Square Enix, Are we really just pretending that WoW isn't running laps around you?

[Ardeth]

It also doesn't help that if me and my best friend want to play the new Wow expansion Midnight all we need to do is buy it and we both get level boosted to whatever level Midnight starts at and can immediately play together. While in 14, you have to be caught up to the story and at level cap, which requires 3 purchases to achieve vs. Wow's 1.

And I get it they're different games. I've been playing Wow for 20 years and 14 for 12 years. I get it, but one is infinitely more accessible and is learning and adapting things that work in 14 and stealing your players. It's gonna start with housing.

Mark my words if the next story isn't good, the population is going to level out lower and lower. They need to do something anything other than "just go play something else." Because people will, and they won't come back.

[Nadda]

It also doesn't help that if me and my best friend want to play the new Wow expansion Midnight all we need to do is buy it and we both get level boosted to whatever level Midnight starts at and can immediately play together. While in 14, you have to be caught up to the story and at level cap, which requires 3 purchases to achieve vs. Wow's 1.

And I get it they're different games. I've been playing Wow for 20 years and 14 for 12 years. I get it, but one is infinitely more accessible and is learning and adapting things that work in 14 and stealing your players. It's gonna start with housing.

Mark my words if the next story isn't good, the population is going to level out lower and lower. They need to do something anything other than "just go play something else." Because people will, and they won't come back.

Not really a Pro.

WoW Abandons all its old content once they are done with it so of course you only need to "Jump to the End" Current expansion is all they care about.

I've seen how broken the game can get with the poor new player experience where players will have three different quests from three different expansions they'd have no idea of knowing.

Of all the things to mention that's one of the worst things about WoW. The storytelling of later games just gets obliterated so you can get to the end game as fast as possible.
Giving people a free level boost so they don't even know what buttons they are pressing
Go to the broken isles as a new player by accident experience the Legion story - you have no idea is 10 years old at this point... you get your artifact weapon (This seems like a huge deal) huh... this integral piece to the story it's worse than the weapon I got in a dungeon fighting insects on the wall of China the game randomly threw me into... I guess it used to have it's own power system now it's gone forever.


And I know people will complain about how dull FF14 Leveling is at early levels


But it beats getting warp-sped to the ending.

----

The best part of having to play through FF story is that at the very least there's some ever-green content that new players get to experience stage by stage.
This type of "Pro" can only come from somebody who was a WoWfugee who didn't give a shit in the first place. (Not saying that's a bad thing just saying your priorities doesn't make it a good feature)

But not everything about Final Fantasy 14 needs to be ... WoW with a Final Fantasy skin ontop of it.

And it's not infinitely accessible you make it to end game just to get booted from groups for not knowing what you're doing.
Your content at end game is PvP which can be ball bustingly hard because more than half the people in there are gonna be folks who've been sweating PvP for 20 years.

All high-end content needs Addons to decipher what the hell is even going on.
Mythic + which is the most unfriendly environment to put any player period.

People complain about our dungeons being easy but normal content in WoW may as well not even exist in comparison.

And while having "Something to do" is fun - you are never ever done with your WoW character you can't ever be like Well I'm bis. or if you want access to something cool, you got to grind for hours to get it. Or it's FOMO and you'll never get it. I'll never get the Grovewarden because I was in the Navy during WoD a Raid mount with its own story line shut off because I never played WoD... oh it's in the code... I see others with it... but I can't have it.

I'd say like the Brutosaur but they literally put the mount into their store at the price of a full game. I still remember all the sad people who spent waaaay more buying WoWtokens to afford the brutosaur. (Oh I forgot they have official RMT) People complain our GMs don't do enough about bots that do that, but at least we know we have GMs. WoW just tells me to use WoWhead because they fired all their GMs and community managers.

People complain there's been too many mogstation items recently yet have amnesia over how absolutely awful WoW's store is and how aggressive it is. Your whole game can lag but that store button will work. Least FF14 mostly due to how jank it is - isn't aggressively trying to get my money. That "FREE BOOST" won't be there for my other classes. (Guess what they want you to do for them)

---

WoW has some good stuff going on, let's give it it's flowers and hope FF improves.

But WoW is still WoW.

The good news for the MMO space is that after sucking ass for 12 years straight they finally got their shit together slightly because after that long of being mediocre, a ho-hum experience FF14 had to offer was just that much better than them that they lost their jaded asses. I mean keep in mind the APPEAL for a new player in FF14 is they have shit loads of content to do. Our Free Trial offers three expansions of content. WoW you do tutorial island, do two more dungeons and your character is at level 20 and can't do anything else. Oh and I think you can only have 20 gold hard cap... which gets you nothing, limited bag space unless you link your Battlenet account. (which be like limiting inventory slots if you didn't have the companion app on your phone)

People going crazy over their housing after not having it for 20 years and copying their competitor's homework and doing market analysis to see what pain points they could get rid of. That's not out of care or kindness. They want your money. (YeAh WeLl aT LeAsT I'm NoT fOrcEd to kEeP a SUB/LoG iN to KeEp it) Yeah they just nickle and dime you every other way. Best QoL furniture is probably gonna be in their store anyways. (Like imagine a glamour dresser but it's 20 bucks) or a particular piece of furniture will require some 20 hour monotonous rep grind.

BAH I digress (Sorry to the person I'm replying too... this isn't directed at you but WoW proper - It's still WoW) There's a reason you check a WoW video every now and again with people excited for the state of WoW and you see the Apathy of people going "It looks okay but I could never go back." WoW needs to do a lot more IMO a helluva lot more. *Sigh deep breath*

[Ardeth]

I look at it from the perspective of fun. In the month we played Wow, we got a self-contained story, content to grind, and activities to participate in at launch. Granted, I quit because the gearing and the community is Wow is shit, but the gameplay aspect of it and how accessible it was for us to do what we did was extremely well designed.

In contrast to starting Dawntrail and having my buddy be behind an expansion and having him crash and burn trying to keep up and having to unsubscribe multiple times as to where as of today he finally finished Endwalker's MSQ and he still has patch content and he's still behind and we can still not really play together matters to me.

But I'm not going to lie. I didn't read half of what you wrote because, god damn my dude.

But to sum it up, my 7 months of Dawntrail weren't nearly as fun as the one month of Wow. And it's not even close, and that's with it pissing me off with how shit it's gearing is.

Also, it wouldn't let me quote you properly because there's too much text again. Sorry, dog TLDR.

[Jojoya]

I look at it from the perspective of fun. In the month we played Wow, we got a self-contained story, content to grind, and activities to participate in at launch. Granted, I quit because the gearing and the community is Wow is shit, but the gameplay aspect of it and how accessible it was for us to do what we did was extremely well designed.

In contrast to starting Dawntrail and having my buddy be behind an expansion and having him crash and burn trying to keep up and having to unsubscribe multiple times as to where as of today he finally finished Endwalker's MSQ and he still has patch content and he's still behind and we can still not really play together matters to me.

But I'm not going to lie. I didn't read half of what you wrote because, god damn my dude.

But to sum it up, my 7 months of Dawntrail weren't nearly as fun as the one month of Wow. And it's not even close, and that's with it pissing me off with how shit it's gearing is.

Also, it wouldn't let me quote you properly because there's too much text again. Sorry, dog TLDR.

Why can't you play together? NG+ exists.

As Nadda said, with WoW past content is meaningless. The leveling experience may as well not even exist because new characters are rushed through it.

WoW is a game for those who are only interested in "slaying dargons [sic]" as a friend of mine put it years ago. Endgame is a grind because the developers don't expect anyone to want to experience the content from past expansions so the grind is needed as time filler.

FFXIV is a game for those who want to journey through a world and experience its stories and lore. Endgame is thinner because the developers do expect players to take an interest in content from past expansions.

Both games are going to suffer in the eyes of some players because once they've consumed the content they're interested in, there will be points where there is nothing left the player wants to do. That's most likely to happen with the veteran players who has played through all the content as it was released instead of coming to the game late and having all the old content to catch up on yet it can also happen with new players with more limited interests.

At least FFXIV is honest about that reality and YoshiP encourages players to play other games when they run out of things they want to do in FFXIV. WoW is much more predatory with its endgame grind - their developers don't want you to have time to play other games.

As players (and consumers), we need to decide which style of game appeals to us and spend our money accordingly. If you're not happy, then it's time to move on and spend your money on another game that will make you happy.

[Nadda]

Also, it wouldn't let me quote you properly because there's too much text again. Sorry, dog TLDR.

Don't worry about it dood. same

Ask for your friends experience I took tons of unsubscribing spells from FF14 in my time coming up. Even though I technically had an account during ARR I couldn't play much because I was in the Navy. When I got out HW was going on and I got back into the game thanks to a friend... but I was up until Shadowbringers realistically always an expansion behind because of the amount of breaks I took.. or at most like a Post-MSQ behind.

In stormblood I was so bored from the period of Yanxia and Azim steppe I stopped playing like.. 6 times.

That being said as a new player back in the ARR/HW times I appreciated being able to experience the content first hand.

WoW can get me to the end game fast I remember killing N'zoth in BfA because I must have played that in between my FF14 breaks. But getting to end game in any game is really gonna be the same.

I don't want to endlessly grind gear sets. Or do boring reputation grinds.
Hell... I remember there was this set of armor I wanted. True Steel armor set. It comes from WoD.
You have to like max out your Garrison.
Mine like hundreds of thousands of ore. To smelt ONE True Steel Ingot and it was on a weekly cool down until you can make the armor pieces but then that doesn't even give you the cool looking one.
It gave me some ugly orange and green one.
So you got to keep doing that over and over.

N'zoth armor pieces were cool as were the nightmare vision things but it was the same corrupted vision things over and over. (though because of all the procs, passives and random chances, doing open world PVP will cause the server you're on to melt - not to mention sharding, there's no server identity, you see people talk about Balmung... nobody hangs out on Balmung on my server)

I remember there was a head piece I wanted but required me to do Legion world quests and kill Heliaya or whatever her name is a dozen hundred times.

It's... Okay?
But like that's what WoW is. It's all these boring fricken chores. There's no permanence to anything because the expansions don't expand shit - you don't so much play WoW as you play an expansion.
Which in essence is like paying a monthly sub to play madden. or a Call of Duty game.
And even when they try to make things less system-orientated there's still just grind after pointless grind for the next thing. And still content boils down to the same three things. (M+, Raiding and PvP) <- That hasn't changed.
M+ is full of jerkfaces.
Mythic Raids require Addons to tell you what's going on because to this day Raiding in WoW is completely undecipherable to the naked eye. (Most likely gonna be doing Heroic let's be honest so you're doing the easier version for lesser gear that probably looks ugly) And People will just Tmog over it... Granted people glamour over Savage Sets too but sometimes like in Pandaemonium last expansion you'd see people wearing the full set. Or people who clear Ultimates will show off their weapons/title. You don't really get that in WoW anymore.
Or do PvP (specifically Arena) which is full of sweats or people being carried by sweats, and on any given patch people with PvE gear will just be outright better than you so... there's that.

My point being that both games have pain points.

[Ardeth]

Just to clarify, I'm not saying Wow is better. Honestly, at the moment, neither are to me. I'm just saying from a pick up and go perspective it absolutely is, but as a game, no, it's shit.

It's grind grind grind grind. Here's these convaluted currencies to fill up a tab that will confuse the ever loving shit outta you.

But also, Wow is just better suited to be a coop game. You can do their version of trusts with your friends, etc. It's just more conducive as a concept. 14 has too many hiccups to really be a good coop mmo game. Some people can make it work, but I always end up more bored doing it than I would solo. Plus, I can do it way faster alone and actually pay attention, but that's more of a me issue.

[Nadda]

Just to clarify, I'm not saying Wow is better. Honestly, at the moment, neither are to me. I'm just saying from a pick up and go perspective it absolutely is, but as a game, no, it's shit.

It's grind grind grind grind. Here's these convaluted currencies to fill up a tab that will confuse the ever loving shit outta you.

But also, Wow is just better suited to be a coop game. You can do their version of trusts with your friends, etc. It's just more conducive as a concept. 14 has too many hiccups to really be a good coop mmo game. Some people can make it work, but I always end up more bored doing it than I would solo. Plus, I can do it way faster alone and actually pay attention, but that's more of a me issue.

Yeah I know I got that brother nw.

Both games got strengths and weaknesses.

I actually compare the MMO player to Satan from the South Park Season 4 episodes 9-10

About Satan's new boyfriend Chris to his Ex-Lover Saddam.

The point is FF14 is a Safe but "boring" relationship. A lot of the issues people have isn't just the lack of content - but that we know it's coming in the same way each time. Even if you love Tacos, you're not gonna want to have tacos every single day.

But WoW is more like an Abusive and Needy relationship. That's the chaotic ex you know is bad for you, but sometimes you can’t help but get pulled back in for the rush. You know it’s gonna hurt again, but you remember the highs and forget the lows.(Again these are just allegories not literal)

People go to WoW because it's more exciting but the same issues it's always had are still there the same toxicity. It's just the other extreme.

People (Not you specifically) are so caught up in wanting to choose something they don't realize the most important thing is to choose themselves and what makes them happy. And sometimes that's not having an MMO at all.
People don't like that FF14 like Chris is a huge Wussy that tells you should take breaks because you want something more from them.
And People don't like WoW because it's so end game focused and grindy and full of a bunch of jerks.

It's all about finding a balance.
That's why I'm a Buddhist (OSRS) Player. . . Err watch the south park episodes you'll understand.

(edit) Youtube actually has the clips I'd want to share so I'm adding them

https://youtu.be/575kHkFOkaE?si=IwwRgIlAOobtK-6P&t=43 (God gives Satan Advice)

https://youtu.be/E4oQ1tJXEx4?si=KFlGkAdQ3BeTYuQQ&t=82 (Satan breaks up with Saddam "WoW" and Chris "FF14")

[AshtonCrowe]

Not really a Pro.

WoW Abandons all its old content once they are done with it so of course you only need to "Jump to the End" Current expansion is all they care about.

Wall of text

---

WoW has some good stuff going on, let's give it it's flowers and hope FF improves.

But WoW is still WoW.

Wall of text

I'd rather the WoW approach, Cause FFXIV you have some pretty major roadblocks + very dead content to the point they gotta basically drag people kicking and screaming into the final parts of ARR. People actively avoid Main Story Roulette cause it's almost guaranteed 15 + Mins of unskippable dialogue.

Was fine at first but 10 years later and instead of just turning it into a cutscene they force more of the same nonsense, ARR Itself should be optional. I really do think any new character should start in HW or Dawntrail. ARR Phases so many players out it's not even funny, Even the Nier Dev couldn't finish it bro got bored af and left.

Stormblood really should be shortened aswell, It's just NONSTOP Cutscenes like JFC.

If you survive ARR very high chance Stormblood will sap your remaining will to live after you start talking to hien and getting the nonstop cutscenes for him in both MSQ and post MSQ.

ShB would be a good start but i don't think it'd make sense to start someone there unless they revised the story a bit to accomodate new adventurers, Endwalker really wouldn't make sense. Dawntrail might be acceptable cause WoL Story is DONE, So you got a blank sheet.

WoW has the correct idea, You don't care about story? want to play with your friend? GO NUTS

FFXIV? Suffer through our story Soyboy, Then maybe you can visit the new region > OR, GIB US MONEY TO SKIP AND POWERLEVEL.

FFXIV really needs to stop tying flight & new regions behind MSQ, A Crafter could give less of a fk about Lamat, Emet, Alphi, Or whoever else. Why force people to do MSQ? PLot relevancy? You do realize a good portion of people mash ESC to bypass your content block. I have zero idea what happens in the flight aether current side quests cause i DONT CARE, I want my flight.

Just like if a new raid comes out, You think i'm gunna sit there and watch Lamat talk about her butt For 30 mins? No, That shi is getting esc and skipped. I DO NOT CARE if it has content behind it i'm not gunna watch it.

Some of the story is good, But forcing story participation for zones, dungeons, trials, raids, ETC is braindead.

TLDR; FFXIV has so much potential for community growth but gets curbed cause CBu3 are greedy, Refuse to cull old content & STILL think forcing an ARR start is intelligent.

[Nadda]

Well I can agree on one thing.

FF14 does have potential for community growth.
But not for a second is gonna be based on abandoning the prior content.

All for the sake of doing the exact same thing that DT is being panned for.

It doesn't have a story you need to care about because you don't care and the Blizz devs don't either. So there's no expectations.
In FF14 that's a fault because the game makes you care about the story. It is part of the experience.

In terms of what there is to do in WoW.
A Delve is just a deep dungeon. That's the newest thing.
But other than that it's the same M+, Mythic raiding or PvP all of which needs add ons to perform optimally.
Things too try hard for a majority player base.

WoW doesn't have anything FF14 doesn't have it just has grinding mechanisms to keep you plugged in. Never being done.

Boosts are more popular in WoW. Because WoW is a game where you play the Expansion.
When you play FF14 you're playing it for all of FF14. That's why our Free Trial experience is awesome and WoW's is hot garbage.
If 'playing the game is only max level and fuck everything else' you get like 4 hours of WoW play time with a free trial.
You don't get to play through anything because the old content is abandoned. You don't get to play the new stuff so your only option is to pay blizzard full box price.
Then LFG to elevator you to the max level where you don't know what you're doing with sweats who've played for 20 years get pissed off because the game does an even worse job of teaching you than FF14 does.

[BigCheez]

Well I can agree on one thing.

FF14 does have potential for community growth.
But not for a second is gonna be based on abandoning the prior content.

All for the sake of doing the exact same thing that DT is being panned for.

It doesn't have a story you need to care about because you don't care and the Blizz devs don't either. So there's no expectations.
In FF14 that's a fault because the game makes you care about the story. It is part of the experience.

In terms of what there is to do in WoW.
A Delve is just a deep dungeon. That's the newest thing.
But other than that it's the same M+, Mythic raiding or PvP all of which needs add ons to perform optimally.
Things too try hard for a majority player base.

WoW doesn't have anything FF14 doesn't have it just has grinding mechanisms to keep you plugged in. Never being done.

Boosts are more popular in WoW. Because WoW is a game where you play the Expansion.
When you play FF14 you're playing it for all of FF14. That's why our Free Trial experience is awesome and WoW's is hot garbage.
If 'playing the game is only max level and fuck everything else' you get like 4 hours of WoW play time with a free trial.
You don't get to play through anything because the old content is abandoned. You don't get to play the new stuff so your only option is to pay blizzard full box price.
Then LFG to elevator you to the max level where you don't know what you're doing with sweats who've played for 20 years get pissed off because the game does an even worse job of teaching you than FF14 does.

Delve has literally nothing in common with deep dungeon and WoW has M+ and netcode that actually allows for PVP that doesn't just feel like a minigame.