SE, no effort anywhere lately.

[Lium]

That's fine - The difference is if I were to watch an XIV youtube series, it'd make 0 difference with my gameplay engagement. I'm almost encouraged to watch it on Youtube with the ability to rewind and fast forward through garbage. Where WoW allows me the ability to coop, find secrets with rewards, and skip areas for later, or skip them entirely because I didn't like that side-story.

Also they just have a ton of great video shorts, so hell yeah I'm gonna watch those: https://youtu.be/hndyTy3uiZM



You actually believe XIV questing is even remotely comparable to WoW? Are you out of your mind? Have you played WoW within the last 6 years? WoW is in a completely different universe with how advanced the systems are compared to XIV. It even has dynamic world instances because some quests actually change the landscape and NPC interaction. It just has far better tools for engaging storytelling.

Some of us never actually enjoyed the way XIV has forced and designed MSQ. We assumed that maybe after 10 years they'd at least put a little more effort into the engagement and ways the MSQ is told. But nope, it's been the same boring slog.

They've upgraded boss mechanics, downgraded dungeons, added fun exploratory systems, washed the classes, and kept the MSQ just as shit as ever.

A lot of us are waiting to see what they're going to do for 7.0. It's the tipping point in whether those players keep their sub. I log in less and less every day.

If WoW releases housing, and gets rid of the stupid swirly mechanics, then have mercy on XIV.

Almost everyone on the WoW forums disagrees with you. In fact, they spend most of their time praising this game while dissing their own game when it comes to the story and the writing.

Your opinion is just that. Your opinion. It is not objective. It is subjective. Just like everyone else's.

[Vahlnir]

Almost everyone on the WoW forums disagrees with you. In fact, they spend most of their time praising this game will dissing their own game when it comes to the story and the writing.

Your opinion is just that. Your opinion. It is not objective. It is subjective. Just like everyone else's.

That is because WoW has had genuinely poor writing and game design for 2 expansions in a row. The most recent expansion, Dragonflight, was more of a reset of sorts, so time will tell what happens from here. At the end of the day, the WoW forums aren't much different from ours. When a good point is made, it's a really good point, and when something is universally hated, the players come together and put on quite a show of solidarity. But sometimes they complain just to complain, too. I was seeing a ton of praise for FF XIV and other MMOs prior to Dragonflight, but I haven't seen it much after it launched. A lot of people have dug their trenches again to defend literally everything WoW, for better or worse.

[Zebraoracle]

Almost everyone on the WoW forums disagrees with you. In fact, they spend most of their time praising this game while dissing their own game when it comes to the story and the writing.

Your opinion is just that. Your opinion. It is not objective. It is subjective. Just like everyone else's.

A couple of you are misunderstanding him. He's not saying WoW's story is better than 14's, no sane person would ever do that lol.

He's saying the way WoW's story and questing is handled and structured is more engaging as a video game than 14's. 14's story is good, despite its issues, but the way the story is handled from a gameplay perspective is not good. That's his point.

[DPZ2]

That is because WoW has had genuinely poor writing and game design for 2 expansions in a row.

I actually think that WoW's writing is top-notch when it comes as a book, rather than something in game. The poor writing in-game is primarily due to the lack of enthusiasm for story when the primary goal of players is to reach end-game quickly to participate in end-game battle content. That, and the writers have believed that the books between expansions are a suitable replacement for in-story content. Every single expansion that I played, at least, and we're talking BC to BFA ...

[drtasteyummy]

A couple of you are misunderstanding him. He's not saying WoW's story is better than 14's, no sane person would ever do that lol.

He's saying the way WoW's story and questing is handled and structured is more engaging as a video game than 14's. 14's story is good, despite its issues, but the way the story is handled from a gameplay perspective is not good. That's his point.

Don't really want to argue against that but on the flipside you have to be honest like 90% of the WoW community doesn't even know what the story is about they just have a surface level guess of what they're doing. Protect some people here, fix something there, fight dragon here, fight old god there, wrestle illidan, kick arthas off his throne. I bet if it's not for WC3 people wouldn't even know who Illidan is lol.

[Lium]

A couple of you are misunderstanding him. He's not saying WoW's story is better than 14's, no sane person would ever do that lol.

He's saying the way WoW's story and questing is handled and structured is more engaging as a video game than 14's. 14's story is good, despite its issues, but the way the story is handled from a gameplay perspective is not good. That's his point.

That's still just his/her opinion. I played WoW from May 2005 up till Legion. I switched to FFXIV full time as my main game around 2017. So to me, even from a gameplay perspective, I much prefer the way FFXIV does it. But you and others may disagree with that.

I tried WoW on a couple of free weekends that I had when Blizzard was trying to get back a lot of the former players they lost when they were (truly) hemorrhaging players. The questing and leveling as they are today is - how can I phrase this nicely - an afterthought. You are either dumped into a starting island for new players, or can pick which expansion to level up in if you are a returning player.

In either case, questing and leveling goes by in the blink of an eye. The game tries to get you to the current expansion as fast as possible while completely ignoring everything else that came before it. It is very much a hollow experience. And you don't even really learn your class or the lore of the world or anything. The game goes by so fast.

This is actually a major source of complaints in the WoW community from what I can tell. Most players seem to want a revamp of the questing and leveling system in WoW because it is not new player friendly and offers such an empty experience.

But again, that's just my opinion and the opinions of many on the WoW forums. Some, like the poster I originally quoted, prefer WoW's method.

[R041]

Sorry, could you go into detail on the tools WoW uses for their storytelling? I feel like I'm missing something.

Sure, again there's a point being missed about the storytelling toolkit itself. XIV has about a fleshed out toolkit as a Visual Novel and they refuse to expand on it.

I think before BfA the story was especially disjoined, but during BfA it did an OK job of letting you roam and figure stuff out yourself on your own time. Also the whole point of the new expansion Dragonflight is to find a middle ground for a better new player experience without shoving all of the history into it so you can just enjoy the game and storytelling.

You really don't need to know everyone's backstory 100% to be engaged in the overall plot. It's not like XIV was a saint in this regard, most players didn't even get to play XIV 1.0, so who are we to tell them they can't enjoy the plot unless they actually knew who the Path of the Twelve were and how they were started.

XIV MSQ Toolkit:

1. Text Dialog 95% / VA 5% (Sometimes very important story details are only text)
2. Purple glowy with 2 mobs every few hours
3. 1 15 minute dungeon after 8 hours? - Spam AoE button
4. 1 Trial after 10 hours?
5. Solo Duties every 8 hours?
6. Single Player unless Dungeon or Trial (So 95% of the time)
7. MSQ NPC sometimes walks with you in town (woah, high-tech)
8. "It is recommended that you set aside sufficient time to view these scenes in their entirety."

Repeat until end of expansion

Forced formula preventing the story from naturally being told. Means we get dungeons that often don't matter, and areas we wish were dungeons.


WoW MSQ Toolkit:

1. Dungeons open whenever you hit min level (Not required to do them)
2. Story threads naturally push to a dungeon, not forced by MSQ timing
3. Most dialog are VA - Important Dialog seem to always be VA
4. Story threads are rewarding as they can give unique items with special actions
5. All quests/MSQ are coop and can be re-shared
6. You can sync party everywhere
7. MSQ is gameplay focused first
8. MSQ allows you to branch off to different areas and complete them at your leisure
9. MSQ unlocks story progression for alts
10. Gameplay gimmicks all over the place
11. World zones can evolve through quest progress, even small scale.

XIV is just.. Mechanically limited in MSQ. So it's not as engaging as a game.

You could say that if XIV were told in the WoW ecosystem that it would be just as disjointed, so the real difference is you're being force-fed each zone back to back through text dialog.

It's fine if you prefer a forced visual novel. But that doesn't make it mechanically better. It's like saying Doki Doki Literature Club has better gameplay engagement than Valheim.

[R041]

...

It seems like you just read opinion pieces and you haven't actually played BfA, Shadowlands, or Dragonflight.

It is a fact that XIV has the least engaging gameplay for MSQ in the MMO genre. Even if we enjoy the overall plot. No matter how amazing the Trials are as "Wow factors", the dullness between them still isn't engaging.

XIV forces you to play the Visual Novel for 300 hours and players still can't figure out their class. Maybe because the time between actually playing and reading is typically 5-10 hour stretches.

WoW gives you a lot of time to figure out your class, it actually lets you PLAY your class through MSQ unlike XIV. It also has proper class trials and tutorials if you're into that.

It mostly sounds like you're just using negative talking points most FFXIV players make against WoW without actually playing it. I know, because I used those same talking points before - Then I actually played BfA through Dragonflight and had to put my foot in my mouth with how wrong I was.

Also, I enjoy a lot of things in FFXIV more than I do WoW. But that doesn't mean I can say everything is better. I will gladly admit that the MSQ mechanics are dull and lifeless outside of some fun fights we get to do. I wish it were expanded, I wish we could coop more, I wish it had more world and gameplay engagement overall. But unfortunately both the dungeons and maps are used as basic set-pieces for talking heads.

[DPZ2]

It's fine if you prefer a forced visual novel. But that doesn't make it mechanically better.

The lesson from this is: Don't play FFXIV unless you prefer a "forced visual novel". Fortunately, there are a large number of players who prefer going through the story while leveling, and who don't seem to mind the gameplay.

I've played a number of MMORPGs over the years, and current WoW has the sorriest view of "story". What story? All the important bits in the game, since the early 2010s, is only known from books, rather than engaging gameplay. What value is the vaunted "coop" option if the storyline is little more than "go kill 20+ zhevras in order to collect 6 hoofs"? What value is there in a coop option for the story when it is quicker to level through dungeons? I'm amazed that players in WoW don't complain as much about the lack of skill of players who've gone through the story line so fast that they still don't have a good idea of what their abilities can do at end game.

[drtasteyummy]

...

It's hard to argue against that because I absolutely feel the same way. But in their defense, it was always the way they told the story. Whether you like it or not is purely up to that person, and some really do like it the way it is now. It's like saying, "I hate that I have to read the item description in Elden Ring. That's such a bad way of telling the story that would otherwise be so interesting. I hope the next DLC will fix that." It's just like no, not going to happen.