AT THIS POINT in World of Warcraft

[rainichan]

People will likely say they have loads to do, and that's fair, I'd assume they've not been playing since ARR like myself, and have kept up with FFXIV's patches since.

Your assumption would be wrong, considering I've been playing since closed betas (not so much in 1.0, but heavily since closed beta 2 for ARR). I still have things I can and want to do, I just don't speedrun content to get it done and wonder why there's nothing else I want to do.

The only thing that would be correct to assume is not everything I want to do is things you want to do, and that's fine.

Dungeons are definitely not designed to be fun. They're designed for easy, fast, efficient roulette chores.

... If people enjoy 1500 tomes and 5 min dailies then great, I'll be off having fun.

Damn, I must be way too casual if I'm not completing every roulette for tomes within a 5min window.

Joking aside, considering XIV's current way to play is "do everything fast because my time is worth more than anything, how dare my dungeon runs take longer than 10 minutes" and speeding through dungeons has been the meta since FOREVER: how often do you see people go through the other rooms in Sastasha and not just go into the Captain's Quarters and the Waverider Gate? How often did you go an alternate path in Toto-rak when it wasn't a hallway? How often did you see the full map in a dungeon they've recently reworked in ARR? Because if your answer is "not since 2.0 in 2013," that's you answer on why dungeons are boring as all get out. The argument to get more xp is gone with the EW dungeon reworks of bosses giving all the prior XP, and no one went through those rooms or different paths anyway. There's no incentive for them to make more interesting dungeons or reasons to make other paths except now in the Variant Dungeons because everyone takes the most expedient path so they don't have to be in a dungeon "wasting [their] time." It's why no one wants to run other alliance raids except for CT because they're faster and can be completed in a very short time frame... except maybe WoD, no one knows how to run that.

Otherwise, I'm glad you're having fun, regardless of what you're playing. Generally when I come out and say "then unsub and play something else" it's out of a "if you're not having fun, why are you torturing yourself playing a game you aren't enjoying?" place. Play what's going to get those serotonin hits for you, play a game you're going to have fun with, come back later to see if things have changed for you. There's rarely fomo in XIV, the only things you may miss are seasonal events. Take a break, play other things to let your brain reset, see how you feel in a couple weeks. It's not a bad thing, I do it too, even if I've been subbed for... a very long time lmao. We don't talk about that.

[kaynide]

They said they play both. Both have positives and negatives. But some feel XIV has just a few more negatives in this current expac cycle for casual vets. It's not rocket surgery buddy.
Do you play other games? I bet you do. They don't have to be MMOs, but I bet you play something else and can make comparisons to some degree while also enjoying both.

Are you people exhausted with this dumb take? I see it too often, and nobody asked.

This +1,000. I more or less have been in stasis mode for FFXIV since Omega beast tribes. Didn’t hate what’s up…just I already basically leveled my gatherers..now with the rabbits I’ve already leveled my crafters…I have zero interest in endgame content so Savage/trials/raids are a “meh” for me…so……….

Doesn’t make FFXIV bad, just means I’ll come back after some content has built up that I like.

I’m currently delving back to my high school days and replaying Morrowind. And as much jank as there is, I am having a blast. Conan Exiles has a patch incoming. Minecraft has some stuff coming I can do with the kids. It’s not like anyone need be married to one game.

There is nothing wrong with comparing games, and playing other games. Honestly having flashbacks of elementary school where kids fought over which was better between SNES and the Genesis.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Holy fanboy defense force

Do you have an actual Reasonable Post to make?
Or is just saying "Fanboy Defense Force" the new trendy way to get Brownie points with no effort?

I may not agree with many people here, but they at least put up an argument sometimes.

[Shinkuno]

Do you have an actual Reasonable Post to make?
Or is just saying "Fanboy Defense Force" the new trendy way to get Brownie points with no effort?

I may not agree with many people here, but they at least put up an argument sometimes.

There is no response to a take like "everyone that thinks wow does things better is on nostalgic copium"

you get a real response once you have a real take

[Rilifane]

Joking aside, considering XIV's current way to play is "do everything fast because my time is worth more than anything, how dare my dungeon runs take longer than 10 minutes" and speeding through dungeons has been the meta since FOREVER: how often do you see people go through the other rooms in Sastasha and not just go into the Captain's Quarters and the Waverider Gate? How often did you go an alternate path in Toto-rak when it wasn't a hallway? How often did you see the full map in a dungeon they've recently reworked in ARR? Because if your answer is "not since 2.0 in 2013," that's you answer on why dungeons are boring as all get out. The argument to get more xp is gone with the EW dungeon reworks of bosses giving all the prior XP, and no one went through those rooms or different paths anyway. There's no incentive for them to make more interesting dungeons or reasons to make other paths except now in the Variant Dungeons because everyone takes the most expedient path so they don't have to be in a dungeon "wasting [their] time." It's why no one wants to run other alliance raids except for CT because they're faster and can be completed in a very short time frame... except maybe WoD, no one knows how to run that.

The difference with dungeons there is variety on many levels which leads to a very different rhythm when running dungeons. They're easy, they're casual but they don't get stale. And although you can skip a lot, only about 1/3 of groups in leveling dungeons actually do it; most do full runs because they're fun and the skippers usually only skip a bit here and there and not 3/5 bosses with the majority of the trash. No single layer of variety is the deciding factor (e.g. varying amounts of bosses, different layouts) but all combined make for a dungeon experience that never feels repetetive.

The most variety you have in terms of rhythm in FFXIV is whether a tank pulls one or two packs at a time.
FFXIV had some of it to a degree once but they purged it and made dungeons into sterile "2-3 pack > boss, rinse & repeat" corridors that look nice but that's it. It's efficient, it's dev-approved, it's the same you will do in pretty much every single dungeon, no way around it.

My sub will run out tomorrow unless we botch our last reclear today, already been back to WoW for several weeks, having a lot of fun there with no intention of returning in the foreseeable future and I have a long list of things I look forward to doing. It has a number of issues and maybe not all of them get fixed but they're types of issues I can work with just fine. It has more than enough positives to make me shrug off the negatives.
There's no nostalgia here, there's experience from playing it, looking at it carefully and deciding "Yep, this is what I enjoy and will continue to enjoy".

[caffe_macchiato]

anyone defending FFXIV is defending their nostalgia. nostalgia is simply the mourning for something that is lost. the only way you'll stop being slapped in the face with that nostalgia-level depression of what things once were is by moving on which i suggest everyone defending FFXIV in this thread do.

just let go. the FFXIV you know and loved is gone and it'll happen (or is happening, depending on who you ask...) to this game, too.

just move on.

Nuff said!

[MahthildisMMORPG]

Be careful, Zepla might make a dismissive Twitch segment about your post because you mentioned Garrisons. *eyeroll* I will never get over it (when she made one about my post for simply hoping we get Garrisonlike features in Island Sanctuary, like Aesthetician, Glamour Dresser, and Marketboard), it stressed me out.

[hunkygladiator]

[Themarvin]

Well for starters, this is not World of Warcraft, enough said really and that is all.

[Johners]

Well for starters, this is not World of Warcraft, enough said really and that is all.

It might not be World of Warcraft but there’s still valid takeaways. WoW is roughly twice as old as XIV if you count ARR as the starting point (this’ll start a debate itself but that’s not particularly relevant here). WoW has evolved a lot in terms of game design and even in the people making the game.

Blizzard OGs like Chris Metzen and a vital part in WoW’s success… but they also oversaw the beginning of its decline at the WoD stage, the same stage that XIV is at now. Yoshi-P has been a great service to this game and community but he’s also stubborn in his stances and many of his live letter comments is just him shouting himself in the foot.

Even when Blizzard’s leadership churned, things weren’t always better and it’s taken the fallout of Shadowlands plus subsequent effort with Dragonflight to really get things in track. I don’t think XIV would have the same fate, especially as the exodus location for many WoW players. A Shadowlands moment would kill this game, it would not recover. Unfortunately this game has a massive vocal community that buries criticism and ultimately gatekeeps the game as a result while relies on and fuels Yoshi-P being placed on his untouchable pedestal amongst other things.

There’s many lessons in WoW’s history and lifecycle that Square Enix and the player base should really take a good hard look at (this extends to things like proper QoL changes, plugins etc).

EDIT
I seriously don’t get why Yoshi-P and the dev team gets placed on an untouchable pedestal though. They have and will get things wrong, sometimes repeatedly. Sometimes things need to change despite stubbornness from the devs. Sometimes you just need a new leadership direction entirely. WoW and many other games have survived this and even thrived because of this. Given the growing frustrations with the Endwalker patch cycle, if they repeat this in 7.x then it’s going to be a massacre for player numbers and expansion sales (no big story arc to carry them).