FFXIV has some serious competition with WoW: Legion

[FunkYeahDragons]

Only friends I knew who left for WoW were heavy PVPers. Faster queues, better development. Three months and they haven't come back. ;_;

[Reynhart]

In the end we noticed we were always ju8st waiting for the "next thing" (expansion content, dungeons, areas, unlocking raid finder just to see there were no raid we could even do) to be something better

Isn't just the same with XIV ? Once a patch hit, you have several things to do, but unless you do Savage, you'd roll over everyhting in a week. And after that, you just wait for the next thing...

I feel HW is a long list of "Let's wait for the next patch".
"Gordias is really bad designed" Please look forward to Midas
"Void Ark doesn"t give much in term on story" Please look forward to Mhach
"When will the new Relic be in the game ?" Please look forward to the next patch
"Diadem is a failure" Please look forward to the revamp
"Jobs aren't balanced" Please look forward to the adjustments
etc...

And the king of all "When will we be able to use different Egis ?"...

[Taika]

Isn't just the same with XIV ? Once a patch hit, you have several things to do, but unless you do Savage, you'd roll over everyhting in a week. And after that, you just wait for the next thing...

Well I'm talking about the path from level 1 to endgame here, since my argument was that WoW doesn't really compete with XIV for new players. In FFXIV there's a main story you follow, and that's the actual game, with additional side quests and other stuff to do. I would consider XIV worth playing as a FF game just for the main scenario. The game directs you forward to new areas and battles, and everything you do is tied to the main story context. In WoW I felt like I was just wandering aimlessly, trying to find a point for doing something. That can work in some (I guess mostly single player) games and create a feeling of an open world adventure, but in WoW's case I just felt that the game world and game content didn't offer me anything. More importantly (for me), because of the level sync system, the content you do in XIV is scaled to your level offering at least some kind of a challenge, whereas in WoW that just isn't there. After my first time leveling in XIV 2.0, I remembered the dungeons and primal fights I had done, the bosses and some of their mechanics, now I can't remember a single one clearly from WoW.

I can't compare the endgame between the two since I never got there in WoW.

[Reynhart]

Well I'm talking about the path from level 1 to endgame here, since my argument was that WoW doesn't really compete with XIV for new players.

Oh...I was a little off-topic, then

[Lokier]

I've played WoW for 12 years, I played vanilla back in 2005. I played Legion in 2016 for, what, four days? And I was bored already. I went back to FFXIV pretty quickly. I don't think FFXIV has much contest against Legion... It's not that *good* an expansion, most of their content is locked behind dailies and things that reset in four days, including *more* fucking table-missions.
I levelled my DH to 110 and I just couldn't bring myself to level my alts / mains to 110, and I love levelling my alts. I have every single class, and a horde, at 100, including two other servers full of characters between 85 and 90. I hit the 50-characters cap for christ sake. WoW Legion was fun to level in... until you hit max level, it's pretty much made the mistake of pulling a Wildstar (and Wildstar is STILL capped at 50 and comprised of dailies if you don't want to raid.)

I had 213 mounts, with most of the ones I did need to hit 250 locked behind things like Arthas (you RNG bastard) and I had already completed my mog' sets (so there was no gear to farm.) The curse of being a 12 year-old player, I guess.
But no, in my personal opinion, I don't think FFXIV is going anywhere. Legion will peak interest for a few months and it'll die down again, like it does in every expansion until they release the next expansion in WoW next year. (They now do year-by-year expansions with three main patches of added content. £50 well spent, aye?)

[Colorful]

Well I'm talking about the path from level 1 to endgame here, since my argument was that WoW doesn't really compete with XIV for new players. In FFXIV there's a main story you follow, and that's the actual game, with additional side quests and other stuff to do. I would consider XIV worth playing as a FF game just for the main scenario. The game directs you forward to new areas and battles, and everything you do is tied to the main story context. In WoW I felt like I was just wandering aimlessly, trying to find a point for doing something. That can work in some (I guess mostly single player) games and create a feeling of an open world adventure, but in WoW's case I just felt that the game world and game content didn't offer me anything. More importantly (for me), because of the level sync system, the content you do in XIV is scaled to your level offering at least some kind of a challenge, whereas in WoW that just isn't there. After my first time leveling in XIV 2.0, I remembered the dungeons and primal fights I had done, the bosses and some of their mechanics, now I can't remember a single one clearly from WoW.

I can't compare the endgame between the two since I never got there in WoW.

You've definitely hit the mark, but I'd guess that's why you now get a boost to level 100 for Legion which has a set story (but I believe that's optional). New player retention isn't only an issue for WoW though, I've tried getting several friends into FFXIV and only two have stuck around, and one other hit level 60 and then quit shortly after while the others didn't even make it to level 50. The game has a huge issue with filler content, no one I know cared heavily for the story and the lack of voice acting put them off so they started skipping dialogue, and so they cared less. I can't why MMORPG developers always half ass the introduction experience, the first impression is by far the most important and telling others "The story gets better later, and the combat is much faster with all the off-GCD abilities you'll get later!" for FFXIV or "Legion is far better, and you'll actually be doing challenging raids!" for WoW just doesn't work when that requires a time investment of 50+ hours.

I don't even want to get started on butchering WoW's complexity, from "rotations" so simple an Ice Mage could do high DPS in WoW to making dungeons effortless with even mythic being easy if you're playing with people you know are alright. With Yoshida saying FFXIV rotations are too complex in 3.x, I sure hope he doesn't look to WoW for inspiration as he just seems to pick up their worst ideas and somehow make them more lacklustre, such as Garrisons/Squadrons.

[Duelle]

We played for 2 weeks, kept leveling up and hoping to see something that would make the game worth playing. In the end we noticed we were always just waiting for the "next thing" (expansion content, dungeons, areas, unlocking raid finder just to see there were no raid we could even do) to be something better, but from a newbie perspective at least it was all just one boring quest or dungeon after another.

I understand mileage varies, but I have to ask if you were actually read the text for the quests and piecing stuff together as you did them. I can agree that some were very lackluster (post-Cataclysm Westfall in particular was absolutely ridiculous), but progression generally goes from you being a random yahoo that's helping the local authorities to being sent to various places and doing more dangerous things as you get stronger.

We didn't find the world interesting or explorable at all and the dungeons were just about running after a tank and rushing through stuff.

Which means it ain't that different than FFXIV, specially in the case of the latter.

The battle system was overly simplified (especially compared to FFXIV) and there were practically no mechanics.

There are mechanics. They're simply not as pronounced and involve things we don't do here. Some bosses have buffs that need to be removed (either Purged by shaman, or Mass Dispelled by priests, or Spellstolen by mages). There's also the matter of interrupts, which is something this game almost never uses. Bosses usually have abilities that are inconveniences or can potentially lead to a wipe if not interrupted, and it's generally on the DPS and the tank to make sure those abilities never go off. WoW also uses debuffs that must be removed by the healer a lot more than this game does.

I guess there's a story somewhere in there, but with the current leveling speed we were just rushing from one thing to another.

This is a legit concern. I started a shaman just to see what enhance is like at later levels (for research purposes) and I was surprised at how much the exp requirements for leveling have been nerfed. It's very alt-friendly, but I can see how newbies would have difficulty keeping up with the story if you're going solely for the current-level quests that give the best exp reward.

As an aside, I want FFXIV do to its own version of an under-water zone. SE's artists are top notch so I'd think they would do such a zone justice.

I don't even want to get started on butchering WoW's complexity, from "rotations" so simple an Ice Mage could do high DPS in WoW to making dungeons effortless with even mythic being easy if you're playing with people you know are alright.

Anything said on that is subjective at best. I enjoy simple design and combat, so some of the changes have not bothered me that much. Ret being a mess (judgment mechanic, turned from a holy knight into a not-so-strong knight that gives away their damage potential to other people) notwithstanding.

With Yoshida saying FFXIV rotations are too complex in 3.x, I sure hope he doesn't look to WoW for inspiration as he just seems to pick up their worst ideas and somehow make them more lackluster, such as Garrisons/Squadrons.

To be fair, Everything they've implemented with this patch goes back to the thing about making max level players do old content.

I like to think I suggested a decent blueprint for squadrons. Too bad they didn't use any of it.

[Taika]

I understand mileage varies, but I have to ask if you were actually read the text for the quests and piecing stuff together as you did them. I can agree that some were very lackluster (post-Cataclysm Westfall in particular was absolutely ridiculous), but progression generally goes from you being a random yahoo that's helping the local authorities to being sent to various places and doing more dangerous things as you get stronger.

I did actually read the quest text in the open world (in dungeons I simply didn't have the time since everyone was rushing forward), but since leveling was so fast I was locked out from the quests in a certain zone before I got anywhere with the story. I was also locked out from many dungeons because I outleveled then (and then they just weren't in my dungeon finder anymore). I did make it my mission to complete all the quests in one zone (so I skipped dungeons entirely) in (I think) the first Cataclysm zone (I don't remember what it was called, it was under water) just to experience what it's like, and then I did quests in Warlords of Draenor zones until I gave up the game. With my partner we also tried to find the Lich king story since we were actually interested in it (my partner liked Warcraft 3 a lot) and people we know spoke highly of the expansion, but we simply didn't manage to do that despite trying to find relevant quests in the different expansion zones and even googling to find advice for a good story quest path. It ended up being so stressful we just ended up running dungeons again (some of them did seem to have something to do with the story).

Which means it ain't that different than FFXIV, specially in the case of the latter.

I found there to be a great difference between WoW and XIV dungeon content. In XIV dungeon content players play as a team, each pull takes at least some time to kill (in WoW we sometimes struggled with even getting one hit in), and there are clear boss fights that take longer and have some mechanics. Sure, people in XIV rush through dungeons too, but in WoW it's on a complete different level.

There are mechanics. They're simply not as pronounced and involve things we don't do here. Some bosses have buffs that need to be removed (either Purged by shaman, or Mass Dispelled by priests, or Spellstolen by mages). There's also the matter of interrupts, which is something this game almost never uses. Bosses usually have abilities that are inconveniences or can potentially lead to a wipe if not interrupted, and it's generally on the DPS and the tank to make sure those abilities never go off. WoW also uses debuffs that must be removed by the healer a lot more than this game does.

Are there really these kinds of mechanics in the leveling dungeons? Because I did as many as I could from my way to 1 to 94 and didn't notice any.

This is a legit concern. I started a shaman just to see what enhance is like at later levels (for research purposes) and I was surprised at how much the exp requirements for leveling have been nerfed. It's very alt-friendly, but I can see how newbies would have difficulty keeping up with the story if you're going solely for the current-level quests that give the best exp reward.

Yup I think the leveling speed was the core of our issues with not being able to see any story (apart from the opening CS of a couple of later expansions).

[DukeGr]

To me the major difference between FFXIV and WoW and the main reason i have accepted FFXIV as my main MMO is the simple fact that FFXIV is good at recycling content. In WoW almost everything gets obsolete especially after a new expansion pops.

I'm not just talking about synced content here or older raids, this includes everything in the game like crafting, gathering etc.

After playing 3 years WoW i realized it is nothing more than a huge trash bin with more obsolete stuff being added there with every expansion, its literally like they delete the old game with each expansion and only focus on the new content.

[Hirmu]

This is a pretty long a rant on the subject and based on my experience in leveling to 94 with Taika in WoW and my long experience in FFXIV. Regarding the differences between WoW and FFXIV, I think most of the time we’re talking about nuances and approaches within a very similar design paradigm more than actual differences. The player base is pretty much the same, or at least similar people. Both games have tons of disposable content and it makes me sad to see this toted as a good thing by so many people (in general, not so much in this thread!).

The WoW leveling experience for me was horrible. The first 20 levels are fine as they bring you from your home village to the first big city, showing a bit of a sidestory on the way to give the impression that something’s going on in the world.

After that it’s literally just wading through trash. There’s no compelling reason to move outside the city to do anything. The game isn’t telling you “Hey, there’s all this cool content you should check out and we’d like especially YOU to go and see it!” In my mind I know that these zones probably have quests in them but the game hasn’t earned my trust that the quests are worth doing and in fact what I do know is that I have to go out of my way to find them and when I do find them, I know that I might outlevel the story before seeing it through and another thing I know already is that once I do outlevel the zone, nothing I did back there has any meaning at all in any way.

Not for the story, not for my character, not for me as a player. I’m never going back. The zone is trash for me now. I don’t need the gear because the dungeons and mobs are maddeningly easy to kill as if they’re made of cotton candy and bittersweet dreams, so the gear is trash. And because there is no Big Story where my character is essential, the story is there like an episode in a bad TV series where nothing really connects with anything. It might be slightly entertaining to see what it’s about, but when I’m out of there, it’s like nothing happened. The story is just a memory of trash to me now, too. It never gets referred to, it doesn’t place me in the world, nothing. Meaningless.

We went out of our way to try to find the story in WoW. Seriously, it was incredibly hard to even find the zones and quests and to identify if this particular quest has anything at all to do with the Lich King or is it just something completely unrelated, like fixing some damn gnome’s flying machine. Still have no clue but we outleveled the area anyway.

But WoW has mechanically better quests than FFXIV. In FFXIV, there are two things I do in quests. I click on NPCs to read a bunch of text and kill mobs that are made of silk paper and fleeting thoughts on a long bus ride. At least in WoW I get to ride a shredder or drive a tank or whatnot, even though the end result is equally meaningless it’s at least funny to do it once. But what FFXIV does do, is that it actively directs me through every area in the game, it tells me what my place is in the world and how everything connects. Every dungeon I do, I’ve been to the area it’s in, I’ve been to the entrance and there’s a quest which tells me why the heck I’m even going there in the first place. I’m a person in the world and everything has a context. And every time you kill a primal? Every npc in the world knows that AND refers to it later. You, specifically YOU are the one who killed all these primals. It’s pretty nice. Of course you had no choice, the game wouldn’t let you skip the killing (I’ll come back to this soon).

Also the gear in FFXIV is not trash. The stuff you get in dungeons? Keep it, you’ll need it for your other jobs. And the zones you were in? You might come back when leveling other jobs to gather those sidequests you didn’t do.

What’s incredibly irritating and lopsided in FFXIV is that the low level gear is what you want to hold on to. The one that’s easiest to get. But the endgame gear, the one that I work hardest and am proudest of? I keep tossing that to the garbage bin at an alarming rate. Every week I’m tossing it away more and more. It makes no sense. But that level 45 gear? Yeah, had that since the launch. Not gonna throw it out since I’ll need it for my DRK when I get around to it. And the dungeons in general? Well, you’re gonna be running them for so many times you’ll end up hating them all with a passion. Because in sharp contrast to WoW throwing the dungeons away after you use them once, FFXIV recycles them over and over and keeps shoving them down your throat a long time after you thought you’d never have to see them again. I swear if I ever have to farm ARF again, I’ll sell my computer and become a frog farmer or something.

Regarding leveling dungeons, WoW is again horrible. Sure there might be some mechanics that the tank or healer did which I didn’t notice. However, as Taika said, we leveled to 94 as two DPS classes and did maybe around 80% of the leveling dungeons available. I didn’t do any mechanics apart from two or three times moving out of the bad stuff. I’m not even exaggerating here. Rest of the time I’m struggling to hit my sprint equivalent to keep up with the tank and throw in a few shots so I’m not completely useless. Bosses sometimes die so fast that I didn’t even realize it was a boss. Now I’m not saying FFXIV dungeons are super challenging, but at least you have time to do frigging dps on the trash pulls and there’s a possibility you might even wipe to a boss. Especially in HW leveling dungeons.

But in the end, the biggest differentiator is between the screen and the chair. FFXIV railroads you incredibly hard and I really get why some people don’t like that. Especially during the mindnumbing filler quests in main scenario. Some people just wanna go out and do things and see what’s there. They enjoy the contained morsels of stories in WoW zones. Others like me find it utterly meaningless and empty. And I think both are equally good ways to enjoy a game. WoW is more for the other, FFXIV for the other type of player.

TL;DR: I’m grumpy. If you’re a connoisseur of grumpy rants, read mine.