Can we stop comparing the two at this point?

[Puremallace]

I think we know which two and we all know where this thread is going. FF14 and WoW and this only comes up because I still check the WoW forums and they talk about us a lot over there.

Guess it is because FF14 has been releasing content during a MASSIVE lul in WoW.

1. FF14 is 7 years old and WoW is 15 years old. If you cannot look at one game in its 3rd expansion vs one in its 7th and understand why they work differently then you are lost.

2. Even remotely trying to compare class design in a game where you can swap between them all and another where you have to log off to play a different class then you are lost. Also YET AGAIN one game the character cap is 80 and the other is 120. Square Enix is well aware of the ability bloat which is why you see these class redesigns happening.

3. Just like in WoW's 3rd expansion the devs for FF14 tried to open the game to more casual players so they made tanking easier and thus caused boring healers. I cannot put into words how bored I was in Wrath barely even having to attempt dungeons designed around these new tanks that had some many defensive CD's.

Ever hear people complain about chain pulling? I used to pull Halls of Lightening from start to finish on my Paladin and take hardly any damage and WoW did not have these arbitrary doors to slow people down.

4. One MMO is designed solely for PC users while this one is designed to work on the PS4. Anyone looked at the specs on a PS4? You start to understand very quickly why some designed decisions. Maybe once this MMO starts solely supporting the PS5 which is vastly superior in 7.0 we will see major changes.

5. One MMO relies HEAVILY on RNG for gearing while FF14 is predictable and some call it boring who want to spice it up. Well Blizzard started to "spice it up" after their 3rd expansion and now it is a spicy pile of crap that makes some RNG loot box systems look fair. Go figure after their subs tanking they are reconsidering this approach.

6. One MMO has queues literally every single time I login and when I goto zones I never really feel alone. Could Square incentive going into the open world more...yeah got any suggestions then post them. Also no stupid arbitrary faction war that no longer makes any sense.

7. One game focuses on the story atleast ONCE from 1-80. Do not like and want to be a l33t pwnzers raider then fork over $17 for a story skip or rush through the game by hitting escape. Personally your life will be more empty as you will not understand why Thordan is so afraid of you....who this Zenos guy is...Why Emet turns into this big thing then cries in despair during the fight about being forgotten...

8. One game has gone through multiple game directors while the other has had CONSISTENT leadership and huge subscriber growth using this current formula.

TL'DR: Stop comparing the two. They are in extremely different development cycles in their lifetimes and use VERY different development philosophies.

[Kes13a]

its nice WoW forums devote space for free advertising for FF XIV

They have had many flips through the years as to story direction, and really, direction is non existent. It may have been around for 15 years but it shows its age. I have played it through its life, and personally, prefer FF XIV far more. If they want to talk about FF XIV, they should, its superior is direction and story. gear in FF XIV is a progression, you dont grind out something thats central to a whole expansion only to have it virtually disappear appear after.

but, people play games for different reasons, and I just havent found WoW fun or interesting for years. FF XIV has not disappointed me.

There is no comparison aside from they are both games. Some people just need to justify their time I guess.

[Taebok]

Considering FF is taking a very similar path to destruction, probably not.
Implementing cross server
Way too many classes
Destroying the economy
Making crafting 1 button win/useless
Forcing people to play "their way"
It's like FF is determined to make every single mistake that WoW did

[EaMett]

OP: "stop comparing the two"
Also OP: *compares the two*

I'm curious what is being said on the wow forums about ff14 now. Probably complaining about the weebness or something lol.

[Xatsh]

The two games are always gona be compared because they are basically the 2 titans of themepark mmos. That and Yoshida himself said he had his team play and research what wow was doing before redesigning FFXIV from 1.0 to ARR. He basically admitted he used WoW as a template... so it is fair to compare the two.

Core design of the two games are almost the same, some of the systems as you pointed out are different but when you look at the core design it is closer to WoW then any other mmo on the market. Personally I describe this game to most people as an eastern version of WoW based on final fantasy instead of warcraft.

Oh and just to point it out... the ques in this game are not really real unless it is right after a server crash usually. You use to be able to bypass them by canceling the que and clicking start again until they added a mandatory wait period. You get the same 15-30 person que if you log in at prime time or log in at 4am. Right after a patch or in the middle of a 4 month lul in content.

FFXIV has been through multiple directors as well.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm curious what is being said on the wow forums about ff14 now. Probably complaining about the weebness or something lol.

I guess I'll check real quick. It's usually hard to find anything about XIV there, tbh.

In the first 25 pages of the General Discussion forums, there is... one reference to XIV, from a "XIV-refugee" (if the reverse of "WoW refugee" is permitted), which amounts to "So a lot of people are saying XIV will be the new WoW-killer, but as someone who played XIV before having ever played WoW, almost none of the strengths attributed to it are all that prevalent..."

Overall, complaints about "weebness" are mostly limited to certain Twitch streamers' echo-meme-chat. It's a game with battle-cows, wise panda warriors, and a ton of plot armor, after all.

[Penthea]

OP like it or not they're two games within the same genre and they're among the two most well known in that genre as well. Never mind that it's far from unusual to find players who have played both. The comparisons are never going to stop.

Just because these games have taken quite different directions within the genre does not mean it's silly to compare them. It actually can lead to some interesting conversations to note how two completely different dev teams approach similar types of things.

As for how old they are, it's a bit meaningless at times to point this out because while WoW started far before FFXIV, WoW is still releasing new content and it has gone through some very significant changes since its initial launch. It's not as if the game has stayed mostly the same for 15 years. It is hugely because of this that the demand for Classic WoW became so high. Retail (current) WoW is so far removed from the days of Classic that they're different games at this point. As long as both WoW and FFXIV continue to release new content in similar time frames and dates, comparisons between the two are valid.

And personally I think both games would benefit from taking elements from one another. They each have their pros and cons, and each game does something better than the other.

[Callinon]

The comparisons are inevitable and fair. You don't have to read those threads though. That's your way out.

[Shurrikhan]

They each have their pros and cons, and each game does something better than the other.

Oddly enough, though, the list of things I'd like to see from WoW seems many times more than what I'd want to see in WoW from XIV.

My wants on the XIV -> WoW list are limited to pretty much only...

• More frequent new dungeons (though now we get new dungeons less frequently than Legion did, so, that's kind of reversed by now).
• More open-world based side-content (a la Eureka if Eureka could be done well instead; the closest WoW's had to this was WoD's hardest Apexis zones when still in newish levelcap gear).
• Chained FATEs (or, "World Quests" in WoW's case), though I'd like both to go waaaay further with them.
• Maaaybe more involved conversational pieces, e.g. dialogue choices (though I actually prefer that WoW's quest conversations and uniquely animated pieces therein either don't pull me cutscene or do so only via a full-fledged cutscene instead of something kinda half-assed).
• (There's probably a couple more than just aren't coming to mind atm, but, yeah that's about it.)

Whereas the WoW -> XIV list is... long.

• Sensible systems and features, like their Appearances Log, which supports every appearance in the entire game and even tells you how to get each while offering free Hide choices, instead of our Glamour Dressers, Prisms, Dispellers, and "Emperor's New..." items.
• Player choice making a difference (e.g. choosing to follow Sylvanus in her path to break the cycle of death at any cost or Saurfang in his quest to return honor to his people, even if such was only temporary for obvious [spoilers] reasons), though I'd prefer a... better... take on it.
• Being treated merely as a particularly competent, experienced soldier in the know (still among many) rather than 'everyone's favorite god-slaying pushover courier/handyman/posterchild of whom there's only one except when there's clearly not'.
• "Gearing" includes gameplay augmentation, rather than only stat growth (see integral trinkets [akin to bonus traits or abilities via each of two dedicated gear slots] and gameplay-affecting Tier bonuses from raid gear; Artifact Weapons; Azerite gear, Essences, and Corruptions; Conduits and Soulbinds).
• Replacement players zoning in at the party's location instead of only ever at the entrance (technically dungeon-dependent in WoW, but let's take it and go further).
• More varied mobs in terms of emergent gameplay, especially when still less geared.
• CC being a thing.
• Interrupts being frequent and vital, with more granular and generally counterable penalties if missed, rather than being either irrelevant or almost instantly wipe-causing.
• Gathering not locked behind unique gear that thereby causes all open-world gathering to be completely separate from open world threats (via Sneak); I like there being economics reason to venture into potentially dangerous parts of the open world (and not merely invalidate those dangers) and to be able to specifically pursue whatever it is I want, in particular.
• Gathering nodes can occur in any area logical for that herb, vein, etc., and have specific, visibly-obvious rewards rather than spawns merely being a universal glowing ball and their rewards thereby obscured.
• Specializations (especially if via a revision of the tree model rather than the grid model); you have this toolkit, so now you figure out what you want to most place your focus on and build your own emergent kit around those focuses.
• Seamless open world (loading zones only between continents, e.g. La Noscea, mainland Eorzea, and Othard).
• More worldbuilding in the zones themselves.
• Better zone design insofar as creating space for game mechanics, grinding areas, etc (more the case back in Classic), with a greater sense of many and varied sub-zones.
• More in-world storytelling (see war campaigns and quest-based phasing, rather than merely glowing spheres and purple spawns-mobs circles)
• And so much more.

[Charisma]

Considering FF is taking a very similar path to destruction, probably not.
Implementing cross server

Cross Server itself was never the problem, the way SE did it is perfectly fine. In WoW you often will end up being phased into a dead instance, which kills the immersion entirely. There is also a lot of other problems with the phasing on top of that.

Way too many classes

Never heard that one lol, also not seeing a problem here.

Destroying the economy
Making crafting 1 button win/useless

Well this 2 go pretty much hand in hand. Ive been crafting since Heavensward, and i see nothing wrong with how crafting works now, taking the bs rng out of crafting didn't make it "easier" just less annoying, also getting rid of pointless skill bloat. It just made crafting more attractive for a lot of people, which is a good thing. I can totally see why certain main crafter content creators are salty about the fact that they can't easily cap their retainers anymore just because only a handful of people bothered with crafting.

Forcing people to play "their way"

Well had to end it with an argument without any context, just for the sake of it, why not.


Let's not start about the so-called "Casualization" of this game, most normal raids in Shadowbringers take a piss on ARR Extreme fights, Shiva Unreal is so laughable easy, it's literally "unreal" and just shows how easy fights were back then.

Also does no one claiming this remember, how shocked people were about how easy Classic endgame actually is?