Quote Originally Posted by Vonleo View Post
What are you even talking about? Heavensward is one of the best expansions after ARR and is still beloved by many in the community. Storm Blood I admit was lower in terms of story but then shot way up with shadowbringers so I don't get where you get this "Coasted for years" take from because its wrong.

FFXIV isn't trying to be something its not FFXIV is not for PVP minded players. FFXIV is for people that like the story and most of all SOCIAL interactions with a sprinkle of raiding. If you someone that has been here since 2013 hasn't seen that yet I don't know what else to tell you.

As for your comment about FFXIV only enjoying its success because WoW players came over you are again wrong because Shadowbringers was a big success even before Blizzard crap the bed.

About SWTOR having a better story I have to disagree as I played it at launch and even came back to it with the Eternal throne expansion and it has never once made me feel anything unlike FFXIV I actually gave a crap about the characters and actually felt something when something happened. Now again this is probably the most personal thing because it can go either way but in my opinion FFXIV story for ME is much better because again I actually felt emotions while going through it. SWTOR on the other hand I didn't feel anything at all.
Heavensward was a step above ARR which isn't saying much. It's one of the better expansions sure but mostly for its increase in the quality of its presentation and voice acting. The story itself was Pope bad, religion lied, let's do democracy now. Ishgard is still my favorite nation despite all that.

The community was much smaller in HW too and the amount of players rose through Stormblood, which had a worse story than HW but better content btw. I also mentioned the game went by without much notice until Shadowbringers, this is true. I don't attribute all of the game's growth to WoW's misfortune, but it certainly got a surge of growth, hype, and attention in the last couple of months because of it and that's undeniable. The server issues might see it lose some of that popularity, time will tell. It's also undeniable that there just aren't many other options out there. Other games do certain things much better than XIV but XIV does several things decently and has a good aesthetic even if it's pretty dated by this point.

Onto XIV not trying to be something it's not, they used to make more of an effort for PvP. I actually liked to casually play PvP back in HW. Was it always balanced? Certainly not, but it was more fun to me. Anyway I pointed it out as one of the glaring things this game does not provide that many other MMOs do better. It's more about SOCIAL interactions with a sprinkle of raiding? That's one thing to call the content droughts that lead people to stand around idly in cities or run ERP night club/bar venues. This game has always had content lulls that lead to substantial population dips and that's going to remain true because not everyone is trying to play Second Life on here. Don't be surprised if a lot of people don't come back after this expansion rush, and don't take this game's current success for granted.

As for SWTOR I've played every class to 50 and got through Knights of the Fallen Empire so I'm not current on the story but overall what I experienced there was more engrossing and interesting than XIV's story. Some class storylines are better than others, I played Agent first and that was also my main so I got to have probably the best experience as my first impression. I felt more attached and felt more of a sense of ownership to some of my SWTOR characters than I've ever felt towards the WoL. Overall I think SWTOR has better storytelling between the way its presented, the factions involved, the decisions you can take, its morality system, and Valkorion was just a very enigmatic and far more interesting antagonist than most of the ones XIV has given us. XIV has become such a convoluted mess of a story that now contradicts itself and just hand waves away issues that crop up. EW was a really mediocre way to finish the story arc and at least a lot of people on the forums can see the way they cut corners with this story.