A lot of pre-WOW players!

[Sotaris]

Don't mind me, just setting up the first popcorn stand in this thread!

I got the seasoning.

[MoofiaBossVal]

WoW has been bleeding for a long time. It had 12 million subscribers a decade ago and now barely has more than a million or two. It's just come to a point this year where finally the straw broke the camel's back of the hardcore WoW fanboys who are left. Game started going downhill after MoP, with each expansion being worse than the last. WoD having no content, Legion also having a lack of meaningful content padded out by grinds (also music dropped in quality because Russell Brower was laid off), BFA doubling down on the grinds with more grinds ontop of having a terribad story, and then Shadowlands being BFA but even worse. The devs have been mocking and gaslighting their paying customers for the past 7 years.

You pay $60 every two years for an expansion and an additional $15 a month to play a game with barely 20 hours of content and after that, grinds that aren't fun. The music isn't good anymore. The devs insult their customers. The devs have been consistently doubling down on everything wrong with modern WoW. All of the good writers are gone and nobody cares about Danuser's awful fanfic story or mary sues. There is no hope for the future of retail WoW. If you like WoW, you jump ship to private servers. If you just want a high production quality MMO and don't care if it lacks what made WoW appealing, then you jump ship to FFXIV.

[Lexis]

Former WoW player here who came here with the rest of the Exodus but yeah, as people have already mentioned, WoW shot itself in the foot and doesn't even have the good sense to limp over to a hospital. Many of us have been disillusioned with the game for some time and came here to see what's up. Then we discovered catboys/catgirls and decided to never leave <.<

And for those calling FFXIV easier, I guess if you never make it past ARR dungeons it could certainly seem that way but I feel there's content out there to challenge even the hardcore Mythic Raiders. FFXIV just has less of a focus on top tier end-game content and is more about the overall experience with a little bit of everything for everyone. A surprising amount of former WoW players are finding this approach to their liking.

So yeah, thank you for welcoming the seemingly neverending waves of former WoW player sproutlings!

[Raoul9753]

Honestly, my point stopping WoW was during BFA, when I was trying to unlock the Achivement to unlock Vulpera as a race, and one day I just stoped and looked back at what I did in the game the last week, askingt myself one simple question: "Am I having fun right now?" and the answer was no. I literally did a grind to unlock another grind just to get a new Race which I either had to grind or pay money to switch to...

Then I asked myself "Did I have fun during the last month of playing? DId I have fun during the last YEAR of playing?" and being honest with myself, the answer was no. I just logged out right there, uninstalled and cancled my sub...

Thats the whole Problem with WoW, it used to be fun because it was all new and Interesting, it was fun whole there was stuff to do, but I think for the last expansions, fun was a low priority in game design...

The whole game seems designed to keep you playing, but not because you want it, but because you will fall behind or miss out if you dont.

Then someone told me "Yo, Some streamers I watch went to FF14, and I tried it too, it was a blast!", and after about eight months where I just said "no more MMO's" i tried the free trial...

Well, long story short, almost done with Shadowbringers and looking forward to Endwalker^^

[Illmaeran]

A surprising amount of former WoW players are finding this approach to their liking.

I absolutely love it, which is why I've stuck around/consistently come back throughout the years. I enjoyed late-game dungeons and raiding through BWL in Vanilla, but after that it lost its luster. PVP and RP were good for another couple of years' of subscription, but that too came to an end. I had no desire to min-max every tiny little thing in WoW and the more relaxed pace of ARR sucked me in, never to let me go.

For me at least, the challenge of XIV raiding is hitting your rotation and positioning just right. That's more than enough for this middle-aged guy to handle while still retaining an aspect of fun and enjoyment. Now, crafting? That's where it's at!!!

[Kes13a]

WoW is a job, plain and simple. they took entertainment and turned it all into a grind you had to do daily or you were behind. I am very happy FFXIV takes a different philosophy

that was the first turn off, then I realized they hadnt earned my money in a long time, so leaving years ago was pretty easy

[Flashock]

You gotta make it to max level end-game content.

If you are coming from heroic/mythic raiding in WoW and comparing it to leveling dungeons… that’s just not a fair comparison and of course it’s going to feel “too easy”

Level 80 extreme trials, savage/ultimate would be a more apt comparison and IMO these are harder than WoWs heroic/mythic.

Like imagine an Ultimate Raider comparing their experience in FF with RFC or SM dungeons in WoW.
They would be like, “yeah WoW is super duper easy peasy boring game”

[Nishira]

I’m guessing quite a few of the “FF14 is so much easier than WoW!” crowd are the same as the ones who stated WoW was too easy for ages there I have no idea why it is essential that the game you are playing is miles beneath you and your potential, but some are quite invested in this while playing a game for years and consistently paying their sub. One of the mysteries of life. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to it unless they bring an interesting discussion to the table.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I’m guessing quite a few of the “FF14 is so much easier than WoW!” crowd are the same as the ones who stated WoW was too easy for ages there I have no idea why it is essential that the game you are playing is miles beneath you and your potential, but some are quite invested in this while playing a game for years and consistently paying their sub. One of the mysteries of life. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to it unless they bring an interesting discussion to the table.

TBH I feel a fair amount of the MSQ and 4 player dungeons needs an upscale in difficulty over its progress to build players up to doing raids/trials later rather than what they've been doing which is essentially the opposite in making it so simple people can clear it with their eyes closed only pressing 2-3 buttons. It's created an unnecessary rift or divide in the player base and a number of issues in raid/trial content when people cause these to fail simply because nothing had them develop any skills as a player that they needed to actually do that content while playing the other content they needed to do to unlock the raids and trials. Most casual players aren't going to spend time on a striking dummy in those land,sea,sky locations to train themselves or watch a video on youtube repeatedly to memorize everything before jumping into these things. The non raid/trial content really needs to be more like development content that slowly builds players up so new people aren't staring up the face of a cliff when they decide they want the shiny rewards waiting in the treasure chest behind the boss.

[Nishira]

And that’s a very fair discussion Ritsuko Feedback like that makes perfect sense, and actually is aimed at improving a game. But just hollering it is too easy!!! Raaar! regardless of the discussion others try to have with you about it to understand why is sort of… silly. And I’ve seen that happen in WoW regularly haha. So if it’s those people… yeah.