AT THIS POINT in World of Warcraft

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

They don't.

They do. Every bloody day around here, it's the same bull people have been peddling for 10 years. "Yoshi saved the game!" "Yoshi is looking out for his players!" "Yoshi is so thoughtful!" "Yoshi doesn't want us chained to the game!" over and over and over and over and over and over.

You are doing it right now. He's a grown-ass man, you don't have to defend him like he's your 10 year old son getting bullied on the playground. Frankly with the absolute clown show he's been making of himself in interviews about FF16, he doesn't even deserve to be defended and excused as this game's cult community oh so often likes to do.

It's just the natural reaction from honest people who see Yoshi-P getting personally attacked and the game absolutely trashed by a select few malcontents who are so pathetically bitter they can't stand the thought of people enjoying the game.

If people can enjoy the braindead dumpster fire that the game has turned into, genuinely, power to them. I still have a couple friends who continue to play and find enjoyment (somehow), and I don't knock them for it or constantly talk down to them about it. I am happy they can still enjoy it where I can't, even if I don't personally understand how - other than perhaps just having low standards and being easily pleased. Which, that's fine too - lots of people are like that.

People who have been here for 10 years, however, and have been given increasingly less reason to trust in Yoshida's vision for the game, or to keep logging on, or to keep supporting it monetarily via cash shops or subs... they are not just "malcontents" looking for any reason to be bitter.

In my case, at least, I desperately ignored the writing on the walls for years, I plugged my ears to the game's problems, I grit my teeth and said "it's fine, at least X and Y stuff is still fun!" Until I couldn't anymore. I desperately tried to keep enjoying this game, year after year, despite knowing deep down I was not having fun, I was not happy, and I was simply deluding myself because admitting that it is not the greatest thing since sliced bread felt terrifying after having put so many years and so much of my love and energy into the game.

And so I stepped away. I took time to play single player games with better storytelling. I tried other MMOs, and found they provided me with all of what I had been wanting out of XIV for years and kept being denied. I realized, from my time away, that the game had numerous problems I and others have noticed, pointed out, and begged to be change for LITERAL YEARS. I realized it barely offered me jack outside of the MSQ - which ofc got flushed down the toilet with Endwalker, as the near 900 page thread on the front page of GD will attest.

Come 6.4, if we get yet more of the same braindead bullshit we've been fed year after year on a slowly oxidizing copper platter - and oh, we definitely will, god forbid they innovate lest the whiny children who play this game form riots over it - I will be cancelling my sub fully. I will let what few of my FC who still keep subs going/sub infrequently, look after our FC house - on the off chance that XIV has a wake-up call like WoW did, and improves enough to entice most of us back, so that we at least still have our home.

If we somehow lose it before then, though, that will be assurance of none of us coming back.

This game no longer deserves my money, let alone my time or my energy or my investment. It does not respect me, despite what the cult members like you try and shovel. It does not respect what I want out of an MMO experience, it does not respect my desire to take breaks without potentially losing something worth tons of gil, time, and memories that will be nearly impossible to get back or replace; it does not respect my intelligence as a person or as a player, it does not respect my time - whether lack of, or surplus of. It does not respect me. Yoshida, egotistical prick that he has become, does not respect me - or anyone - despite what he used to claim back when he managed to pull XIV out of 1.0's trainwreck via copying WoW as much as he could.

So why should I respect him? Or give him any money? Why should I give SE more money to blow on NFT garbage and crappy dead-on-arrival games that feel as if they're being made more for paychecks than out of passion?

If others want to do so, whatever - their money, not mine. But I took my money elsewhere, where it's actually worth it to me and where I feel it is being respected at least to some degree more than here.

Look in game. Look on YT. Look on Reddit. The "frustration" you're claiming isn't there.

In-game is dead half the time, from what I hear lately.

Youtube? What few content creators I still follow/have yet to unfollow, seem to all be providing less and less favorable words for XIV.

• CiderSpider just released a video regarding the abysmal relic design this expansion, in fact.
• MisshapenChair long stopped really making content for XIV.
• Lucy Pyre has barely made any real content for it outside of streaming it now and then.
• I've heard Zepla has even decided to "take a break", citing she feels she doesn't really need to come back regardless.
• Zack? Haven't heard a peep out of him regarding FFXIV.
• Nixxiom and many other WoW creators who began doing XIV content for a while during SL stopped, and have returned to WoW.

I could go on, but that's just looking at my feed thus far.

The mainsub for XIV is over-moderated to hell, everyone who seriously uses it and isn't a brainwashed cultist knows they rip down anything even remotely "negative" in perception to the game, regardless of how negative - if at all - it even is.

TalesfromDF, before I stopped following it, was cannibalizing itself due to a number of people quitting, getting tired of the crappy attitudes people have in the community to the point of blowing up at them in-game, or had mainsub simps jumping over being aggro about things that most people who were active in the sub found ridiculous at the best of times, let alone in the state the game's in.

Everywhere I frequent - even on Twitter, of all places, where I don't even really follow any XIV content makers or XIV-heavy accounts anymore! - is showing more and more frustration, dissatisfaction, or outright exhaustion for XIV lately. It certainly exists, even in places I don't expect, and I don't even go out of my way to look for it.

Hells, even WoW's GD forum has a number of XIV refugees often talking about their dissatisfaction with or distaste with the game, every time some XIV shill or XIV/WoW forum troll comes in trying to Jehovah's Witness about the game on an entirely different MMO's forum.

the active playerbase is the highest it's ever been.

Last I heard of the usual player censuses - since we have no actual hard sub data from SE - it's actually dropping off sharply.

It's okay to not personally like the way the game is designed, but to act as if that makes the game objectively "bad" or unpopular is disingenuous and unhelpful.

Clearly it's not okay, or you wouldn't keep screeching at every single dissention ever written about the game on these forums.

The game is, at its core, a bad game. People can still enjoy it despite that! I mean, WoW itself has a number of problems still - but plenty of people are still loving it despite them. ESO has a number of problems, and people still enjoy it despite them. It is possible to like a game despite issues.

But sometimes, the core of a game is still objectively bad, and built in a way that is crippling it over the long term. XIV is one of those cases.

You're not going to get a "Shadowlands moment" here because the dev team is devoted to the story and focusing on casual players;

You are living in the BfA timeline right now. You are not yet in Shadowlands, but you are careening towards it with every month that goes by.

BfA wasn't entirely terrible, but it had enough problems - especially coming off the magnum opus that was Legion - that it started to crack apart like an egg, until finally fumbling at the end and breaking into the mold-stained yolk that was Shadowlands. I am fully expecting XIV to do the same, with how it's currently going.

the "Shadowlands moment" happened because Blizzard ended up with a new dev team that didn't care about the story and focused on the toxic cesspool that is e-sports with end-game raiding and M+ as the primary focus.

You know, it's funny. Everyone always claims M+ is a toxic cesspit, but in the time since I moved over to WoW after finally giving it a genuine try.... never once experienced even a fraction of the supposed toxicity that gets harped about. Does it exist somewhere? Most certainly. But not nearly on the scale people like you always claim.

I am not even a serious player in WoW, and know I'm actually pretty bad at the game since most of my focus goes towards questing and solo content. But I've never gotten chewed out or insulted or had slurs thrown at me about it, in all the keys I've bothered to run. You look at any thread about M+ on the GD, and others say similarly - it's usually a few loud and insistent voices trying to cling to the story of how toxic the game's community is.

Kind of how it's a few loud and insistent voices here on GD trying to cling to this story that the game is doing fine and is somehow perfect/nearly perfect in every way.

---

Already did.

WoW is simply a better game than FFXIV right now. Yes, it's a mess. It has a lot to fix. But it's a lot of fun and has thousands of details and QoL that ff14 lacks. I already have a list of things I want to do in WoW that will probably keep me occupied for a year or two.

I'll compare the two because they are comparable. They're both competing MMO's at the top of the market. FF14 has lost all sense of fun. Island Sanctuary is not designed to be fun, it's designed to be rewarding in an efficient manner without forcing the player to spend time on it. Jobs are not designed to be fun, they're designed around simplicity, ease of numerical balance and 2 min bursts. Verminion and FATEs are a joke compared to Pet battles and WQ's. Dungeons are definitely not designed to be fun. They're designed for easy, fast, efficient roulette chores.

It's just so sterile, watered down, excessively streamlined and lacking substance here. If people enjoy 1500 tomes and 5 min dailies then great, I'll be off having fun.

I'll just leave off with quoting Liam, as his post is probably the best summation of things as they stand, and of my own feelings on the matter - as a FFXIV refugee who first went to ESO, then settled in WoW (quite unexpectedly, at that).

Is WoW perfect? Absolutely not. Blizzard still has a long, long road to follow with improving the game, listening to people, and bettering themselves in the process.

But they are at least trying. FFXIV, meanwhile, feels as though it's sitting on its laurels, its team - or at least its producer and director - content with the assumption its rabid fanbase will keep the game floating even with minimal effort put forward into bettering the game in any way.

With WoW's resurgence and Blizzard's genuine attempt to course correct after the severe downward dive they took into the dumpsters with BfA and SL, FFXIV has two potential futures. One where it, too, seeks improvement and betterment in an effort to stay relevant against its biggest competitor, and upcoming competitors in the next few years. And one where it continues its own dumpster dive into a bonfire.

I hope it will be the former. But I am expecting, and will not be saddened over, the latter.

Those who are still genuinely finding fun and enjoyment in the game: I am truly happy for you, and wish I was still able to as well. Please hold on to your enjoyment and love - just not at the cost of trying to choke dissatisfied voices out, and plugging your ears to the problems it still has. That will only lead to Shadowlands - and we all know what happened with Shadowlands.

Probably my last post on the matter going forward, so godspeed to the usual ear-pluggers for trying to pick it apart like vultures, as you guys always do. I'll be returning to a game that actually respects me as a player and provides me with what I want out of an MMO.

- side note, but my god SE needs to update these forums. I shouldn't have to have three tabs open just to properly quote people; WoW's forum lets me quote on highlight, what's your excuse, Square?

Yes Vel, we all know you had a bad breakup with WoW - screaming and shouting and throwing your fists on the table whining like an overgrown toddler doesn't make any of your ranting valid or correct to current WoW as it is now, long after you likely stopped playing.