We lost 70% of our player base half a year in

[Shougun]

NGL. After finishing this current savage tier (P3S nearly broke me), multiple EX trials (mounts), multiple unreals (mounts), dipping my toe in UCOB (not for me).

I took a break.

There are SOOOOO many games out there. Books. Movies. Sports. People.

I know it sounds weird, but sometimes I WANT to distant myself from the game and static group sometimes. Because when that next patch comes out...I log in and it's like seeing an old friend again. For me it's all or nothing style of playing.

Pulling up the duty finder and figuring out what I want to level...if I don't feel it....I don't even want to play. I log out and load up a different game.

Honestly, I have been playing WoW Burning Crusade Classic and just enjoying the ride to 70. Never thought I would even want to do that...but WoW was a good game during that time and it's still fun.

FFXIV is an anomaly in the MMO space that actually values your time. WoW and other MMO's had this FOMO feeling like no other. I know when I come back to the game I can catch up pretty fast, and it's better to let things take time in FFXIV. Blowing through the content isn't my goal. Taking my time and not feeling like I have to hurry.

This savage tier was my main goal for the game. I wanted to clear it before echo is allowed. Don't care about parses, don't care about perfection, and I don't strive for that. I just play the game and have fun with my static, and there are some things that I will remember from this savage tier. So many good times....and bad. (P3S...seriously)

I feel WoW is a few steps away from being great but has a weird direction and is not sure who it's trying to please most.

Like if you added more value your time and less FOMO to WoW, making it /more/ casual friendly, fixing up Garrisons to also include a housing component, ensuring using alts was essentially like changing your job in FFXIV- man I think you'd have some SERIOUS competition in that field of players. Stop being so weird with the story would be another. Like even on a bad day with FFXIV story I think to myself "at least we're not WoW" lol. There are good stories in WoW in the past and current, but it just seems like the quality and more particularly the referential quality is really all over. There are a lot of things the game does right, better than FFXIV I'd argue, but there are a lot of things that I look at WoW and I go 'hahahaha nope, smack me in the face and tell me in a more clear way you're trying to manipulate me and mess with my time".

One point that might be harder to 'fix' is they've seriously burnt their good will credits. So every 'meh' action is met with a lot of very negative media (more than FFXIV would have had for doing the same thing). I think Blizzard needs to be biting the bullet on a few things to gain that back, but clearly whoever is rolling in the cash at Blizzard doesn't think so lol.

Alternatively lean more into the crazy hardcore raids, though my supposition on that is it was, for all games, and will always be, the minority- so I'm not entirely sure going all in there is the best idea if you're wanting to gobble all the cash lol (particularly now that MMOs are frequently being designed with other groups in focus, back when WoW was young WoW was actually 'the' friendly MMO for casual minded players). BUT if you did that at least those players would have a home like no other, and you can see those people have pretty epic high energy stories that mean a lot to them. Like to me- the guy who leads WoW has an obvious bias that is clearly put into the game (he's pretty hardcore raider, at least in a general sense of it- like Yoshida but I think Yoshida does better separating his own personal desires over what might be good for the game.. even with people up in arms about BLM), so there is a lot of FOMO and a lot of content directed at a narrow band of players with large bias to many rewards on top of it with sometimes quite unfriendly reward systems (WoW has waffled a few times and I have read about quite friendly systems, but it seems they then remove those so.. yolo). That they have the Garrison system and have for a while been like "housing doesn't fit into WoW" is evidence to me that perhaps they had (imo) misaligned perspectives to what is more and more a majority type environment (be friendly to your casuals, respect people's time, stop trying to scare everyone with FOMO, making a place to call home away from home is important, stop showing up as the company that preaches to players but then harasses their own employees, wild ideas..., etc).

[Sqwall]

I feel WoW is a few steps away from being great but has a weird direction and is not sure who it's trying to please most.

Current WoW could be great if it looked at the game less as a "personal goal driven" and more as a "shared experience driven". Things that resonate with me are the lead up to the goal...not the goal itself.

Take this current savage tier. I will probably forget that feeling of elation after dropping Hespheros. But I will NEVER forget the frustration of FOF, FOA, Flow 3, Chains, Pinax, Curtain Call, etc. etc. Overcoming those moments was the REAL goal. Finished P4S was kind of sad for me....it's over...it's done. I won't have that moment again. The only thing left is all the memories and shared experience I had with my static group. Talking about strategies. Listening to the healers talk about when to use strong heals and mitigation (no idea what there talking about unless its AST). My OT and I on the same wavelength an understanding when to shirk, voke, stance on stance off, invuln, toss out nascent to them, gives me TBN.

Those are the moments I will cherish....

Climbing a mountain is long and arduous, followed up with shear elation of reaching the summit as your reward....so is the climb back down...

WoW was weird as when it came out it was unlike ANYTHING out there. I have life long friends that I still talk with till this day that I met back in 2004 when I was 21. WoW came at a VERY opportune time in my life and I found an outlet for myself through the game.

FFXIV gives me that in neat little packages that I can continually visit. Once I complete the goal the only thing I remember is everything I encountered along the way. I almost never remember achieving the goal. Is that wired?

[Shougun]

Current WoW could be great if it looked at the game less as a "personal goal driven" and more as a "shared experience driven". Things that resonate with me are the lead up to the goal...not the goal itself.

Take this current savage tier. I will probably forget that feeling of elation after dropping Hespheros. But I will NEVER forget the frustration of FOF, FOA, Flow 3, Chains, Pinax, Curtain Call, etc. etc. Overcoming those moments was the REAL goal. Finished P4S was kind of sad for me....it's over...it's done. I won't have that moment again. The only thing left is all the memories and shared experience I had with my static group. Talking about strategies. Listening to the healers talk about when to use strong heals and mitigation (no idea what there talking about unless its AST). My OT and I on the same wavelength an understanding when to shirk, voke, stance on stance off, invuln, toss out nascent to them, gives me TBN.

Those are the moments I will cherish....

Climbing a mountain is long and arduous, followed up with shear elation of reaching the summit as your reward....so is the climb back down...

WoW was weird as when it came out it was unlike ANYTHING out there. I have life long friends that I still talk with till this day that I met back in 2004 when I was 21. WoW came at a VERY opportune time in my life and I found an outlet for myself through the game.

FFXIV gives me that in neat little packages that I can continually visit. Once I complete the goal the only thing I remember is everything I encountered along the way. I almost never remember achieving the goal. Is that wired?

Why would that be weird~

Enjoying the experience is usually a main part of the fun of it all. Of course this does vary from person to person, so you can't always hit a one size fits all formula. For example I'm sure some people felt elated getting their ARR relic after all the FATE grind.. to me that was like a slow form of torture lol. Though that's where I think, generally, FFXIV does pretty good at giving many different types of players the opportunity to experience something in the means they'd like (most of it being a function of time). If I think "wow that grind is just.. that's just pure awful" for the most part I know I can just wait and then it'll be more my pace later, meanwhile the people who do need a bit of 'pain' (to create powerful memories) .. there it is lol. Of course FFXIV also tends to be a bit more friendly with the pain as they've added more and more systems that are kinder like "ehy good job! now here is something relevant, cherry on top of your rush you're feeling!" rather than some MMOs (particularly older school designed) which are like "good job, but you got nothing.. so.. go again amirite?".

Of course there is rush to that pain as well, for people who try to get their kirin asode, club, turtle shield or whatever fraction of a decimal drop rate item lol, but I look back at such things and think to myself- way too much pain to offset that moment and specifically a very real chance that all that pain is not worth it 'ever' (very real chance you could spend hundreds of hours for a 0.X% drop item and never get it, meanwhile you'll be filled green with envy and maybe even rage when some person 'gets it on their first try'). Alternatively, especially in context of those hyper painful designs, I can simply play a fantastic game that doesn't require almost anything perceivable as 'pain' and still have an amazing time- for example.. witcher 3. I remember that game exceptionally well, and never did I really feel like I was being disrespected or taken advantage of nor did I feel like "there is a high chance my efforts here are being manipulated or will likely be worthless" (unlike high pain grind / low drop rate designs). I'm very much in favor of respecting my psychological health, my time, and trying as best as possible to view that journey as 'fun'.

I think that's why for me, on the more casual side, I occasionally talk about movement systems like.. you know... it sounds silly but.. I think you should invest more in how you navigate the world... the journey itself is gameplay! Or in a similar thought but different system, ensuring the open world has a bit more of a journey itself (I did like the ShB gem system, but still need some more ideas I think for their open world - with other MMOs we can reference as examples.. not like we're waving blankly in the air and saying "do something", or I've, suggested ideas and you can see ideas out there in action).

I think that's a thing WoW would benefit from by killing their love of FOMO- there is some content that you can't just wait till it becomes your style. More often WoW is like "MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY", now of course there are MMOs far more hardcore than WoW lol, but such an unnesccary approach that prays on the minds of players in a sort of "how can I manipulate you into being forced to take action now" and some of that might just be general game design 101 you have to consider.. but it's also blatantly obvious and therefore feels insulting. To which I give FFXIV credit for because there are many times where I think FFXIV's team looks at something as says, "you know what, we could abuse the psychological fear more but we're going to not do that anyways".

Coming back around more to your point though- absolutely the journey itself is important. That's where I think of course those hardcore raids shine, I mean I DO NOT WANT TO DO THEM- AT ALL (because to me it's going to be A LOT of time lost to gaining nothing, given my limited time and perhaps luck if I find a group that can learn or can't.. even worse then), but ... you can read those stories, you can hear Yoshida talk about those stories, I have those stories, they're pretty powerful. It's why I love that rolling mountain design FFXIV generally uses, 'for the most part', everyone gets to approach the content in a way that will suit them.

There are amazing stories in WoW about that high energy journey, but overall I still feel the game doesn't do a very good job of respecting time, helping encourage players to enjoy majority content via functions (like time, though they do 'do that' just things like FOMO are in direct opposition), and in general the company itself seems like it's very addicted to psychological manipulation / abuse currently .

[Sqwall]

Of course there is rush to that pain as well, for people who try to get their kirin asode, club, turtle shield or whatever fraction of a decimal drop rate item lol

OK. THAT actually got me right in the heart.

We now understand one another.

/cheers