Finally tried WoW

[Hallarem]

If you want to play a real MMO I'd suggest Turtle WoW private servers. You wont have to pay anything. The leveling process itself is a journey and every zone has its own story in quests that might take you to other zones, dungeons and back.
Every class has its own unique way of approaching a fight and can share utility with groups and friends.

The open world actually matters and fights are dangerous if you pull too many mobs etc. Gear matters and upgrading it will make you stronger in open world, dungeons and raids. No MSQ but what has 14's MSQ really developed in Dawntrail? The Scions might as well have been signposts and Wuk Lamat a pamphlet for "papas peace" she is not a character. Maybe 8.0 will (copium, but possible) focus more on character-focused writing instead of "look at the flashy lights and spectacle"

[Masekase_Hurricane]

The open world actually matters and fights are dangerous if you pull too many mobs etc. Gear matters and upgrading it will make you stronger in open world, dungeons and raids. No MSQ but what has 14's MSQ really developed in Dawntrail? The Scions might as well have been signposts and Wuk Lamat a pamphlet for "papas peace" she is not a character. Maybe 8.0 will (copium, but possible) focus more on character-focused writing instead of "look at the flashy lights and spectacle"

That's another problem the usual repetitive crap i overlooked prior to this expansion as I loved the story, but this expansion I really can't get into the story and for the first time i'm skipping bits.

[Exmo]

Taking inspiration from other games is fine. Some suggested QoL improvements sound good. But many people here overlook that FFXIV *does* improve QoL over time - wasn't so long ago you had to stand still to mount or select city teleport locations from a list rather than a map. People forget these are QoL features almost immediately and then act like a neglected stepchild.

As for WoW vs FFXIV, you don't have to look far on the WoW forums to see posts like "this game is dying", "cancelled my sub", "FFXIV does things better" etc.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Maybe pay some streamer(s) to get banned to ensure they'll implement QoLs faster. /s

[Themarvin]

Star Wars Galaxies and EvE Online is Superior to both as it is mostly based on players, player economy and skill based.

[Hallarem]

Taking inspiration from other games is fine. Some suggested QoL improvements sound good. But many people here overlook that FFXIV *does* improve QoL over time - wasn't so long ago you had to stand still to mount or select city teleport locations from a list rather than a map. People forget these are QoL features almost immediately and then act like a neglected stepchild.

As for WoW vs FFXIV, you don't have to look far on the WoW forums to see posts like "this game is dying", "cancelled my sub", "FFXIV does things better" etc.

Hating WoW and still playing it has been a hobby for every Wow player since Cataclysm if not earlier. It's nothing new.
I think people have a problem with how LONG it takes for them to improve QoL, things that by all means seem to be very simple fixes for better quality of life. I mean genuinely? How much cheering and fanfare do you expect the community to give over MOUNT TILT? Compared to let's say in WoW something that revolutionizes the way you move in the open world with Dragonriding? Freedom to move in a fully open map, no loadscreens go in the sky without a low skybox and deep underground. Versus MOUNT tilt?

FFXIV does a lot of things better than WoW, mainly in terms of the roleplay quality of life, the way the characters look, forced wooden clogs aside and a lot of other stuff. But let's not kid ourselves that FFXIV devs somehow deserve a loud cheering for adding mount tilt and "mounting while running"

[Masekase_Hurricane]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmhpwT7w0r0 Wow's new housing

Makes me sad and mad lol

Xeno got it spot on WoW looks s***, but the systems are so good and 14 looks epic but the systems are so bad. Solution they need to merge and have a baby lol

[Catwho]

Taking inspiration from other games is fine. Some suggested QoL improvements sound good. But many people here overlook that FFXIV *does* improve QoL over time - wasn't so long ago you had to stand still to mount or select city teleport locations from a list rather than a map. People forget these are QoL features almost immediately and then act like a neglected stepchild.

As for WoW vs FFXIV, you don't have to look far on the WoW forums to see posts like "this game is dying", "cancelled my sub", "FFXIV does things better" etc.

I suspect people don't recognize them because these little things are so incremental.

But every patch has those tiny improvements. And unlike the big changes to systems, which are almost always internally designed, a lot of those tiny little QoLs have come from suggestions over in the UI forum right here on this website. So SE's internal team DOES listen to our suggestions for improvements! What they are not going to do is fundamentally redesign a system on a whim. We're more likely to get additions to Glamour Plates than a switch to the WoW transmog.

And some of the design decisions are on purpose. The limited retainer slots for marketboards are to encourage you to pay them more money for retainers. That's it. XI did that by charging you for extra characters; XIV gives you the additional characters for free up to the data center cap, but charges for the retainers. This limits the total potential items on the marketboard, acting as a form of economic control, but also makes SE a little bit of extra money. I don't know enough about WoW's economy to understand they reasoning behind unlimited items on the market board, but it simply tells me that WoW's cash shop is making its $$$ in other ways. (Probably mount recolors)

[Uzephi]

1. Being able to talk to NPCs without getting off your mount
   
2. Being able to gather without getting off your mount
   
3. Carrying things on your mount for fetch quests i.e hold an egg..

....

When a 20+ year-old game makes all your long-standing frustrations seem easily solvable....

Keep in mind, since it is a 20+ year old game, there were times like the two QoL features I highlighted weren't in the game. For the longest time, only druids in travel form could gather herbs, everyone dismounted, and mining nodes would give druids an error 'cannot do that while shapeshifted.' The 'feature' of not dismounting while talking to NPCs actually was a hindrance until way later when they removed the "you can't do that while mounted" error and fixed it.

Both games have their issues, it just depends on which you want to deal with. On the topic brought up later, yes, coming back in 5 years will more than likely not see many differences. I took a break at the beginning of Shb due to the heavy battle changes, and returning at DT, the core of the gameplay loop is still very similar like you claim.

[TaleraRistain]

WoW has some decent QoL that XIV could look at implementing but biggest drawback to me unless they've changed this since I quit in MoP is having to have alts because you're limited to one class (even with specializations, it's still one class) and you're limited in number on crafting and gathering professions. The crafting and gathering systems aren't nearly as robust as XIV. If XIV wanted to crib some ideas there, they should look at EverQuest II instead. It does the system of responding to random events that they tried to do in Expert recipes much more effectively. Gathering is still boring, though. XIV does that much better.

Transmog is probably one of the better systems they could look at integrating. It took a very long time for WoW to fully realize that. I remember we started with something very similar to the Glamour Dresser where we stored items we wanted to use for appearance purposes before things developed over time into the current transmog system. And IIRC there weren't glamour plates so you had to go back to that storage every time you wanted to change something. So it's possible XIV is already working on that slowly like WoW did.