I’d debate the story comment, Endwalker was not good, especially the Meteon thing, and I feel it had SO much potential.
And although jobs have no borrowed power, there is also no variety. You don’t have talents to change things up. And while you can argue that talents in WoW are very cookie cutter, I’d say that is only true if you’re top tier or a wanna-be top tier. More most of the player base, talent choice doesn’t matter, but it’s fun to make totally different builds for different types of content.
If FFXIV had talents in some fashion, I would play it a lot more. (And please don’t misunderstand, I do love the game, it’s just taken a back seat to WoW in 9.2.5 for me.)
I admit FF14 did get a little iffy. But after the stuff I’ve forced my brain to swallow from WoW the hole in my brain was so large the FF14 mac trucks fit thru easy.
Fair enough, we all run into the MMO endgame walls where there’s not much else. WoW isn’t much better in that regard unless you like running old raids for 1% mounts. I hit a complete burn out last year on wow for 2 months…it was bad.
Housing, Actual Story (and dang good story at that!), Hildibrand (and great side quests you enjoy and want to use New Game+ to redo), New Game+, Class/Job Quests (which are REALLY good, none for EW but they plan to reintroduce them in the next expansion with new casts and characters), Balanced Jobs (something I doubt we will ever have in WoW), the list keeps going.
Artwork and Music both games do extremely well on. I mean listen to the amazing OST’s of FFXIV fights, many bring tears to players eyes when they hear them such as dragonsong (Just got that trial in Trial Roullette the other day and had to fight back tears again).
I wish WoW had unique boss themes (and different music scores for phases) for at the very least every final boss of a raid tier and lore significant bosses. Imagine if for Arthas we had multiple music scores during his encounter one for each phase with the final phase being Invincible playing.
Ya I needed to uninstall that WoW mentality from my head. The end game in FFXIV is what you make of it. I do alot of collecting, I’ve got all the triple Triad Cards except 2 collected (354/356 as of this post).
PvP’s revamp for Crystaline Conflict has been amazing I’ve spent so much time in it there, the raids are great but I really love Trials. And I take breaks and play other games.
At the very least, they told a complete story. You didn’t need to read an external book to get the complete picture. You didn’t need to swap factions to get all the details. And we actually got an ending! The very structure of the storytelling in FFXIV is what blows me away more than the actual substance of the narrative.
Which alot of players are just there for the story and do the content once and done, 100% perfectly ok.
Endwalker was good, but I agree Shadowbringers was better comparing 5.0 to 6.0. Nothing will beat the leadup to the final trial of 5.0 and how impactful it is and the timing of the music. Same with 5.3’s trial.
Shadowbringers was the Climax of the story arc, and Endwalker the falling action of the narrative.
But I was satisfied with Endwalkers Ending, like having an excellent meal and as Keldar says:
It was a complete story, I felt like I closed a really good book and I’m happy. I’m satisfied and ready to take up a new book and see what it has in store and I hope with 6.2 onward that new book will be as satisfying as the one I just finished in 6.0.
“Oh wow will be the next Ff14 killer”
Just like all the others, this small indie game wow won’t kill FF14, we’ve heard this “FF killer” doomsaying before!
(Remember when people said ff would never kill wow, my how the turns have tabled)