Finally tried WoW

[DBriggs304]

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.

This! They are too busy making you jump through hoops to play current content or bleed you dry with various boosts. I decided I wanted to boost an alt to DT. I (my fault) boosted a job instead of the story skip. I am not going through all that again on an alt. It was awesome, once, but not a second time. I tried to get my money back as I didn't realize I needed the story skip as well. For the past week, they have done nothing but loop me back and forth between se America and a "game master" while online. Each has been telling me to contact the other repeatedly. I finally said screw it and just cancelled the sub after 8 plus years. They just don't care about the players or think they are too big to fall.

[Raikai]

I would also like to point out a very positive aspect in WoW:

You don't have to pay a sub if you don't want, since you can buy game time with ingame gold. Kind of a currency sink, but I usually don't have a lot to spend in there, so it's nice.

[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.

[BunnyBrat]

They do have a bunny race, but it’s not playable. Honestly, it looks like what you’d get if a Lalafell and a Viera had a kid… and that kid discovered meth

LMAO

[TaleraRistain]

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(had to snip cause forums no likely how long both replies were)

You basically have the same gathering route type of system that you have in XIV. Only things really different in EQII are that you don't have Sneak so you have to slide around the mobs Eureka-style and you're in competition with others for nodes since they're not personal. But most of the other aspects about gathering were just annoying, like having to gather every node in the area to keep the ones you wanted spawning. I much prefer that you have multiple choices at a node in XIV and can choose the item you want to gather. Plus much better abilities and traits to help with increased yield. Not to mention the whole collectible system. I'm kind of half and half on the "legendary" types of items in both games. IIRC they would randomly come from nodes in EQII. And in XIV we have specific timed nodes for them. The timed nodes can be a bit annoying, but I like the guarantee of getting them on a set schedule, since so many are needed for crafted items.

The one thing they can crib from EQII for gathering is telling you on the items what tier of crafting they're used in, though that might be difficult in XIV since sometimes lower level items are used one or two expansions later in basic materials.

One thing I really enjoyed about EQII's crafting system is that the control of the craft was in your hands. You screw up and miss an event? In XIV you're basically done because of the rigid rotations. But in EQII if you lost one of the bars, you could get it back through good usage of your abilities and responding correctly to future events. If Expert recipes were more like that and less RNG, they would be much more enjoyable and would put the autonomy back into our hands by making us responsible for our success, not RNG. And yeah it was funny when the crafting station murdered you because you messed up that badly.

I think one of the most important things about gathering and crafting in XIV versus EQII is that it's still marketable to gather and craft in XIV because the game itself keeps crafted items valuable, and unfortunately EQII devalued crafted items so much that it lost that aspect.

[TaleraRistain]

I'm more of a fan of your characters having identities. If you're a hunter, you're a hunter, being a skinner and leatherworker, or miner and engineer is apart of that. Like your own little story. Much like I stick with Gunbreaker in FFXIV, even if I have all the other jobs leveled. Also this was more evident in classic / actual vanilla / turtle WoW private server. But there tends to be one guy / gal who has the most recipies or some rare ones that they can make as a blacksmith / enchanter / jewelcrafter etc. So you form a relationship with them as a return customer, sometimes maybe getting discounts for repeat business, haggle etc. Bring them rare materials that they can craft your things with.

As opposed to everyone just crafting on their own in one corner.

The drawback with that is that if you don't know that person, you're kinda SoL. I was on Horde side on a predominantly Alliance server so our community was small and we did help each other where possible, but we tended to need to be self-sufficient.

There's nothing wrong if someone prefers the other way, though. And you can do the same in XIV since not everyone levels their crafters and gatherers. So we're still valuable to the community.

[Hallarem]

The drawback with that is that if you don't know that person, you're kinda SoL. I was on Horde side on a predominantly Alliance server so our community was small and we did help each other where possible, but we tended to need to be self-sufficient.

There's nothing wrong if someone prefers the other way, though. And you can do the same in XIV since not everyone levels their crafters and gatherers. So we're still valuable to the community.

It's as simple as sending them a whisper when they advertise their things. There is no "SoL" situation here. They aren't a secret.

[TaleraRistain]

It's as simple as sending them a whisper when they advertise their things. There is no "SoL" situation here. They aren't a secret.

Maybe they have better communication tools now. I played from launch to MoP on Horde side and I remember there was a trade channel but it was kind of all over the place. I also didn't raid there, and I remember our trade channel was mostly concerned with those sorts of items, not things like basic bags for more casual players.

Again, there's nothing wrong with the setup for those who like that style. My preference is XIV allowing it all on a single character and then I can choose to have alts if I want them.

[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.

[Uzephi]

I feel they will have to do some type of level squish and merge content in certain level brackets. That's how Blizzard fixed the leveling alt issue when levels ballooned over 100 and each expac had it's own level tier. Now most expacs are slotted between levels 30 and 50 or something like that. I could see that being a big change in the future to make the game more approachable for new players.