emotional investment in the story too. But it just doesn't exist anymore. I see FF14 as the opportunity to start a new journey and experience years of emotional investment in a great story all over again. There's just no reason for me to cling to the tattered remains of something that's done and over and miss that chance. I have fun here.

Blizzard went downhill once they started removing storyline back in MoP (the Legendary cloak questline) to try and create a fomo effect and drag people back to cover their content drought. They went pants-on-head after that and left massive chunks of vital story missing, tucked away in a book somewhere, deleted more legendary quests, deleted conclusions to entire expansions, deleted pre-patch quests that explained how major events happened. The story ingame made no sense whatsoever.

I could never go back to WoW. I had fun. I don't regret playing it. But it's over. I would rank Blizzard as one of the worst large gaming companies I know of now.

[Kes13a]

I could never go back to WoW. I had fun. I don't regret playing it. But it's over. I would rank Blizzard as one of the worst large gaming companies I know of now.

they did manage to succeed in taking years of investment, emotional and monetary, and turning an entertainment meant to be fun, a game, into a non paying second job.

I dont regret the time I spent there, but I also dont miss it very much either. they are now like that ex romantic partner that you avoid seeing, or that job you left because it was horrible and never put on your resume.

awesome job Blizz....

[Xaruko_Nexume]

WoW had great lore. I had those years of emotional investment in the story too. But it just doesn't exist anymore. I see FF14 as the opportunity to start a new journey and experience years of emotional investment in a great story all over again. There's just no reason for me to cling to the tattered remains of something that's done and over and miss that chance. I have fun here.

Blizzard went downhill once they started removing storyline back in MoP (the Legendary cloak questline) to try and create a fomo effect and drag people back to cover their content drought. They went pants-on-head after that and left massive chunks of vital story missing, tucked away in a book somewhere, deleted more legendary quests, deleted conclusions to entire expansions, deleted pre-patch quests that explained how major events happened. The story ingame made no sense whatsoever.

I could never go back to WoW. I had fun. I don't regret playing it. But it's over. I would rank Blizzard as one of the worst large gaming companies I know of now.

Same and same. I played for 16 years its not like I hated the game or regret it...Well, I do regret not leaving sooner. But I met good people during Wotlk at least and there were fun moments that I do not regret.

[_Koneko_]

Good luck to you op but I'm of the opinion that blizzard will not change they will remain a bad company making only surface changes while not addressing the underlying problem with their company just like ubisoft and riot got a slap on the wrists and continued pretty much like before while pretending to do something about what they got sued for no doubt we'll see this companies sued again in the future as they never seem to learn though it's not like they are the only problem it seems the industry could use better policing and more then a slap on the wrist the suits never seem to feel it unless the wallets where their heart should be are hit

on a personal note blizzard could go down in flames tomorrow and drag activision down with it and i'd be pretty happy about it since I don't really feel attached to the company or game even after 15 years of playing world of warcraft they lost me when they started butchering their lore in favor of rule of the cool