Quote Originally Posted by Basteala View Post
It's gotten steadily worse, I think. The WoW refugees may not be all bad but I definitely feel they opened Pandora's box, and once exposed to that aggression, toxicity, and progression at all costs, people started reacting to it. And just like real life, when one extreme gets too vocal, people who have a problem with it go all in on the other extreme.

FF14 has also given up a lot lately to cater to hardcore or progression players, or for gimmicks like trusts. While there are exceptions, a lot of gameplay feels the same. A lot of company feels worse. And without the story to carry it, if you don't have a good circle of peers to do SOMETHING with, there's no point in being online. Dawntrail might legitimately be FF14's Warlords of Draenor.
I would say the state of the game is worse than the infamous 434 day WoW content drought. The stagnation has been ongoing for probably 2 years at this point. I'm personally tired of being fed recycled content with a new skin and I'm sure most of the community is by now as well.

I combine the droughts from Post Endwalker with Dawntrail and post Dawntrail patches. Endwalker had some of the Worst patches in this games history. 6.3 for instance might as well not have existed for how littled it offered. The fatigue from all this recycled content, and weak patches carries on, but now since the story sucks and half the community seems to be skipping cut scenes, and losing faith that 7.0 will offer anything worth resubbing for, the loss of players has only accelerated, it's a chain reaction. I honestly don't see anyway for them to fix this without making sacrifices to Dawntrail to make 8.0 something you wouldn't want to miss. Just like how WoD was sacrificed so extra development was put into making Legion fantastic.