Other MMOs and their History

[strawberrycake]

As a WoW player from 2006 to 2020, i say people need to truly consider is that WoW players now are MUCH different from pre-cata players.

WoW players today do not cite what made the game incredibly successful following additional early expansions.
Accessibility, achievement, making our own path.

Back then we did not need a carrot on a stick to play. We max geared an alt? We rolled another one. Much more people did both PvE and PvP.

We did not need borrowed power and hundreds of hours of grind every quarter of something not essential to class or gear before. We did not need devs and others telling us *how to play*. We just *played*.

The current WoW generation has been hellbent of supporting lootboxes and tossing hundreds of hours into unhappy forced play time. Years ago, I never would hear "I need to grind why else would I play?" And then you find out they came from HD runescape theirfirst MMO and they had no idea what made a decent MMO for all. So y'all skip cutscenes and run into a "timegate" which is the same schedule we've had here for years.

My deduction is that the fact that these Legion first gen players that supported borrowed power, mythics, and a carrot stick over their head needed an influencer to tell them a game was good, might not have the faculties to deduce what is a well made game.

They had unmade a WoW shaped by the players that wanted out of the grind. Out of the controlled one track play style that stifled them. Only to be caged by artifact power. Azerite power. Covenant reknown. Instead of fetching other pursuits and the other wonderful side things such as FF has, we had to sit and grind part time job, some of us career PvPers, doing stuff we hate.

Why would i play, doing something i hate?

As someone who started back in Vanilla, and has been struggling to find a way to explain a lot of what it was to be a WoW player back then I would say you've done a really amazing job of Explaining it actually.

[Penthea]

i'd argue FFXIV has the opposite issue with rampant toxic positivity.

I have yet to see this anywhere in the game itself. I only see this among players on the likes of the forums and twitter who can't stand even the smallest criticism about their favorite game. Twitter being the best place to find this from what I have seen. These crazy stans exist in every fandom. I have even seen this behaviour on a twitter account about knitting lol.

While WoW's Community has rampant toxic negativity

The way some systems are handled nurtures this. For example with how mythic keys are designed the price of failure is so high that it has resulted in players overly scrutinising each other and sometimes get easily angered when something goes wrong. It also doesn't help that players can get away with saying a lot of awful stuff so bad eggs get dealt with much less frequently and with a much lighter hand than in FFXIV.

Players are players. But your environment does affect how you act and many of WoW's systems cause players to become overly judgemental and irritable for various reasons. WoW was not always as hostile as it is now. As the systems became more demanding on time and punishing on mistakes the playerbase's patience grew thinner. It also doesn't help that the casual section of the game is hugely neglected so chill stuff to do is not numerous or engaging. I've seen quite a lot of WoW players be more mellow in other games. I was never one to get angry quickly but even I noticed that I became more chilled out while I played FF and when I went back to WoW I became more tense.

There is something very wrong with how WoW is developed. Not the players as a whole. Too much focus on competition and not enough on fun. That's not going to result in a happy or welcoming playerbase. That isn't to say nothing in WoW is fun but nearly everything that is has some manner of competition built into it, and too much competitiveness can bring out the worst in people.

[Maxilor]

As a WoW player from 2006 to 2020, i say people need to truly consider is that WoW players now are MUCH different from pre-cata players.

WoW players today do not cite what made the game incredibly successful following additional early expansions.
Accessibility, achievement, making our own path.

Back then we did not need a carrot on a stick to play. We max geared an alt? We rolled another one. Much more people did both PvE and PvP.

We did not need borrowed power and hundreds of hours of grind every quarter of something not essential to class or gear before. We did not need devs and others telling us *how to play*. We just *played*.

The current WoW generation has been hellbent of supporting lootboxes and tossing hundreds of hours into unhappy forced play time. Years ago, I never would hear "I need to grind why else would I play?" And then you find out they came from HD runescape theirfirst MMO and they had no idea what made a decent MMO for all. So y'all skip cutscenes and run into a "timegate" which is the same schedule we've had here for years.

My deduction is that the fact that these Legion first gen players that supported borrowed power, mythics, and a carrot stick over their head needed an influencer to tell them a game was good, might not have the faculties to deduce what is a well made game.

They had unmade a WoW shaped by the players that wanted out of the grind. Out of the controlled one track play style that stifled them. Only to be caged by artifact power. Azerite power. Covenant reknown. Instead of fetching other pursuits and the other wonderful side things such as FF has, we had to sit and grind part time job, some of us career PvPers, doing stuff we hate.

Why would i play, doing something i hate?

This is an excellent summary of mine and many other's problems with Modern WoW.

[Alklios]

They had unmade a WoW shaped by the players that wanted out of the grind.

Why would i play, doing something i hate?

In FF14 I can do anything I want to. I have not had to swallow the same PvE crap forcing me to rerun Mythic X for the 200th time and X world quest group 20 times a week. WoW in the past i spent a fraction of the time getting to where I needed and had so much morw for leisure. BG's, WPvP, RP, helping noobs.

Only to be insulted that I am not 'hardcore' that I do not spend so many hours playing. "Back in my day", hardcore was: world first, achievement completion, skill capped.

In modern WoW I am told I am a bad player because I don't have the time to fish for a decent healer and grind arenas against boosters with my gear value being useless from rating requirements we did away with in 2010. You want to talk good PvP? GW1 had flat capped pvp in 2005. Yet here we are in 2021 with it all undone.

So I play FF. Where I can craft.
I can mentor.
I can decorate and household.
I can do alternative PvE and not fall behind (in Legion during finals I missed a week of artifact power grind and was fighting players with 50% more HP and got better lootbox stuff)
I can RP without feeling guilty I am falling behind the progression curve.

You brainwashed new WoW generation have become so brainwashed with the need to RUSH RUSH RUSH to get to the next boost in your numbers to face a stat squish only 1 xpac apart.

There is no joy, there is only arbitrary grind. Artificial gametime. So how dare you plague and ruin my favorite MMO i have so many memories of, then spit and scorn a game for years only to two face and follow and influencer that clearly showed majority base are sheeple who demand nothing constructive of their game and get peeved that people enjoy having choice and isn't your terraformed barren wasteland of burnt out players.

[Michieltjuhh]

One of the biggest issues is that players are getting too good at min-maxing. Content gets consumed too fast. Everything is datamined and people are ready for it before it's even released. This issue happens in every MMORPG. WoW tried to find a cure and failed. FF14 just accepts it as it is, for better or worse, with Yoshida stating that we should just take it a break between content if need be (I disagree that this is an option due to housing decay but that's a different story).

In other MMORPG history, SWtoR did a bloody amazing job at telling you a story. Cutscenes gallore similar to FF14, fully voice acted including your character, meaningful choices that impacted your story, resulting in potentially entirely different outcomes. Too bad the rest of the game suffered for it, as the majority of their budget went into the stories. And the eventual free to play launch was a disaster due to a bad business model.

[UkcsAlias]

Back then we did not need a carrot on a stick to play. We max geared an alt? We rolled another one. Much more people did both PvE and PvP.

I think this detail goes further into all games in general. In older games, knowledge to aid a player into making better decisions was often quite restricted. Sometimes this was covered by limitations in hardware (completing a level gave a clear marker of proceeding). And sometimes it was an issue developers didnt know it existed (the reason for a compas was often to cover bad level design regarding to pathing, the compas would guide a player to search for a specific direction). However, these days most of these features are now known, and can be handled.

And this brings the next issue: Many players dont want artificial delays in progress. If you are forced to grind to proceed, it will anoy players. And this is an aspect WoW heavily relies on by setting quest tresholds. I do however have the idea FF does it the other way around by giving you too much progress too fast (but thats because i dont play a lot of diffirent characters acros the MSQ). WoW has the advantage that the MSQ can follow the character level quite well, while in FF, if it would be done like that, you would cause yourself to face a wall of leveling as side effect. I like the FF system more because even if overleveled, the events you play can downscale you. But it makes the world often not feel like a dangerous area, until you are reaching the max level again and cant overlevel anymore.

Another thing is, because games were still more expensive at the WoW time than they are now, it was better make that time worthy. But the costs in games have reduced massively over time, allowing more and more content to be made at a cheaper cost, while also having a larger audience to get more sales. This means that games now are forced to get people into an interesting situation earlier, and more often. WoW has the advantage of simply having a lot of content and experience on what players like. Knowledge that is hard to clone if you are making a diffirent game (like in FPS games, gun mechanics decide which map type you should generaly have).

And a last but important feature, forcing people to play to not miss out on anything creates a FOMO situation. And this can get people away from a game because they simply can never get everything. And wow is full of these things. But in the end, i think this is why WoW still has a place for plenty of FF players, because when you do have plenty of time, WoW can cover it. While FF is more accessible, and also pulls away the players that actualy dont suit WoW's philosophy of how their game should be.

Just look at the speed diffirence of completing the MSQ, i wouldnt be surprised if WoW players essentialy rush this (and i dont see that as an issue, play how you want to. just dont force others to do the same)

[AnnRam]

As the title suggests I wonder how many people are interested in the history of other MMOs and how they got here to where they are today. Atm I can say I've seen the rise and fall of several MMOs, and these things happened for various reasons with each.

I'll use the lovely buzztopic as an example:

WoW was not as bad as it is today, and personally(I can be wrong) I feel many like to harp on its failures vs its success. I doubt it has to be said to many but A lot of the current state of XIV mirrors a point in time where WoW was much the same. From devlopment choices, to a massive influx of players. Even now, similar issues have been talked about with XIV, from time gating, to adding more hardcore content,to what a new job should be. These may not be WoW and XIV specific, but given how Yoshida has developed the games, they've been similarly handled.

So I guess my question, and point of this topic is, if Yoshida is willing to learned from WoW, good and bad, why does the community constantly resort to tribalism, over talking to WoW players about what can be done to keep XIV from possibly going down a similar path. Learning from them the history of how the players affected that game, just like Yoshida is learning from the live history of the Development and company side of WoW, and how that affected the game.

I personally think we should make it a point to do so as players. We never know what the future brings and it only take a few things changing for similar issues to arise within XIV.

I doubt I have to say it, but no, not a troll thread, just an honest thought I had since WoW vs. XIV is literally everywhere now a days.

Wow had everything before Pandaria.

Good Story
Good gameplay with different builds
Real open world with no loading screens and an active environment
Good PVP and in open world as well.
Real-good gathering/crafting with tons of tools to play around.
A mix of PVE/PVP world.

Meanwhile in FFXIV

Good MSQ
Good Graphics and animations/skills
Good all-in-one character system.
Everything else is mediocre and feels like a game from 2005 (menus,gathering,static world with no changes even after 3 expansions, dead pvp, dead worlds filled with fates that nobody does, etc)

I quit wow for FFXIV in 2014 and never came back.

[Breakbeat]

Title comes off as an innocuous request for discussion on MMO history.

Thread - of friggin' course - is now WoW vs. FFXIV.

@OP, if you truly wanted a discussion about MMO history, using "WoW vs. FFXIV" in your post as an example was a really silly move. Admit, you don't really want a discussion about MMO history, do you? As a naturally inquisitive individual who is a fan of both knowledge and debate, I probably would have started with a paragraph on MUDs, which I used to play 'till the sun came up, back in the day.

Neverwinter Nights? Asheron's Call? EQ?? Anyone??? LOL...

"Other MMOs and their history" indeed.

/shrug

[Conundrum]

I love when someone says "lets talk about MMO history" and then starts with WoW.

That's like saying...Lets talk about American History and then starts with the 1930s.

[strawberrycake]

Title comes off as an innocuous request for discussion on MMO history.

Thread - of friggin' course - is now WoW vs. FFXIV.

@OP, if you truly wanted a discussion about MMO history, using "WoW vs. FFXIV" in your post as an example was a really silly move. Admit, you don't really want a discussion about MMO history, do you? As a naturally inquisitive individual who is a fan of both knowledge and debate, I probably would have started with a paragraph on MUDs, which I used to play 'till the sun came up, back in the day.

Neverwinter Nights? Asheron's Call? EQ?? Anyone??? LOL...

"Other MMOs and their history" indeed.

/shrug

I love when someone says "lets talk about MMO history and then starts with WoW.

That's like saying...Lets talk about American History and then starts with the 1930s.

To both of you I'd simply say Look at the main points I've made, they can applied to multiple MMOs, not just WoW, but given how often the topic comes up I figured it would be easier for people to start with given it's a constant for them to hear about it or see it. Personally I've primarily been a WoW player and an XIV player. But I hope this opens up many other MMO vets to come and speak on said points I've made and speak on how their Games have been affected by their respective player bases and companies.

But no matter how either of you decide to take it, I still made my points fairly. Be it Rift and it's chaotic series of updates, or ESO's terrible launch and how Zenimax changed their approach to MMOs, You can take out "XIV and WoW" and place any other MMO in these spots.

Edit: Also WoW was used due to Yoshi P using the game to Develop XIV. So there are many things to compare, and for good reason.