There are free games with larger and more frequent patch content

[Hallarem]

"Free" games are games that make their money with predatory gambling mechanics. So they have a huge budget (Lets be real, more flexible staff too than SE).

I think if 8.0 "fails" and follows the same formula, I think its time to thank Yoshi-P for all his hardwork, and retire him to leading other games, and get an actual leader who focuses solely on FFXIV and how to make it competent and worth a monthly sub. And TRY to hire people who are passionate about changing the game while respecting the old, people who want to take risks with the new arc of the story too, and the gameplay. And not just "Follow their senpais to the letter and cash in a paycheck"

Final fantasy has always been about pushing boundaries and innovation. I'm not seeing a lot here, or at least the urgency to do so.

There's a lot of QoL that just hasnt been done, like shifting combos into one button to clear bloat.

[Red-thunder]

PoE2 sure is fun right now

[Gokki]

There's a lot of things SE can do right now with existing content to make it more replayable and extend its use past the one or two times you visit it. i can elaborate.

[Ryaze]

Shoot, there're private servers (for other games, not XIV) running purely on donations that have more frequent content releases and events than this game. Three hours of stuff every 4 months at 15 dollars a month is so bad; you're being robbed. And I don't care if WoW does it too; if that's the case, then WoW's ripping their people off as well.

At this point WoW is doing significantly better than FFXIV in that regard. Long gone are the days of a year+ inbetween major patches. Not only does WoW also have sub-patches that add a variety of content, have more engaging seasonal events, but they just dropped 11.1 yesterday. The War Within launched almost two months after Dawntrail, yet just yesterday released the patch with their second raid tier (plus an additional zone for daily activities, rep grind, and a new upgradable car mount with speed boosts and drifting unique to the zone).

Estimated time for FF14 to get their 2nd raid tier in DT? 38 weeks

Time for WoW to get their 2nd raid tier? 26 weeks.

Not only that but all the casual and accessible content for WoW drops on day 1 of the patch without having all this unnecessary waiting of 2-10 weeks because content has to be drip fed.

[RoboticNomad]

I feel that is the biggest difference with "content" between WoW and 14. When an expansion advertises features, WoW puts them in at launch and iterates on them every patch. In 14 you seem to be lucky if you get most of them within a year of release. Their release schedule doesn't seem able to support the players anymore and it should probably be looked into and changed in some way. People want something more exciting post-MSQ other than just a raid tier.