Congratulations Square Enix! FF4 surpasses WoW this year. (Source inside)

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

You have no idea how good you have it.

[Theodric]

Sadly that doesn't say much about Dragonflight. WoW hasn't been good since The Frozen Throne.

I'd say there's still a lot of things that WoW does very well. It's by no means a perfect game but it certainly caters to a broader range of personal tastes than FFXIV. Both in terms of playable races and class fantasies - I've been pretty eager to get another bow job from Square Enix, particularly one that allows us to tame animal companions and fight alongside them but despite being such a core fantasy trope the archer with a tamed beast is absent altogether.

Then there's the exploration in the open world. Dragonflight added a lot of things to hunt down and find. Whereas the closest thing to 'open world secrets' is a single NPC from the days of ARR that gives you a pair of minions if you bring him a specific item.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

I'd say there's still a lot of things that WoW does very well. It's by no means a perfect game but it certainly caters to a broader range of personal tastes than FFXIV. Both in terms of playable races and class fantasies - I've been pretty eager to get another bow job from Square Enix, particularly one that allows us to tame animal companions and fight alongside them but despite being such a core fantasy trope the archer with a tamed beast is absent altogether.

Then there's the exploration in the open world. Dragonflight added a lot of things to hunt down and find. Whereas the closest thing to 'open world secrets' is a single NPC from the days of ARR that gives you a pair of minions if you bring him a specific item.

You must not be keeping up with Dragonflight.

Here, let me remind you.

World Quests? You better be there at the server reset of you may as well ignore the boss world quest entirely.

Citadel area? Dead. Unless you super outgear it, you won't even be able to do all the dailies there. Good luck trying to kill the rares you summon with keys if no ones there to help you.

Cooking Event? You'll never reach Legendary, as no one does them anymore.

Centaur Hunts? Dead.

Elemental Storms? No one does them.

Cobalt area? You gotta log on at the right times for the only groups doing it or you may as well pretend it doesn't exist.

Winter Storm timeline? Dead. No one ever goes there.

Forbidden Reach? Dead.

The Caverns? Was dead in its first week.

Time Rifts? They'll be dead when the Dreamsurges happen.

Players that come in late to Dragonflight are bombarded with disjointed questlines (So, new players have no idea which ones to do before the other for the story), the quest areas are empty of players, the zone activities are impossible for them to solo so they are told to just skip it. I, like many, requested that Blizzard scale these areas down (as Blizzard easily could, as they had no issue scaling all Mob Health/Damage up by 25% and nerf all healing by 25% - a BAD decision as they did this due to High Key M+ Players and ended up screwing over all the other majority playerbase) and to reduce the grind for them as they're dead areas. That was met with Blizzard being silent and the "white knights" would attack anyone that suggested making things better for other players. Their mindset is that everyone should "Suffer like they did" and "I got mine on patch, so screw you!".

Then there's the WoW Token. It has only gotten more ridiculous as prices rise which means there's no reason to farm or work towards anything that can be bought with Gold. Buy a WoW Token or RMT as Blizzard supports it (Blizzard never removes RMT bought gold, nor bans the Buyers - at most they get suspended. All the Top guilds participate in RMT trade and sell carries for profit. Blizzard knows that they do. They brag about it. Yet aren't banned). I've seen the same Bots trains in the same areas grinding 24/7 and not getting banned until Blizzards 6-12 month ban wave. Then they're back again, as they've more than made their money back to profit and to buy a boost to 60 and a sub.

[Stormpeaks]

You must not be keeping up with Dragonflight.

Here, let me remind you.

Citadel area? Dead. Unless you super outgear it, you won't even be able to do all the dailies there. Good luck trying to kill the rares you summon with keys if no ones there to help you.

Cooking Event? You'll never reach Legendary, as no one does them anymore.

Centaur Hunts? Dead.

Elemental Storms? No one does them.

Winter Storm timeline? Dead. No one ever goes there.

Forbidden Reach? Dead.

The Caverns? Was dead in its first week.

Time Rifts? They'll be dead when the Dreamsurges happen.

Players that come in late to Dragonflight are bombarded with disjointed questlines (So, new players have no idea which ones to do before the other for the story), the quest areas are empty of players, the zone activities are impossible for them to solo so they are told to just skip it. I, like many, requested that Blizzard scale these areas down (as Blizzard easily could, as they had no issue scaling all Mob Health/Damage up by 25% and nerf all healing by 25% - a BAD decision as they did this due to High Key M+ Players and ended up screwing over all the other majority playerbase) and to reduce the grind for them as they're dead areas. That was met with Blizzard being silent and the "white knights" would attack anyone that suggested making things better for other players. Their mindset is that everyone should "Suffer like they did".

Then there's the WoW Token. It has only gotten more ridiculous as prices rise which means there's no reason to farm or work towards anything that can be bought with Gold. Buy a WoW Token or RMT as Blizzard supports it (Blizzard never removes RMT bought gold, nor bans the Buyers. All the Top guilds participate in RMT trade and sell carries for profit. Blizzard knows that they do. They brag about it. Yet aren't banned). I've seen the same Bots trains in the same areas grinding 24/7 and not getting banned until Blizzards 6-12 month ban wave. Then they're back again, as they've more than made their money back to profit and to buy a boost to 60 and a sub.

It's almost like WoW is made for people that actually want to do content, and not focused on leveling/MSQ like FFXIV is, I know I know, it's crazy that there actually is content in a game, since you are so used to FFXIV and the 2 days of content once every 6 months, but some games actually do focus on content and not questing and leveling.

As for the RMT part, I am laughing pretty hard, have you ever seen what's under the limsa aetheryte with idle cam ? RMT is prevalent in this game, and nothing is done agaisnt it, it's been left like this for years after years, gil sellers and players are literally trading in the middle of Limsa in front of everyone to see, you can see them with their busy status, and always around level 10, it's very obvious what's going on there, the only difference is that WoW made it legal by putting it in their game, while FFXIV is keeping this stance of "cant see what's going on and cant hear lalalalalala" as everything happens right under their nose

[Theodric]

I haven't struggled to find people to do content with in WoW, actually - though I play on the EU servers. I can't speak for any other region.

As for disjointed story-lines, it used to bother me a lot more that quest progression in WoW is out of order and difficult to keep track of. Yet over the course of the last few years, FFXIV's supposed 'story driven' experience has been rife with outright retcons and large swathes of the setting being hastily cast aside in order to make way for the premise of 7.0 which is shaping up to take us far away from the three great continents.

If you're specifically a Scion fan then you're eating well. Not everybody is a fan of the Scions, though - and very little in the way of a meaningful bone is thrown at those who are invested in more than just the game's increasingly stale main cast.

[Striker44]

It's almost like WoW is made for people that actually want to do content, and not focused on leveling/MSQ like FFXIV is, I know I know, it's crazy that there actually is content in a game, since you are so used to FFXIV and the 2 days of content once every 6 months, but some games actually do focus on content and not questing and leveling.

Most zones being dead equates to a game for people "wanting to do content"? By the way, FFXIV has a mountain of content - just because you personally may not enjoy that content doesn't make it any less real.

Yet over the course of the last few years, FFXIV's supposed 'story driven' experience has been rife with outright retcons and large swathes of the setting being hastily cast aside in order to make way for the premise of 7.0 which is shaping up to take us far away from the three great continents.

There's an enormous difference between retcons (which are virtually inevitable in any long-running series) and utterly disjointed questing that can have you effectively time traveling (not for plot purposes) with no clue what's going on. Not to mention at least FFXIV just has a few retcons about the sundering...WoW has entire re-writes of plot and geography.

[Stormpeaks]

Most zones being dead equates to a game for people "wanting to do content"? By the way, FFXIV has a mountain of content - just because you personally may not enjoy that content doesn't make it any less real.

Yes, zones are dead because... people are doing end game content which is instanced, no way ? What's next ? The sky is blue ? As I said, WoW aint like FFXIV, people in WoW actually spend their time doing m+, raids or other instanced content, not MSQ and RP 24 7 or hang out in main city afk all day, WoW has people playing for the content, not to be a social hangout all day long.

As for mountain of content, you keep coping there bud, you've been coping for months already with your responses, it aint worth to even try to change your mind.

You can compare PF and WoW's group finder, it's night and day the amount of parties every day, even during content droughts.

[caffe_macchiato]

World Quests
Citadel area
Cooking Event
Centaur Hunts
Elemental Storms
Cobalt area
Winter Storm timeline
Forbidden Reach
The Caverns
Time Rifts

Jesus, they get all of that for $15 a month? No, seriously. As someone who mostly just plays FFXIV, it's astonishing how WoW still gets new content regularly compared to FFXIV. We barely get anything per patch, which is every five months now. And didn't you and your ilk claim that FFXIV had more content than WoW? And all of it was playable and such-and-such?

Why does FFXIV have to be the MMO that people feverishly defend despite its flaws? I thought WoW held onto that mantle? Now we're the shitty game.

[DixieBellOCE]

Most zones being dead equates to a game for people "wanting to do content"? By the way, FFXIV has a mountain of content - just because you personally may not enjoy that content doesn't make it any less real.



There's an enormous difference between retcons (which are virtually inevitable in any long-running series) and utterly disjointed questing that can have you effectively time traveling (not for plot purposes) with no clue what's going on. Not to mention at least FFXIV just has a few retcons about the sundering...WoW has entire re-writes of plot and geography.

XIV does have a mountain of content.

If you have not played the game before.

All of this 'mountain' of content you refer to, is stuff that active players did on patch, years ago, when it was actually considered content.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

Jesus, they get all of that for $15 a month? No, seriously. As someone who mostly just plays FFXIV, it's astonishing how WoW still gets new content regularly compared to FFXIV. We barely get anything per patch, which is every five months now. And didn't you and your ilk claim that FFXIV had more content than WoW? And all of it was playable and such-and-such?

Why does FFXIV have to be the MMO that people feverishly defend despite its flaws? I thought WoW held onto that mantle? Now we're the shitty game.

All dead content.

You seem to have missed that entirely, just so you can complain about FF14. It's so bad that players are going back to Shadowlands and refusing to do any of that. As the only active content in Dragonflight is an hourly Time Rift which has more than half the players AFK on the pillars until the Rift opens open for a few minutes of content. Then it's over.

I cannot recommend WoW to new players as the new player experience is horrid and when they get into Dragonflight they're overwhelmed with dead content that the game sends them to. It wasn't bad at the start of Dragonflight, when content was relevant, but now? It's real bad, and Blizzard refuses to re-scale these areas so that new players/late comers/alts can actually do that content.

Not to mention that a lot of that content is super grindy and doing the same stuff every day/week until you max it out. It's not innovative, and with them being dead zones they aren't even possible to do unless you super out gear them.