Since it popped up in my google feed and the topic was locked. I wanted to put my experience with both here. Been playing WoW since Warlords and FF14 since 1.0. Both have had some great highs and lows. Dragonflight was fun but really enjoyed Shadowlands. As for FF14, the last expac I truly thought was engaging was Shadowbringers. Heavensward is my all time favorite though. Both have been fun but both of there latest expansions have been “meh”. Been treating WoW like Pokemon and just capturing pet with my hunter. FF just biding time til the next limited job rolls out. Anyways, what’s your thoughts? Saw some good points brought up in the last thread before it was locked. Love ya, happy turkey day!
The fashion on FFXIV is so much better than ours. WoW characters look like steaming piles of pixar next to FFXIV characters. It’s such a shame.
Is there a Miqo’te version of Enekie out there?
FFXIV Rakham is a ninja catboi.
*Preens. *
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I am shocked that you guessed my race.
Not that shocked, but shocked.
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I stopped playing Dawntrail well before I got to the end of the MSQ. I adored that game, but that expansion was hot garbage. The main character was so BORING. I don’t know how hot that take is, and it has literally zero to do with the VA (I didn’t even know about that drama until after I’d already given up on the expansion), but man she sucked. And I’m really sad that I found it such a terrible story, because I really loved the game!
I’ve been playing WoW since BC, but I quit from somewhere mid/end BfA and only came back in Dragonflight…and that was only because I was following my boyfriend. 
I’m glad I missed Shadowlands, and I remember rolling my eyes real hard when I heard snippets of story from it, but I’m enjoying myself in the new expansions! Guess it just goes to show that every game has its low points (though if I ever hear about Yoshi-P stealing breastmilk from the break room fridge, I’ll be really weirded out). At least we’ve got lots of games to choose from…and RP to get us through the bad parts.
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If we’re going just on writing, Dawntrail was definitely not my favorite MSQ. I’d rank it above A Realm Reborn, and depending on the day, equal with or just below Stormblood.
It was always going to have a steep hill to climb after the one-two punch of Shadowbringers and Endwalker though.
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I will never excuse bad writing–it’s always fair to criticize it. But I also think that you can build up enough goodwill that bad writing doesn’t undo all the good you’ve done. Dawntrail being a beach episode after pulling off some really good works beforehand is one such case.
That said, recency bias is a helluva drug–Cataclysm was so badly received in part because Wrath had been so good.
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This ^
People had been waiting for the Lich King. And the team who wrote it did a great job. It was almost universally loved, so it made it a really tough act to follow.
I think we would have forgiven the writing if the devs wouldn’t have gone from a casual-friendly end of LK to what they gave us at the start of Cata. I was running Smoke & Mirrors at the time and we had about 20 really good raiders and around 400 casuals. The disappointment among the players who’d been able to raid ICC at the end of the LK but couldn’t manage the higher difficulty level was palpable.
My personal complaint with Cata was that the writers seemed to double down on the real life comedic references, to the point that it became painful. Yeah, we get it. The writers are so in touch with what’s hip and cool. Now, can you please take Harrison Jones and let Deathwing eat him?
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I still haven’t finished the Dawntrail MSQ. Started playing when the xpac first came out and dropped it midway through. I was having fun but just ended up losing interest, I guess.
It’s unlike me because I love FFXIV and have been playing since mid-Heavensward. But when I think about it, the game peaked for me in Shadowbringers. That xpac’s story completely enthralled me and had me hooked through Endwalker. With that arc now being finished, I guess I’m just struggling to get on board with the new one.
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This and this so much. A lot of the humor they added into the questing was just way too overblown and in your face for my taste. And some of those mid-2000s pop culture references are really showing their age in 2024.
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The best are the ones which were dated even at the time. We got a whole zone full of Rambo references and I don’t think a single soul thought Rambo was culturally relevant in 2010 or whenever cata came out.
Anyway this is an FFXIV thread and I’m talking about cata so with great respect to the OP I will say something final fantasy related. In final fantasy 6 you could play as a king who could attack people with a handheld power drill as I recall. Does this feature remain in Dawntrail? I’m not sure I want to play it if I cannot be a power drill wielding monarch. I think he also had a chainsaw.
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I, for one, am stunned that “blood elf dudes look like chicks lol” jokes did not age well.
Stunned, I tell you.
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My judgment of Dawntrail is always tempered by the fact that Shadowbringers and Endwalker–and indeed the entire arc they brought to a conclusion–were always going to be a tough act to follow. And so I have to be fair in my assessment. I’m also aware that there was one or more new writers helming DT and that’s part of why it had such a dramatically different feel.
Honestly it just didn’t hold my attention. I got about halfway through and couldn’t bring myself to push on. I understand what the intent was, and I accept that it’s a thing? It just wasn’t for me, it wasn’t the sort of experience I wanted (in terms of narrative) and I hope others enjoyed it as much as I wanted to.
I will say I really hate that people had to get nasty about Wuk Lamat and her VA because of all the criticisms one can fairly make about DT, she isn’t one of them and I thought her work was exceptional.
A side effect of that mess though is that any criticism or dismissal of DT can very easily be misconstrued as veiled bigotry even if there’s legitimate criticism. And in other cases, well, what I started seeing was a very tiresome vein of “if you’re a DT hater you’re not valid” and that further caused me to raise my hands and back away slowly.
As for whether or not DT is superior to TWW, I think Yoshi P could accidentally slice his thumb and stagger around his kitchen looking for a cloth and the purely fumbling splatter of blood would still be a far and away superior story to most things WoW’s given us since WLK. I think a child could sneeze and it would be better. There’s almost no comparing the two even IF Dawntrail bored me.
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