AT THIS POINT in World of Warcraft

[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).

[Striker44]

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).

They don't. It's just the natural reaction from honest people who see Yoshi-P getting personally attacked and the game absolutely trashed by a select few malcontents who are so pathetically bitter they can't stand the thought of people enjoying the game. Look in game. Look on YT. Look on Reddit. The "frustration" you're claiming isn't there. People in game are having a blast, and the active playerbase is the highest it's ever been. It's okay to not personally like the way the game is designed, but to act as if that makes the game objectively "bad" or unpopular is disingenuous and unhelpful. You're not going to get a "Shadowlands moment" here because the dev team is devoted to the story and focusing on casual players; the "Shadowlands moment" happened because Blizzard ended up with a new dev team that didn't care about the story and focused on the toxic cesspool that is e-sports with end-game raiding and M+ as the primary focus.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

They don't.

They do. Every bloody day around here, it's the same bull people have been peddling for 10 years. "Yoshi saved the game!" "Yoshi is looking out for his players!" "Yoshi is so thoughtful!" "Yoshi doesn't want us chained to the game!" over and over and over and over and over and over.

You are doing it right now. He's a grown-ass man, you don't have to defend him like he's your 10 year old son getting bullied on the playground. Frankly with the absolute clown show he's been making of himself in interviews about FF16, he doesn't even deserve to be defended and excused as this game's cult community oh so often likes to do.

It's just the natural reaction from honest people who see Yoshi-P getting personally attacked and the game absolutely trashed by a select few malcontents who are so pathetically bitter they can't stand the thought of people enjoying the game.

If people can enjoy the braindead dumpster fire that the game has turned into, genuinely, power to them. I still have a couple friends who continue to play and find enjoyment (somehow), and I don't knock them for it or constantly talk down to them about it. I am happy they can still enjoy it where I can't, even if I don't personally understand how - other than perhaps just having low standards and being easily pleased. Which, that's fine too - lots of people are like that.

People who have been here for 10 years, however, and have been given increasingly less reason to trust in Yoshida's vision for the game, or to keep logging on, or to keep supporting it monetarily via cash shops or subs... they are not just "malcontents" looking for any reason to be bitter.

In my case, at least, I desperately ignored the writing on the walls for years, I plugged my ears to the game's problems, I grit my teeth and said "it's fine, at least X and Y stuff is still fun!" Until I couldn't anymore. I desperately tried to keep enjoying this game, year after year, despite knowing deep down I was not having fun, I was not happy, and I was simply deluding myself because admitting that it is not the greatest thing since sliced bread felt terrifying after having put so many years and so much of my love and energy into the game.

And so I stepped away. I took time to play single player games with better storytelling. I tried other MMOs, and found they provided me with all of what I had been wanting out of XIV for years and kept being denied. I realized, from my time away, that the game had numerous problems I and others have noticed, pointed out, and begged to be change for LITERAL YEARS. I realized it barely offered me jack outside of the MSQ - which ofc got flushed down the toilet with Endwalker, as the near 900 page thread on the front page of GD will attest.

Come 6.4, if we get yet more of the same braindead bullshit we've been fed year after year on a slowly oxidizing copper platter - and oh, we definitely will, god forbid they innovate lest the whiny children who play this game form riots over it - I will be cancelling my sub fully. I will let what few of my FC who still keep subs going/sub infrequently, look after our FC house - on the off chance that XIV has a wake-up call like WoW did, and improves enough to entice most of us back, so that we at least still have our home.

If we somehow lose it before then, though, that will be assurance of none of us coming back.

This game no longer deserves my money, let alone my time or my energy or my investment. It does not respect me, despite what the cult members like you try and shovel. It does not respect what I want out of an MMO experience, it does not respect my desire to take breaks without potentially losing something worth tons of gil, time, and memories that will be nearly impossible to get back or replace; it does not respect my intelligence as a person or as a player, it does not respect my time - whether lack of, or surplus of. It does not respect me. Yoshida, egotistical prick that he has become, does not respect me - or anyone - despite what he used to claim back when he managed to pull XIV out of 1.0's trainwreck via copying WoW as much as he could.

So why should I respect him? Or give him any money? Why should I give SE more money to blow on NFT garbage and crappy dead-on-arrival games that feel as if they're being made more for paychecks than out of passion?

If others want to do so, whatever - their money, not mine. But I took my money elsewhere, where it's actually worth it to me and where I feel it is being respected at least to some degree more than here.

Look in game. Look on YT. Look on Reddit. The "frustration" you're claiming isn't there.

In-game is dead half the time, from what I hear lately.

Youtube? What few content creators I still follow/have yet to unfollow, seem to all be providing less and less favorable words for XIV.

• CiderSpider just released a video regarding the abysmal relic design this expansion, in fact.
• MisshapenChair long stopped really making content for XIV.
• Lucy Pyre has barely made any real content for it outside of streaming it now and then.
• I've heard Zepla has even decided to "take a break", citing she feels she doesn't really need to come back regardless.
• Zack? Haven't heard a peep out of him regarding FFXIV.
• Nixxiom and many other WoW creators who began doing XIV content for a while during SL stopped, and have returned to WoW.

I could go on, but that's just looking at my feed thus far.

The mainsub for XIV is over-moderated to hell, everyone who seriously uses it and isn't a brainwashed cultist knows they rip down anything even remotely "negative" in perception to the game, regardless of how negative - if at all - it even is.

TalesfromDF, before I stopped following it, was cannibalizing itself due to a number of people quitting, getting tired of the crappy attitudes people have in the community to the point of blowing up at them in-game, or had mainsub simps jumping over being aggro about things that most people who were active in the sub found ridiculous at the best of times, let alone in the state the game's in.

Everywhere I frequent - even on Twitter, of all places, where I don't even really follow any XIV content makers or XIV-heavy accounts anymore! - is showing more and more frustration, dissatisfaction, or outright exhaustion for XIV lately. It certainly exists, even in places I don't expect, and I don't even go out of my way to look for it.

Hells, even WoW's GD forum has a number of XIV refugees often talking about their dissatisfaction with or distaste with the game, every time some XIV shill or XIV/WoW forum troll comes in trying to Jehovah's Witness about the game on an entirely different MMO's forum.

the active playerbase is the highest it's ever been.

Last I heard of the usual player censuses - since we have no actual hard sub data from SE - it's actually dropping off sharply.

It's okay to not personally like the way the game is designed, but to act as if that makes the game objectively "bad" or unpopular is disingenuous and unhelpful.

Clearly it's not okay, or you wouldn't keep screeching at every single dissention ever written about the game on these forums.

The game is, at its core, a bad game. People can still enjoy it despite that! I mean, WoW itself has a number of problems still - but plenty of people are still loving it despite them. ESO has a number of problems, and people still enjoy it despite them. It is possible to like a game despite issues.

But sometimes, the core of a game is still objectively bad, and built in a way that is crippling it over the long term. XIV is one of those cases.

You're not going to get a "Shadowlands moment" here because the dev team is devoted to the story and focusing on casual players;

You are living in the BfA timeline right now. You are not yet in Shadowlands, but you are careening towards it with every month that goes by.

BfA wasn't entirely terrible, but it had enough problems - especially coming off the magnum opus that was Legion - that it started to crack apart like an egg, until finally fumbling at the end and breaking into the mold-stained yolk that was Shadowlands. I am fully expecting XIV to do the same, with how it's currently going.

the "Shadowlands moment" happened because Blizzard ended up with a new dev team that didn't care about the story and focused on the toxic cesspool that is e-sports with end-game raiding and M+ as the primary focus.

You know, it's funny. Everyone always claims M+ is a toxic cesspit, but in the time since I moved over to WoW after finally giving it a genuine try.... never once experienced even a fraction of the supposed toxicity that gets harped about. Does it exist somewhere? Most certainly. But not nearly on the scale people like you always claim.

I am not even a serious player in WoW, and know I'm actually pretty bad at the game since most of my focus goes towards questing and solo content. But I've never gotten chewed out or insulted or had slurs thrown at me about it, in all the keys I've bothered to run. You look at any thread about M+ on the GD, and others say similarly - it's usually a few loud and insistent voices trying to cling to the story of how toxic the game's community is.

Kind of how it's a few loud and insistent voices here on GD trying to cling to this story that the game is doing fine and is somehow perfect/nearly perfect in every way.

---

Already did.

WoW is simply a better game than FFXIV right now. Yes, it's a mess. It has a lot to fix. But it's a lot of fun and has thousands of details and QoL that ff14 lacks. I already have a list of things I want to do in WoW that will probably keep me occupied for a year or two.

I'll compare the two because they are comparable. They're both competing MMO's at the top of the market. FF14 has lost all sense of fun. Island Sanctuary is not designed to be fun, it's designed to be rewarding in an efficient manner without forcing the player to spend time on it. Jobs are not designed to be fun, they're designed around simplicity, ease of numerical balance and 2 min bursts. Verminion and FATEs are a joke compared to Pet battles and WQ's. Dungeons are definitely not designed to be fun. They're designed for easy, fast, efficient roulette chores.

It's just so sterile, watered down, excessively streamlined and lacking substance here. If people enjoy 1500 tomes and 5 min dailies then great, I'll be off having fun.

I'll just leave off with quoting Liam, as his post is probably the best summation of things as they stand, and of my own feelings on the matter - as a FFXIV refugee who first went to ESO, then settled in WoW (quite unexpectedly, at that).

Is WoW perfect? Absolutely not. Blizzard still has a long, long road to follow with improving the game, listening to people, and bettering themselves in the process.

But they are at least trying. FFXIV, meanwhile, feels as though it's sitting on its laurels, its team - or at least its producer and director - content with the assumption its rabid fanbase will keep the game floating even with minimal effort put forward into bettering the game in any way.

With WoW's resurgence and Blizzard's genuine attempt to course correct after the severe downward dive they took into the dumpsters with BfA and SL, FFXIV has two potential futures. One where it, too, seeks improvement and betterment in an effort to stay relevant against its biggest competitor, and upcoming competitors in the next few years. And one where it continues its own dumpster dive into a bonfire.

I hope it will be the former. But I am expecting, and will not be saddened over, the latter.

Those who are still genuinely finding fun and enjoyment in the game: I am truly happy for you, and wish I was still able to as well. Please hold on to your enjoyment and love - just not at the cost of trying to choke dissatisfied voices out, and plugging your ears to the problems it still has. That will only lead to Shadowlands - and we all know what happened with Shadowlands.

Probably my last post on the matter going forward, so godspeed to the usual ear-pluggers for trying to pick it apart like vultures, as you guys always do. I'll be returning to a game that actually respects me as a player and provides me with what I want out of an MMO.

- side note, but my god SE needs to update these forums. I shouldn't have to have three tabs open just to properly quote people; WoW's forum lets me quote on highlight, what's your excuse, Square?

Yes Vel, we all know you had a bad breakup with WoW - screaming and shouting and throwing your fists on the table whining like an overgrown toddler doesn't make any of your ranting valid or correct to current WoW as it is now, long after you likely stopped playing.

[R041]

The mainsub for XIV is over-moderated to hell, everyone who seriously uses it and isn't a brainwashed cultist knows they rip down anything even remotely "negative" in perception to the game, regardless of how negative - if at all - it even is.

Every time I look at r/ffxiv and r/ffxivdiscussion, I see threads being deleted. If they're not deleted, then they're downvoted to absolute hell for even showing any type of frustration. God forbid they even mention Yoshi as the problem, they're ripped to shreds in an instant.

Oop, 2 new threads popped up. Let's watch the bloodbath for having an opinion and some ideas.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...age_loot_feel/
https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...lue_your_time/

There's a lot of discussion currently around XIV's content lull and current direction. You don't see those on r/ffxiv or r/ffxivdiscussion. They're all over youtube and twitter right now.

LMAO. No, they arent. WOW is so primitive in its design that it ENCOURAGES stalkers.

XIV is riddled with stalking behavior.. It's a serious problem. It's like 1 of the 3 major complaints we've had since ARR.

What other game lets you get married to someone, divorce them, and your ex can still teleport to you? lol

Edit: Also, I won a house awhile ago and was stalked for a month by the opposing FC sitting on my plot harassing me. GMs didn't do anything.

[AwesomeJr44]

In-game is dead half the time, from what I hear lately.

Youtube? What few content creators I still follow/have yet to unfollow, seem to all be providing less and less favorable words for XIV.

• CiderSpider just released a video regarding the abysmal relic design this expansion, in fact.
• MisshapenChair long stopped really making content for XIV.
• Lucy Pyre has barely made any real content for it outside of streaming it now and then.
• I've heard Zepla has even decided to "take a break", citing she feels she doesn't really need to come back regardless.
• Zack? Haven't heard a peep out of him regarding FFXIV.
• Nixxiom and many other WoW creators who began doing XIV content for a while during SL stopped, and have returned to WoW.

I could go on, but that's just looking at my feed thus far.

The mainsub for XIV is over-moderated to hell, everyone who seriously uses it and isn't a brainwashed cultist knows they rip down anything even remotely "negative" in perception to the game, regardless of how negative - if at all - it even is.

TalesfromDF, before I stopped following it, was cannibalizing itself due to a number of people quitting, getting tired of the crappy attitudes people have in the community to the point of blowing up at them in-game, or had mainsub simps jumping over being aggro about things that most people who were active in the sub found ridiculous at the best of times, let alone in the state the game's in.

Everywhere I frequent - even on Twitter, of all places, where I don't even really follow any XIV content makers or XIV-heavy accounts anymore! - is showing more and more frustration, dissatisfaction, or outright exhaustion for XIV lately. It certainly exists, even in places I don't expect, and I don't even go out of my way to look for it.

Hells, even WoW's GD forum has a number of XIV refugees often talking about their dissatisfaction with or distaste with the game, every time some XIV shill or XIV/WoW forum troll comes in trying to Jehovah's Witness about the game on an entirely different MMO's forum.

Thank you for this absolute demolition of the supposed 'majoritah'. I shall be yoinking this for later use.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

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.

To this day, Im still lost. What Pedestal?
YoshiP has never been Untouchable, he has gotten Many things wrong and have been called out for it.

[Arrius]

Considering that BFA and Shadowlands was generally bad received, it's a rather low bar to jump for Blizzard to bring out a better expansion.

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy Dragonflight and the new class/race, but it did feel something lacking for me.
Though it does give me the same vibe with XIV right now, too, so I tend to fall back to older MMO's that seem to scratch that itch.

[VelKallor]

But they are at least trying.

LMAO. No, they arent. WOW is so primitive in its design that it ENCOURAGES stalkers, it is poorly moderated, poorly managed, has more bugs than a flea infested warehouse, cannot manage a universal day night cycle, cannot even manage a calendar to show events in local time, has piss poor privacy measures, relies on three and only three endgame areas, raid, pvp, m plus, the open world is a joke, the story looks like a smashed mirror put together with sellotape, the list of deleted and wiped content is HUGE, their GMs cannot and do not take active part in moderation, their crafting is a sick parody laced with RNG , they allow vendors , npcs and questgivers to be ganked because "wurld pee vee pee" which NO ONE cares about or gives a rats fart for, the graphics are old , dated and quite frankly horrible, their classes are laced with RNG, racials tied to an idiotic, outdated, hackneyed faction war no one gives a crap for and hasnt for years, their communication is non existent, their vaunted "community council" has accomplished NOTHING, they have a PTR that is ostensibly for testing and feedback..said feedback of course goes into the proverbial black hole as they listen to NONE OF IT...how many times have they been warned about problems and ignored them?

WOW pvp is famous for the fact it is rife with cheaters, every expac they reinvent the wheel, not to mention that unlike FF 14 you CANT go back and do older content because it is chainsawed out of existence, even when you want to play through older expac content ( what there is of it that hasnt been sliced and diced ) the game FORCES YOU into current content whether you want it or not, WOW is "play the way we want you to" which in itself is a major screwup, they have been told over and over and over again is not what the players want.

They dont care.

You did know that in their current expac, WEEKS after launch, they went in and DELETED an entire questline so no one can do it anymore? Thats also a huge problem, its all "you have to have been here to do this content but its gone so too bad so sad sucks be to youuuuuuuuuu"...add to that the fact that Blizzard has blatantly LIED to their playerbase...this to you is "trying"

"Vel is making this up they have never lied"

Yes, they did.

Repeatedly.

Karabor and Bladespire come to mind, ilevel scaling ( remember Ion saying they would never do that then sneaking it in during Legion..admitting it only AFTER they had been caught? )...the list is very long.

WOW is "If you dont raid pvp or m plus GTFO we dont want you". THAT is "trying"?

Lets say you have an ingame stalker, WOW allows ANYONE to add you as a friend without your consent, they can message you, mail you, stalk you, follow you, put them on ignore??? They make a new character and start all over again....this so called "better game" doesnt even have an acct wide ignore system so please..get off the copium.

Put in a ticket? Better get ready to wait a week as they have NO GMs anywhere else but 'Murica ( they closed the EU offices and fired the staff ), report an abusive player? Youll get an auto response maybe a week later, go ahead and report a bug...it will never be fixed.

I did Loremaster and found hundreds of bugs, three years later they were still there..for the love of God every new expac I was reporting typos that had never been spotted..and they were never fixed either. Thats what the PTR is, btw...they get players to do their QA work for them...they DID have QA...Blizzard fired them too.

Really, they cant employ or use a damned SPELLCHECKER?? Thats embarrassing, thats the sign of a rank amateur, you'd think an AAA developer could do better than THAT. Why are the PLAYERS being asked to report typos when they should have been checked and fixed IN DEVELOPEMENT?

which ofc got flushed down the toilet with Endwalker, as the near 900 page thread on the front page of GD will attest.

Using this forum as any kind of metric is a serious mistake.

[VelKallor]

Every time I look at r/ffxiv and r/ffxivdiscussion, I see threads being deleted. If they're not deleted, then they're downvoted to absolute hell for even showing any type of frustration. God forbid they even mention Yoshi as the problem, they're ripped to shreds in an inst

Its taken you this long to realise Reddit is a hivemind that downvotes and silences any dissent? You hadnt noticed up until NOW?

Really?