Finally tried WoW

[Chasingstars]

I unironically believe that the way WoW handles alts these days is better then the FF14 method of having it all on one character. Leveling the alt and getting them to the entry point for doing dungeons and such is incredibly easy, and then you can actually gear multiple alts at once. Reason being each alt has a different raid lockout and things of that nature, whereas in FF14 you can ONLY actively gear one job at a time until that job is capped out.

That is not a hot take, ffxiv is a slog on alts. As what your leaving out is the mandatory msq quests, the 6 mandatory crystal tower quests, and the 3 mandatory hard version fights of titan and garuda and ifrit. If WoW players had to go through that, I think it would be a different story of being "alt-friendly".

Like with speedruns of just trying to blitz through all of 2.0 to 2.55 of ARR, that is still like 20 hours on a healer.

[DPZ2]

That is not a hot take, ffxiv is a slog on alts. As what your leaving out is the mandatory msq quests, the 6 mandatory crystal tower quests, and the 3 mandatory hard version fights of titan and garuda and ifrit. If WoW players had to go through that, I think it would be a different story of being "alt-friendly".

I spent over 10 years in World of Warcraft leveling multiple* alts to max level without any mandatory instances. The storyline didn't require a single dungeon instance at all.

It still doesn't. The whole storyline is currently a fractured mess that doesn't matter at all in WoW, except as an excuse to have nostalgic dungeon and raid runs with no apparent context.

I have the ability to pay US$9.00 for the convenience of skipping all of those mandatory instances in ARR once I hit level 50. For leveling I think that could be as early as, um, level 40 content?

* 14 Horde/14 Alliance on Cairne - the week-old new Realm back when I started playing the game. Yes, some of us enjoy playing for the story.

[Chasingstars]

I spent over 10 years in World of Warcraft leveling multiple* alts to max level without any mandatory instances. The storyline didn't require a single dungeon instance at all.

It still doesn't. The whole storyline is currently a fractured mess that doesn't matter at all in WoW, except as an excuse to have nostalgic dungeon and raid runs with no apparent context.

I have the ability to pay US$9.00 for the convenience of skipping all of those mandatory instances in ARR once I hit level 50. For leveling I think that could be as early as, um, level 40 content?

* 14 Horde/14 Alliance on Cairne - the week-old new Realm back when I started playing the game. Yes, some of us enjoy playing for the story.

Okay, but then that is just paying $9 to skip 241 msq quests, but your still going to have to do 727 mandatory msq quests afterwards, their dungeons, their trials, and solo instances. At that point you might as well have paid $25 if your going to do a story skip.

Meanwhile, WoW? Oh yeah, you can power level from 1 to 80 in like 3 to 4 hours, then go grab some gear and already be doing current content.

Like you got 28 character on WoW? The equivalent in FFXIV, of grinding 27 more, even factoring in $9 story skips for ARR ($243 for all 27), that is still 19,629 quests that must be completed collectively. Like this is why even if you speedran from heavensward through dawntrail, your looking at a very long grind even if you cutscene skip.

And its only going to get longer of a grind for alts when 8.0 comes along and introduces another 100+ quests. Which lets say a person has 1 main, 1 alt. That is another 200+ quests they have to do. More if they more alts.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Okay, but then that is just paying $9 to skip 241 msq quests, but your still going to have to do 727 mandatory msq quests afterwards, their dungeons, their trials, and solo instances. At that point you might as well have paid $25 if your going to do a story skip.

Meanwhile, WoW? Oh yeah, you can power level from 1 to 80 in like 3 to 4 hours, then go grab some gear and already be doing current content.

Like you got 28 character on WoW? The equivalent in FFXIV, of grinding 27 more, even factoring in $9 story skips for ARR ($243 for all 27), that is still 19,629 quests that must be completed collectively. Like this is why even if you speedran from heavensward through dawntrail, your looking at a very long grind even if you cutscene skip.

And its only going to get longer of a grind for alts when 8.0 comes along and introduces another 100+ quests. Which lets say a person has 1 main, 1 alt. That is another 200+ quests they have to do. More if they more alts.

I don’t think you can really compare levelling an alt in WoW to levelling one in FFXIV. An alt in FFXIV is an entirely new character, whereas in WoW, it’s basically just another class—most things like achievements, mounts, and companions carry over. From what I’ve read, once you’ve completed the story on one character in WoW, you can either skip it on alts or choose to re-enter it at specific points, which makes the process a lot smoother

[Chasingstars]

I don’t think you can really compare levelling an alt in WoW to levelling one in FFXIV. An alt in FFXIV is an entirely new character, whereas in WoW, it’s basically just another class—most things like achievements, mounts, and companions carry over. From what I’ve read, once you’ve completed the story on one character in WoW, you can either skip it on alts or choose to re-enter it at specific points, which makes the process a lot smoother

Sure I can, because WoW used to not have all those nice quality of life features. Its actually why the celestial steed mount sold very well as it was the first account-wide mount and that having account-wide mounts wasn't even a normal feature until Mists of Pandaria. Similarly with achievements and companions/pets, they weren't account wide until Mists of Pandaria. So for almost a full 8 years of the games life, whatever you got on one character didn't transfer to another. In addition there was no heirloom tab until 6.1, meaning you actually had to store heirlooms as items and make sure not to lose them unless you wanted to pay gold again to replace it and that was 3 years after the prior mentioned stuff was made account wide.

Its partly why people had so many to begin with, as for example you could only have two professions on a character, so lets say you want to do alchemy, well you either went herbalist + alchemist or you had an alt that was both a miner and herbalist and would mail you what you need on your main. And until the expansion Catacylsm, you couldn't get exp from mining and herbing, so you had to level them the same as you would any other character with maybe a boost from the aforementioned heirlooms if you had gotten those.

I personally see people ask why one would have alts in FFXIV since everything can be done on one character, and that is because they provide mechanical benefits that are all related to timers and limited resources. Like if you have 2 characters, you can double up on legendary nodes, treasure maps, challenge logs, wonderous tails, mount tokens, etc. And since a given world can have 8 characters, its that much value from what is normally meant to be limited in what 1 character can do.

What your enjoying is good and fine, just remember that it wasn't always that way and that WoW was more alike to FFXIV in how it handled alts.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Ah, you mean when WoW was still good. Tbh, if you enjoy wow so much, just go play it. No one is forcing you to stay with ffxiv. It's okay to move on.

Ah sure cause that's what this post was about which one was better....As I pointed out numerous times it was a question in why a game 20+ yrs can manage to fix simple things.

Sure I can, because WoW used to not have all those nice quality of life features. Its actually why the celestial steed mount sold very well as it was the first account-wide mount and that having account-wide mounts wasn't even a normal feature until Mists of Pandaria. Similarly with achievements and companions/pets, they weren't account wide until Mists of Pandaria. So for almost a full 8 years of the games life, whatever you got on one character didn't transfer to another. In addition there was no heirloom tab until 6.1, meaning you actually had to store heirlooms as items and make sure not to lose them unless you wanted to pay gold again to replace it and that was 3 years after the prior mentioned stuff was made account wide.

Its partly why people had so many to begin with, as for example you could only have two professions on a character, so lets say you want to do alchemy, well you either went herbalist + alchemist or you had an alt that was both a miner and herbalist and would mail you what you need on your main. And until the expansion Catacylsm, you couldn't get exp from mining and herbing, so you had to level them the same as you would any other character with maybe a boost from the aforementioned heirlooms if you had gotten those.

I personally see people ask why one would have alts in FFXIV since everything can be done on one character, and that is because they provide mechanical benefits that are all related to timers and limited resources. Like if you have 2 characters, you can double up on legendary nodes, treasure maps, challenge logs, wonderous tails, mount tokens, etc. And since a given world can have 8 characters, its that much value from what is normally meant to be limited in what 1 character can do.

What your enjoying is good and fine, just remember that it wasn't always that way and that WoW was more alike to FFXIV in how it handled alts.

Yes I see where you're coming from, but 14 is a game that came way later, it should've learned and be ahead of WoW. Like WoW has done by taking 14's housing system and made it better...

[Codyjt92]

Ah sure cause that's what this post was about which one was better....As I pointed out numerous times it was a question in why a game 20+ yrs can manage to fix simple things.



Yes I see where you're coming from, but 14 is a game that came way later, it should've learned and be ahead of WoW. Like WoW has done by taking 14's housing system and made it better...

That's literally what your entire post is about. How a 20-year-old game with a much larger budget than FFXIV is able to have features that FFIX has, and do it better. You want to know why they do it better? 1. They have a much larger budget than ffxiv now with the backing of Microsoft funding them 2. Many of these features were added into WoW way after FFXIV had them in their game. Again, FFXIV just needs to polish up their current systems. Not completely redesign the game into something new. You bring up housing. WoW literally just added this... Players have been begging for it since vanilla.

[Chasingstars]

Yes I see where you're coming from, but 14 is a game that came way later, it should've learned and be ahead of WoW. Like WoW has done by taking 14's housing system and made it better...

Yep and that is where people want to hope that CBU3 keeps learning from Blizzard on what should be implemented. Sadly what we have now in FFXIV is basically the black magic equivalent of alt support with shell FCs and similar matters that are not really intended for alts but for other players.

[TaleraRistain]

Ah sure cause that's what this post was about which one was better....As I pointed out numerous times it was a question in why a game 20+ yrs can manage to fix simple things.



Yes I see where you're coming from, but 14 is a game that came way later, it should've learned and be ahead of WoW. Like WoW has done by taking 14's housing system and made it better...

I dunno, why did it take WoW 21 years to add housing when EQII that came out 2 weeks before it had it back in 2004 from launch? Some of these things really do depend on design and how flexible it is to change later or how much dev time would need to be devoted to make those things workable.

[AnnaUK]

Ha if you call having to play season pass like content just to be able to place furniture down! Wow housing is not ahead.