FFXIV Bahamut vs. WoW Deathwing - Who Wins?

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just deathwing, eh? seems like selective bias.

Not at all, although given one of your arguments later I can see why you'd say that. But we'll get to that.

this is exaggeration. first of all, we have to understand and accept that bahamut is being used as a convenient excuse for redesigning the game world, and he serves that function admirably.

Were this a thread discussing a real company called Square Enix, with a real Producer/Director Naoki Yoshida's whom made a real decision to scrap the (then) existing version of FFXIV and rebuild it from the ground up, including the real directive of completely re-designing the game's zones/areas, then sure, we would have to "understand and accept that".

However, given that this is a hypothetical discussion about two imaginary dragons, from two imaginary worlds in two fantasy online games and the imaginary destruction wrought upon those imaginary worlds by those imaginary dragons, no... we don't have to "understand and accept that" at all, because it's irrelevant in the context of the subject.

the dev team have even specifically commented that he mostly only messed up mor dhona and coerthas (though not *only* those areas- they just saw the worst of it).

His megaflare only mostly messed up those areas. Everything else he did affected everything/everywhere else.

other places were completely untouched. all of thanalan, for example. other areas which were changed without being attacked were explained by the gravity from Dalamud's descent reshaping the land. while you could attribute this to bahamut, i don't think that's very fair considering it's entirely incidental.

So, the fiery shards of Dalamud that Bahamut launched across all the areas when he decided to turn his one-time prison into a gigantic grenade were "gravity"?

The swarms of fireballs he trailed in his wake that ultimately slammed into and destroyed many other areas as well... those were "gravity"?

If the "gravity" of Dalamud was the reason for the upheaval of all those areas, then that should have taken place long before Bahamut's attack. Yet, all that devastation only took place during his attack.

I think you've got your lore confused. Or you're just making stuff up.

and let's go back to your 2.5 years comment about deathwing, which is accurate enough. but look at the state of ARR- it appears just 5 years after the events ending 1.0. you're telling me he succeeded in destroying the world, and we rebuilt it all in just 5 years? i'm not buying it.

Remember that part in my post, near the very beginning, where I mention how I'm not even going to discuss the idea of "destroying the world", since everyone seems to have their own definition of what that is? You know, the part you deliberately omitted from your response, and clearly ignored as well?

Here, I'll quote it for you...

Part of the issue people seem to be dealing with is each one's personal definition of "destroying the world". So, I won't even go there. I'll just speak to the overall amount of destruction each creates, and the fallout from it.

That part. Yeah, see, that paragraph there puts my entire post into a very specific context; that context not being "Bahamut or Deathwing destroying their respective worlds".

I very specifically state that I'm going based on the amount of overall damage/destruction each one inflicts. You ignored that part as well, apparently.

When I type things in my posts, I do so for a reason. That reason is to convey an idea, to support that idea, or to otherwise put other things I say into a particular context. Since context matters, if you're going to take the time to respond to me, please at least have the courtesy of not selectively ignoring parts of it, okay? Appreciate it.

That said, they didn't "rebuild the world", they rebuilt their society and their lives, and their homes, out of the rubble of what Bahamut left in his wake. In watching videos and viewing screenshots, Aetheryte camps are clearly rebuilt and/or completely expanded on, resembling villages more than the small little campsites they used to. Significant changes and improvements have been made to the cities (though we've only seen Gridania so far, with small snippets of the others). All of this is built within and around the rubble left behind by Bahamut's attack.

So, yes, they have had to rebuild their world to a very large degree, much like people have to do in the wake of any major disaster.

pretty sure devs commented on this, too- only players participating in the battles ending 1.0 were teleported away into the future. other people who were far away from the attacks, in lands which were untouched, were subsequently untouched themselves. not only is this evident through the simple fact that the chocobos all seem alive and well, but in ARR there will be a distinction between legacy and non-legacy players, where the legacy players will have slightly different dialogue and story than non-legacy, referencing the events ending 1.0. non-legacy players will get something a little different, and a little different flavor text from NPCs.

Irrelevant. Even if all people weren't teleported to the future, there were still plenty others in or around the areas of attack. If they weren't hit directly by the attacks, they certainly were affected by collateral damage or other fallout. I don't think one could, or would, seriously argue that somehow all the damage happened only in the exact spot that each piece of Dalamud, or Bahamut's rain of fire touched the ground. But maybe I'm wrong and some people would try to argue that.

We don't know the answer to this. We don't know how many others were affected, killed, displaced, etc. It remains to be seen, like I said before.

i think it's easy enough to assume that new non-legacy adventurers aren't 5 years old, so for them to exist at an adult age 5 years after Dalamud's descent, but be completely unaffected and uninvolved with that story arc- this seems to only underscore the implication that they were simply in different parts of the world at the time of those events, and were thus unaffected.

Ridiculous argument.

When Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana, overwhelmed a levy and flooded/destroyed New Orleans, not everyone living in or around the area was killed. They were still very much seriously affected by it. I lived through Hurricane Andrew and you are not going to tell me that thousands of people who survived through that were not seriously affected - for *years* afterward.

Even if they survived Bahamut's attack, the people would still have been greatly affected/displaced by the events. Hence, they spent 5 years rebuilding to get them to where things are when 1.0 players return.

but that would ruin immersion, wouldn't it?

It would, if that were actually what I was arguing, and not just some strawman you conjured up.

and here we disagree on one point, in spite of agreeing on another. bahamut does seem to be the more powerful of the two, and many have covered perfectly valid points underlining why- but as has been pointed out several times now, bahamut also failed to destroy the world

Again, you ignore a very key part of my post. Please go back and read it again.

and didn't even really destroy that much (again, unless you also credit Dalamud's descent with changing the landscape, but wouldn't that credit better belong to Darnus?).

Bahamut destroyed/affected everything. I realize you're trying to split hairs here and draw arbitrary differences between the events, but you're just grasping at straws. Van Darnus brought Dalamud down, but Bahamut wrought all the destruction that took place - in 3 different ways. You're probably scoffing right now, so I'll explain.

1. Dalamud was created as a prison. Not a weapon. Bahamut's actions - at 3:15 of the End of An Era video - is what turns it into hundreds/thousands of pieces of flaming shrapnel, which then launch down to the world below (in all directions) and begin the onslought. Bahamut does that. Dalamud does not just explode on its own. Prior to that, Dalamud had merely weakened enough for Bahamut to emerge in the first place and would have otherwise fallen to the ground.

2. From 3:33, all the way up to about 4:10 when he's distracted by Louisoux, Bahamut is soaring all over the place, passing over all the cities, and surely all the areas around and in-between. In his wake is a rain of fire which is raining down and causing further destruction, as shown in scenes like his fly-over of Limsa. He's causing that.

3. His megaflare which, as you state, certainly affected Mor Dhona and Coerthas, but likely had bleed-over into surrounding areas as well.

So, no... the damage wrought by Bahamut was not "incidental". It was quite deliberate and direct.

yes, some areas of azeroth were unaffected, but most of those were expansion areas far removed from deathwing's immediate reach. the entire vanilla azeroth was changed.

And here again you're grasping at straws, using real-life details to explain away lore-related events. Whether they were expansion areas or not has nothing to do with it. All the regions, except Outlands, are part of Azeroth. They are all part of that world. They were all subject to attack and destruction by Deathwing. He failed to ravage them all because he failed to ravage them all. Nevermind "destroying" the entire world, he failed to even scratch a large portion of it.

now, that said, it definitely took him a lot longer to accomplish that in relation to what bahamut did in a few seconds- so again, the scales seem to obviously tip in bahamut's favor here. so why go to so much trouble to disagree with certain points when i agree with the end assessment?

Because this is a discussion forum and we're having a discussion? Because this thread doesn't rely on your agreement or disagreement of the topic at hand? Because the thread can continue and people can continue to discuss and debate it whether you're involved in it or not? Because it wasn't created for your sole benefit?

Take your pick.

because the avenues people take in arriving to that assessment are often biased and inaccurate. and in the end, what's the point of a discussion board if people aren't free to disagree with particulars, whether they agree overall or not? because then it's just a bunch of people talking for the sake of talking, saying whatever they want without considering anything else, and that defeats the purpose of the discussion part of the forum, no?

What are you even going on about at this point? Seriously. It's like you wandered off into some completely different topic... Are you replying to someone else's post? You certainly aren't responding to anything I said in mine.