I don’t see any comparison nor mention of WoW or Shadowlands bar in the title.
Regardless, Dawntrails story builds up slow, it gets better. While I agree its nothing compared to Shadowbringers and Endwalker, but that was to be expected.
Endgame wise the game didn’t change from its previous expansion and more features coming up throughout the weeks.
Dawntrails story still beats the story of the Shadowlands purely because of the recons and sudden “the jailer was behind it since the LK”
Speak for yourself, not for the player base. Their numbers are doing great, I personally haven’t unsubscribed in years, unlike wow where I subscribe for a month see that I still don’t like it and then quit.
Not gonna lie, I fed this prompt into ChatGPT and got a nearly identical post.
"Write a post in which you bash the latest expansion to Final Fantasy XIV, called Dawntrail. One point should be Shoe-horned characters among other things. One of its highlight features is the visual upgrade, and the game focuses heavily on story.
Sum it up with a tl;dr at the end"
I can’t stand the story in FF games. I just can’t enjoy them at all they really do not entertain me that much. FFXIV is a chore to get through for me as well so I stoppe dplaying after shadowbringers.
I came I tried, and then I left.
When she was first introduced in Patch 6.55, it was so bad that Square Enix had to remove the forum thread for about a day before reinstating it to clean up the rampant transphobia. Character hardly had time to be annoying at that time.
Did you actually play the same game as I am? Or did you slap this into an AI suggestion box and get it to spit word salad at you?
Endgame content isn’t even OUT yet so how are you judging it already lmao
This is 100% what this post is. There isn’t even any endgame content released yet, how is OP judging it already?
OP is AI. can’t even come up with their own points about why they dont like ff14
Why is this on a WoW forum? Im an avid FFXIV player myself but seriously why bring up Dawntrail here? Thread should be deleted
i didnt like dawntrail very much myself for a whole lot of reasons. but bringing it up on the wow forums is kinda cringe. rent-free behaviour. take it to the ff14 forums or subreddit
I’d like to clarify a few things.
First off, it’s a bit infuriating to hear that you think that I just regurgitated a ChatGPT response. That’s simply wrong:
My critique of Dawntrail comes from hours of gameplay and interaction with the community. Many players, myself included, have found the narrative pacing sluggish and the character narratives swamp tier. These are not just my opinions but sentiments echoed across numberless forums and player discussions.
When I talk about the shoe-horned characters, it’s based on specific instances where main characters felt awkwardly inserted into the story, disrupting the flow. This isn’t a generic AI output; it’s a targeted critique based on actual gameplay.
Acknowledging the visual upgrade and story focus isn’t a ChatGPT exclusive. Anyone who has played the expansion would note these as prominent features. The critique is that despite these upgrades, the execution in storytelling and character development is spectacularly terrible.
Long-short of it is that my post is grounded in real experiences and community feedback, not a cookie-cutter AI response. The issues I raised are demonstrably documented by players who are deeply involved in the FFXIV ecosystem.
I really disagree with this post. I haven’t played the latest expansion, but it only came out like 1? Week ago.
Warlords or Draenor, BFA, and Shadow lands were not “bad” in their first weeks or couple months. It took a good portion of the expansion playing out to determine how the player base opinion of the expansions would shape.
In other words this is a bad faith judgement off DT or you just weren’t there for WoW expansions people hated on or weren’t paying attention to how people’s opinions developed over time rather than overnight
Dawntrail has critical flaws that make it a weaker expansion. This is true.
Nothing will ever be as cataclysmically terrible as Shadowlands was, though.
OP, you’re embarrassing yourself.
I’m canon-balling myself across the frontlines to voice my thoughts aligned with the broader MMO market - martyr me.
I bought it. I just entered the 5th zone and the story has been very mid so far, okay story for your average MMO but way below what I expect from a FF14 expansion story, and honestly below what I expect from The War Within too.
The first half felt like a WoW expansion campaign in which you removed all the combat quests and you just level up by talking to the locals and doing mundane things for them. Around level 95-96 it picked up and hopefully it will lead somewhere for how bad the first part was.
Also Wuk Lamat is an abysmal character and drags down the whole MSQ. People compare her to Lyse but Lyse was a better character. I think a more apt comparison would be Trehearne from Guild Wars 2.