A major argument FFXIV players present is that "you get used to" the things that bother you about FFXIV when comparing it to WoW. Sure, you can get used to it. But in the back of my mind (after having played both for quite some time), these are some things that stick out to me:
Continuous world environment. No loading screens between zones (aside from instances and major continents)
Saturated Color Palette. The colors in FFXIV feel muted by comparison, and all of the shadows are a bland shade of gray. The visual silhouettes in WoW may feel âcartoonyâ by comparison, but the colors are vibrant and captivating.
Playable Race Variety. WoW has significantly more (and more diverse) playable race options than FFXIV. Yes, WoWâs character models, facial emotes, and customization options could use an update to help bring it up to par with FFXIV, but the overall character variety is still greater.
Diverse Class Fantasy. Iâm not saying that the individual class fantasy is better in WoW than it is in FFXIV, Iâm just stating that the array of different classes feels more diverse. This is perhaps due largely to individual talent specs and base world lore that the classes are designed around.
Smoother Character Control. Tab targeting is horrible in FFXIV, often tabbing you to targets that are nowhere in range of any of your abilities. WoW works the way youâd expect it to, even prioritizing targets that are in the middle of casting (for interrupts, and so forth). The animations and the way in which your character interacts with their environment feels more immediate than FFXIV (FFXIV has this weird animation delay thing between when an ability is triggered, when the animation finishes, and when the results are displayed on-screen⌠even though mathematically itâs all determined at the moment the ability is pressed).
Simple Improvements WoW could use
There's dozens of resources online suggesting why FFXIV is "better" than WoW (story, all classes playable on a single character, and professions are sited often). That's not what this post is about. But I think there are a few relatively "simple" changes WoW could make to help it compete with FFXIV's more favorable features:
More account-wide features. Weâve already got transmog, pets, and other âcollectionsâ made account-wide. Extend it to reputations, expansion-specific features (renown, heart of azeroth, etc) and âcurrently-character-specificâ achievements as well. This would directly compete with FFXIVâs ability to experience the entire game on a single character.
Simplify Flying Unlock. FFXIV allows you to unlock flying per zone (in part because of the way their world is made). WoW could do something similar, such as granting the ability to fly for that zone upon completion of that zoneâs âLoremasterâ and âExplorerâ achievements (even for new content). Reputation grinds are not fun nor meaningful to unlock this sort of feature. In fact, I find myself more eager to grind reputations when flying is unlocked rather than before I get the relevant Pathfinder achievement.
There are many more suggestions for how to make WoW better (Iâm not going to comment on the story here), but these two things are at the top of my list. How about you folks?
I can agree with most of this except for the smoother character control part. I personally have no problems with how their characters move and a lot of the abilities actually feel âweightyâ in a lot of good ways. Also, tab targeting is about the same as WoW. I canât tell you how many times Iâve had mobs in front of me in this game and Iâm targeting something half a mile away lol.
Thanks for this. My imaginary dyslexia mustâve caused me to miss it entirely! Now, I will go and take my roman numeral walk of shame (after updating the original post).
I donât think itâs ugly by any stretch of the imagination but I will agree that it does look a little washed out. Iâm hoping their PS5 upgrades throughout Endwalker help to alleviate a lot of that. I actually use Gshade over the base game to help with it. You can also use it to make some sweet screenshots lol:
I like both games. WoW is by far my favorite and have been playing forever. But right now Iâm having 1000 times more fun on FF. I just so tired of all the systems on top of systems in WoW. I just canât bring myself to care about them so I stopped doing a lot of what I had fun doing.
Playing FFXIV with a controller is a must if you want complete comfort, its 100% viable and works well. However KB&M still works fine.
Also playable race variety? You mean walking talking kung fu pandas, werewolfs with no tails, a humanoid cringe fox race who âlickâ you(actual quest dialogueâŚ), most of the horde races being monster beast things, reskinned elves(nightborne and void elf), ectâŚyeah not much variety when you think of it that way. Itâs terrible.
âDiverse class fantasyâ is subject to opinion. FFXIV has NEVER done a retcon to their lore and world fantasy. Wow makes retcons every expansion now and changes everything we once knew to be true.
Iâm fine with the palette of both games. Neither is betterâŚthey both do palettes jut fine.
Also wow does infact have loading screens between zonesâŚfrom one continent to another, from eastern kingdoms to north blood elf city zone for example.
Not particularly trying to defend the loading screens to a vast amount, but the reason why the ARR main cities have so much loading screens is because it was made with the PS3 in mind. Same with Heavesward. Stormblood was the first expansion to go beyond the PS3âs limits, thus from that point on there are less loading screens.
