The "Wow Refugee's" impact on the FFXIV Community?

[Yuella]

Mileage varies. Some streamers feel burnout by ARR and I don't think they''ll continue. All I can say that those who enjoyed ARR are in it for the long term. I suspect around 30 percent of recent refugees will stay till endgame.

[Wilford111]

I just worry that some (not all) wow players will try to bring the min/max toxic meta mentality to this game...

...I do think that dungeon runs will become more “GO GO GO GO GO, don’t watch cut scenes, hurry up noob LTP!!!” with lots of griefing over little mistakes etc…

This already happens and has been a part of this game for as long as I've been around (mid-Heavensward)

[Shurrikhan]

This already happens and has been a part of this game for as long as I've been around (mid-Heavensward)

It's been there since 1.x. Was pretty dominant in ARR as well.

[DBriggs304]

Every now and then I'll get a run like that where it's wall to wall pulls. Sometimes I don't mind, other times it can be annoying if you notice sprouts there.

Mostly though, the community expectations are there and kinda regulate themselves, so, if someone asks to go slower MOST don't mind and try to accommodate.

[dezzmont]

I love it when sprouts fill the garden. The game becomes more alive and hopeful. Seeing the beginner zones filled with activity really fills me with joy, and most of the negativity I have seen has come from veterans suddenly shocked to see that their roulettes are like 2-6 sprouts, rather than the sprouts themselves.

Remember: always model the behavior you want to see in the world! People are going to learn from the folks they remember, make sure you are remembered for a good reason!

[TeraRamis]

It would be impossible - absolutely impossible - for anyone to know or, really, to predict.

One thing you have to remember about WoW is that the community changed with the game (and, I would argue, the changes to the game altered the community far more than the inverse [as many people believe]). Once you started seeing Blizzard time and again roll out massive convenience changes that essentially transformed WoW from a social construct to a solo game with some group content (which is precisely what it now is), the community slid off a cliff overnight.

For one thing, I don't see Yoshi or SE making massive changes to FFXIV moving forward - at least in terms of things like how casual the game is, or how easy/hard it is to remain anonymous, how easy it is to group kick people, or where the development dollars go (like, do they continue to prioritize housing/glamour/and so on as much as raiding? Probably) etc. So, barring that, I believe that enormous shifts to the community identity are unlikely. Small changes are inevitable, but how exactly would you know they happened, or what to attribute them to? It's not like these WoW refugees are running around with name tags that read 'I jumped ship when Blizzard became a byword for sexual assault' - they're just going to be faces in the crowd, like anyone else.

[Shurrikhan]

It would be impossible - absolutely impossible - for anyone to know or, really, to predict.

One thing you have to remember about WoW is that the community changed with the game (and, I would argue, the changes to the game altered the community far more than the inverse [as many people believe]). Once you started seeing Blizzard time and again roll out massive convenience changes that essentially transformed WoW from a social construct to a solo game with some group content (which is precisely what it now is), the community slid off a cliff overnight.

Overnight? No. More like over 3-7 years.

And if convenience (or even specifically convenience as would make the game more solo-oriented) were such a damning factor, what of a game that started, even, as more of a solo-game than WoW is even now? (Not that it's really that much more solo-oriented than it was in Vanilla. Your average player takes part in far more specifically group-play content by comparison, with only the open world grind experience having lost unique rewards for grouping up, due to level-scaling having removed the ability to push intentionally into higher difficulties.)

I agree that systemic changes were more impactful than some (origins-unexplained) community impulse, but the causation isn't nearly so clear. From Vanilla through Wrath, there seemed a whole lot more toxicity in pre-made dungeon groups than DF ones, if only because of the added obligatory time investment already souring much of the experience. Having to wait for Jimmy to finally get to the Nexus, despite his constantly stopping for quests along the way, only to have little idea how to actually do a dungeon (since the average player only ran some fourth as many dungeons in their time leveling pre-DF as after) left the baseline far more strained.

As DF became the norm, I didn't particularly notice any more people intentionally wasting their group's time, but I certainly saw mine and other groups' time wasted by accident or neglect less often.

[Tarryme]

I came over from GW2 and found it to be a hard learning curve. Even now I still have some of the bad habits that refuse to be over-wiped, none of which are remotely toxic. I guess FF14 is my home now and I wouldn't do anything to change it.