Square Enix respects my time

[Tlachtga]

WoW bad, FFXIV gud

plz upvote thx

[Vahlnir]

WoW bad, FFXIV gud

plz upvote thx

That is how a lot of the FF XIV community operates, but in this regard the OP is not wrong.

[Shougun]

WoW shouldn't be the only game to measure against but it absolutely makes sense to be one of them, being a titan in the industry (FFXIV doing exceptionally well, as well), it also is worth noting Yoshida has had many kind words for Blizzard over the years and so showing off to the devs you can make a giant dump on the game is probably not going to actually win you as many fan points as one might think. I appreciate when I can reference another MMO to show that FFXIV should sharpen up some part of their game. Sometimes it's a big painful in certain areas, like glamour, but I'm hopeful the existence of another doing it better encourages the devs and empowers them to get the resources and back up they need from the head to do things that need to be done to keep the game at the top. Isolation leads to stagnation.

Bellular coming over would, imo, be pretty good news. Maybe FFXIV can help him make the transition, I feel if he could bring over a lot of the crowd that enjoys his work but is normally focused on WoW you'd have a good win for this game as he's pretty calm and doesn't lather WoW in kisses and rainbows so whoever generally follows him will be less likely to be like "I guess I'll try the weeb game, ew anime". lol. More likely to bring over people who will appreciate the game for being the game that it is (his crowd lining up with this game, I think). Heck, I don't play WoW and I watch his videos semi-regularly lol.

Also for OP, I really appreciate that this game has a warm heart to the more casual and non-'make this game my secondary, if not primary, job'. Which to clarify isn't me saying hardcore players need to be kicked out or there shouldn't be that content, as I know that seems to be the assumed war "either you're that or you're this". That content has a place, but in general FFXIV seems to be mindful to allow players to enjoy many pieces of the game at their own pace. I'm hopeful they'll continue to empower blue mage, and make the experience smoother (ie not things like having to go to max level with few to no interesting spells so you can then unsync low level content to actually become interesting), to help fill in the gap that their rebalance will be doing. They said unsync will be harder, not impossible, and it makes sense they're doing this if they're trying to make a more consistent gameplay experience (well they also said it was to prevent bugs in their code as numbers were getting way too high), I assume/guess part of this is also to improve healer experience since the growth rate is strong enough healers usually become near optional in any competent party in non-hardcore content. I guess luckily for healers there are not always competent parties in DF lol, but I've played healer in some of the normal dungeons and literally only used oGCDs to cure, rest of it was just spamming my few damage spells.

WoW bad, FFXIV gud

plz upvote thx