A lot of pre-WOW players!

[Larirawiel]

I just came back to Eorzea from couple of months ...

There is not "the reason" why many players left WoW but many. One of the reasons is lack of content. After the release of Shadowlands there was only one content patch. It means, you paid 156 €/168 $ for one content patch! And this is not worth the money for many players.

Another reason is, the endgame is basically "raid or die". You have raids, you have very hard 5 man dungeons and nothing more. If you do not want to do those things then the game becomes boring very quickly. There is no housing, no meaningful crafting, no meaningful PvP (OK, FF14 not better here^^), places comparable to goldsaucer are only saisonal events etc. FF14 is way more "broader" then WoW in terms of content.

Another reason is, WoW has too many FOMO mechanics. Very important resources like soul ash or anima have a weekly limit. Yes, Allagan Tomestone of Revelation are also limited per week. But in WoW almost everything what is important has such limits. It means, you cannot take a break from the game or do something different in the game like exploring etc. Because if you miss one week of farming soul ash etc. then you have never ever a chance to catch up because those weekly limits will stop you. This turns the game from "what do i want to do today" to "what do i HAVE TO do today". And after some weeks the players ask themself whether the grind in Torghast to get soul ash for the legendary items was fun or not.

And one reason is also the story telling. WoW had never a good story telling but from WoW vanilla to WotLK it was OK. There was never a MSQ but here and there were many interesting "side quests". And often also nice big quest chains. And the stories and the environment were grounded. The player was a very good warrior and nothing more. But now in Shadowlands you are basically a god slayer. They pushed the story to a cosmic level, you deal with godlike entities and ... when you play the story then you have literally one facepalm every three minutes. You ask yourself how it is possible that this trillion years old godlike entity can act so stupid? And why Tyrande Whisperwind tries to strangle an undead banshee? The problem here is the story does not make any sense. You have an antagonist who plotted many events which started in Warcraft 3! But ingame, he is an Arnold Schwarzenegger-like entity. He only says some meaningless one-liners and nothing more. You have never ever the impression that this guy is a kind of a mastermind. Then the undead banshee who wants "freedom for all" and allies with the main antagonist. The main antagonist uses domination magic, he enslaves souls, later in the story he mindcontrols a human and his castle is named "Sanctum of Domination". Domination everywhere. But the banshee queen did not notice it at all. Sorry but third class fanfiction is more consistent and plausible then this. And then there are so many things unanswered.

Cheers

[Loonies]

I am coming from WoW as well and belief me there are still a lot of players on the way to FF 14 from WoW. If the developers say its players fault, then its time to leave a game.

[yajnaji]

More players joining the game is probably not a trend you want to die out. Doesn't matter where they came from.

Actually it is... nothing good ever comes with too much success and that applies to everything, including video games.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Usually people who think FF14 is easier have only done the normal versions, or they didn't do it minimum item level with no echo so they outgeared it and had echo stacks.

Leveling is easy, but for your first class leveling isn't the problem, it's that you have to do the main story quests to get to the current expansion and that can take months.

To be fair some of the "endgame" raid/trial content actually was easy simply because the boss pretty much ran off a script and once you did it enough to see the whole script it was just a matter of remembering where not to stand at specific times.

[Ferra]

What server were you on? I transferred to Wyrmrest Accord the day it opened and stayed there.

I played on Moon Guard and Wyrmrest, doing whatever RP struck my fancy that day. And I fully agree: I could go on about the negatives for ages but I'd rather just focus on the good times I had. Did make Trial characters just to check out WoW after I left but...Not too much I can do on there.

[EzekielBook]

I haven't fully switched yet - I still enjoy playing WoW. I'm also enjoying FF XIV, but for similar and different reasons.

WoW has some great storylines - fewer now than they used to, but still, they're out there. And it's not afraid to throw some slapstick in the middle of a serious quest line. FF seems to have concentrated silliness, and right now what I'm looking forward to most is the next installment of Hildebert Manderville. (I'm only in what I think is the last part of HW right now).

But what WoW really has is seamlessness. FF has load screens everywhere, while WoW has very few of them. It feels much smoother to play WoW than FF.

Also, I'm kind of an altaholic. I enjoy having multiple characters to do multiple things. In WoW you're kind of forced into it, if you want to play different classes, but here, while I can change my looks via the aesthetistician, my name best suits a male Hyur, rather than a Female Mi'quote, who I would want to have a different name with. And not being able to send gil or mats from one character on the same server to another is, frankly, very off-putting.

So, yeah, why I play FF and why I play WoW.

[Darksummoner]

It is too easy. I do the story and then I quit for other games. Can't understand how you all play the same dungeons every single day for years AND pay for the pleasure.

Just like us FFXIV players can't understand how people keep going back to ass grabbing WoW smoking on the same toxic shit and lies they been giving for 17 years now.

[Darksummoner]

Actually it is... nothing good ever comes with too much success and that applies to everything, including video games.

Interesting. You should go tell the WoW players this line. They are under the assumption their KING RULES FOREVER.

[GeminiReed]

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 ...

Are you making a huge assumption that most folks want to raid? You'd be sorely mistaken.

Or do you believe that ramping up the difficulty of the rest of the game is going to inspire the masses to step into EX/Savage/Ultimate? While you might get a few more it'll come at a huge cost when those that have no interest up and leave.

When WoW's LFG was introduced the most honest complaint I read was that nobody would want to do the harder difficulties anymore. While it mostly likely drained some of that pool it opened up the raid content to so many more people who in turn did attempt higher tiers.

It is too easy. I do the story and then I quit for other games. Can't understand how you all play the same dungeons every single day for years AND pay for the pleasure.

I have a lot of alts at various stages of the story and there are certain features that are fun for me. For a time I was doing ShB hunt trains. Right now I'm messing around with Squadrons and BLU. Occasionally some of my friends will (finally) log in and we'll mount farm or do maps and maybe do an older ShB EX sync'd.

While I've done a bit of Savage, challenge for the sake of challenge does nothing for me. In fact I'm prone to tendonitis so I have to be very careful how much progression I do. The attraction is entirely social. I find many of the solo instances very irritating and unfun and will tick "Very Easy" on most of them and some of the lengthy ones without a reasonable checkpoint I'll intentionally fail just so I get that option.

[Jeeqbit]

To be fair some of the "endgame" raid/trial content actually was easy simply because the boss pretty much ran off a script and once you did it enough to see the whole script it was just a matter of remembering where not to stand at specific times.

FF14 just defines the difficulty differently. Learning the script is the difficulty of the game and once you learn it, you might personally feel it's easy but the ones still learning it won't. Some games will make it random so that you never really know the fight, but then you don't necessarily get that sense of confidence that you know the fight so you can farm it and help others through it.

But what WoW really has is seamlessness. FF has load screens everywhere, while WoW has very few of them. It feels much smoother to play WoW than FF.

If you use an SSD you should load instantly.