Quote Originally Posted by fusional View Post
i still find it amusing how many people on these forums flail around about how bad WoW is... while playing this game. it's like we've played completely different games all this time. WoW is a superior game in almost every aspect. that's why it's popular. that's why people who get bored of it keep going back after trying every other MMO on the market, hoping it will be the one to replace WoW. and then it's not.

there's more for casuals, there's more for mid-cores, there's more for hardcores. the loot system is vastly superior, the challenging stuff is more challenging (and more rewarding), the easy stuff is more accessible. the UI is superior (mods, customization), the gameplay and controls are superior, the mechanics are deeper, there's more for min-maxers... and you can't even say the community is worse, because this community is no better. 3/4 of the threads people make are crying about the same dumb crap people cry about in the WoW forums.

as far as this game requiring more thinking? you must be joking. figuring out a perfect rotation on a particular boss takes a couple hours. figuring out the best combination of gear/stats for an encounter takes a couple hours. figuring out the mechanics of a new content for first kill takes... a couple hours. this game is 100% easier in every aspect except for how unintuitive it is. as far as WoW? take a tour around Elitist Jerks. enough said.

but sometimes a game runs its course and you're just looking for something new. or perhaps people simply don't like the direction a game is going. quite a few people from XI and WoW come to FFXIV as a result. most quit immediately after, and for good reason. some stay for the promise of 2.0. if 2.0 doesn't deliver, most will go back to XI/WoW/Tera/etc.

but keep the silly WoW-bashing to yourselves, especially when most of it is just baseless (and downright strange?) opinion. this thread asks for a road map to introduce to people who've come over from WoW to keep them playing. if you can't immediately admit this game's faults and recognize why that may be powerfully discouraging to most new players, especially in relation to other MMOs- you likely lack the perspective to give OP what he's asking for.

the bottom line is, the best way to keep new players playing is to warn them of this game's many faults upfront. be honest. then tell them how to deal with and/or circumvent those faults, or how those faults will be addressed in 2.0. because making this game out to be something it's not is *surely* not the way to keep a new player's interest. period.
QFT.

Glad to see they are still people with common sense on forums. One may or not like WoW gameplay style, graphic style etc. But saying that WoW is "bad" while XIV is "good" is just a complete non sense.

You may like XIV more than WoW, that's a matter of preference, not quality.

The part in bold is even more true. Raid progression in WoW (or even most of "WoW-like" games such as Rift etc.) is way harder than anything we have on XIV. And it's not hard because of the latency, lack of having a proper UI, timesink due to awful mechanics (no group rez, high downtime between attempts). It's hard because of how mechanics are punishing and require a perfect raid coordination in order to be able to defeat bosses, especially when you are low on gear (i.e. soon after a new raid tier is introduced).

DPS checks are tight, everyone have to focus on raid-wide mechanics during the fight from simple "Don't stand in fire" to Interupt spell X/Y/Z with a rotation, buff tank/use CD on tank during a certain phase, tank swapping mechanics because of debuff stacking on tank, add management and so on... We are looking at sometime 10 mechanics to follow in a single boss phase.

Next to that, Garuda is baby's first boss. Take Garuda's mechanics to WoW, with the same UI, low latency and so on, everyone would just defeat her. On XIV? It's a challenge due to how crippled the current version is.

Which bring me to the point of this thread. The most important part that players transitioning from WoW to XIV have to understand is that they will feel less efficient on XIV. They will never be able to perform as many things as they could perform in WoW. No more casting 3 abilities on 3 different target in couple seconds. They need to understand that in XIV this is "normal" and that everyone is the same and it's not them being bad at it.