FFXIV’s story is among the best I’ve ever encountered in any game, and encompasses multiple inter-connected plot threads and characters across all of it’s eras (base game A Realm Reborn, and expansions : Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker)… I cannot recommend it enough for the MSQ (main story questline)… Literally small obscure details from each era, slowly get layers peeled back from them as you approach the latest expansion: Endwalker that put events in different contexts or build upon the already established story and it feels like the entire multi expansion arc ended up being one long, epically planned out narrative, rather than several disjointed and often ludicrous stories with no sense of continuity, coherence, and aimless retconns like we have in WoW.
That being said, beyond the story, and the gameplay, I didn’t find much else to the game. The pvp is a sloppy, zergy mess, and the end game raiding is way more limited because of how the story aspect works (the MSQ takes you chronologically through the story so most of the playerbase is effectively in entirely different expansions content wise)… Those things aside, I highly recommend it as a “side game” just for the story. Though be warned, by far the slowest part of the story is the base game A Realm Reborn, which encompasses 50 of the first levels and takes a bit of patience to get through… That said, Heavensward is the first expansion and was one of the best single era narratives of the series. I’d add that you can also try the game for free, and the trial includes both AAR and the first expansion in their entirety before considering subbing. Those two alone is at least 2 weeks of absolute no lifing content.
Robin Hobb has written a series of fantasy novels that I think are great. Interesting and deep character development and an unusual take for that genre. I’d highly recommend them.
Jaire’s comment in response to the above (i messed up and somehow your comment wasn’t here had to add it. sorry!)
Thanks! How nice of you. Not sure that statement strengthened your point the way you might think, though.
To your comment, though - QoL changes can add up to an enviroment that void of any community interaction (for multiple reasons), and lower player commitment while promoting casual play - again, a very defining retail thing. “Oh, I can just log in, insta queue into a dungeon group, then if i dont like the way the tank is playing, ill insta quit.” Yea, great environment. Retail is built around those types of systems.
My comment in agreement
We have several expansions of history to point at to demonstrate that yes we do in fact get on the slippery slope that results in retail. Even as early as the launch of burning crusade.
Wrath was an amazing expansion in terms of the story. It was the final conclusion of warcraft in many ways. The content itself was good for over a year despite the many problematic issues.
All of which paled compared to the inclusion of the single most damaging system to ever be added to the world of warcraft imo. The patch 3.3 Random Dungeon Finder. Even the dev’s noticed the damage wrought by this terrible system. With the launch of cata, players had to actually go discover the location of the dungeons before they could queue for them. The whining about simply exploring the game was legendary, and so the first patch removed that restriction.
Wow classic was an escape from that slippery slope. Lets not get back on that slope if possible please.
I think Mythics are an improvement actually and I wouldn’t mind seeing something like them in an older incarnation (though I acknowledge that’ll never happen.)
But the rest were just negatives in my opinion. The borrowed power stuff that just completely goes away feels bad. The generic gear stats feel bad. And even though I understand most people mostly run the same talent builds anyway… I still think the new system feels bad. Also the chores… oh the chores. Any game with chores is one I’m eventually going to get behind on and stop playing.
But more than anything I think the main problem with retail is there’s just no community, and short of Mythic raiding none is necessary…
It’s my personal perception that, for classic, the qol comes from add-ons. The rest of the game should remain as it was otherwise it wouldn’t be classic.
LFD was added in 3.3.0. The same patch that Icecrown Throne became available. That’s why people don’t think of Wrath as the point where things went wrong, but rather blame Cataclysm.
Ask 100 wow players why they left retail and you’ll get 100 different answers. I stopped playing because Cata took away too much classic content. I liked all the QoL stuff.
And if you dig into it, a lot of “What was your favourite expansion” answers are more related to the people around them than the expac itself, as are the inevitable departures whenever that specific thing falls apart.
Which is precisely why saying, ‘Well, this change is good, but that change is bad’ is a pointless endeavor. #nochanges was always the most logical approach. Authenticity has no bias.
I really wouldn’t call TBCC more successful than Classic.
Also, people used to claim that World buffs in Classic were bad because they caused raid logging, but the raid logging in TBCC is DRASTICALLY worse than it was in Classic. Most people I know spend 90% of their gaming time playing other games now.
There were only a handful of changes made to TBCC that people liked. Some of the changes have been widely disliked (the arena changes for example).
I know you’re just a troll, Ziryus, and have been ever since your Wall of No days, but you gotta try harder than that. Don’t be quite so obvious.
Classic was far more popular than TBC Classic. It also stuck to #nochanges with much greater faith. So all these #somechanges people can’t accept the fact that it led to a less popular Classic experience. You can throw all the possible variables into the equation, but numbers don’t lie.
If there’s a lesson to be learned here it’s that the more authentic, the better. As I’ve been saying for years trying to appease the Professional Complainers is a waste of time. Blizzard should have realized that over the past 17 years.
Tbc is less popular because it’s an inferior product… Hell some of the biggest problems with tbc have been areas where they tried to keep things authentic, like honor gain rates, and content that consists entirely of rep grinds and obnoxious raid attunements gating access to content. It’s literally all the same problems everyone hated about it back in the day, and that led to wotlk being significantly more casual friendly by design… The difference today is that people actually have gaming alternatives now, and are way less willing to waste their time, even if feels like it’s being insulted /wasted.
Having multiple mid/long term end game objectives make people stay longer in the game & keep it alive.
This is mostly why people are bored really fast nowadays on retail or MMO in general they don’t want to farm, don’t like leveling, don’t like “long term” objectives etc… They reduced/removed those part and now you end up being bored really fast. You consume the content faster than it can be produced.
Blizzard is using #SomeChange wisely. They don’t add modern features, they fix/balance existing features which is the best middle ground for everyone #ProChange & #NoChange.
They are not #SomeChange wisely.
How is doing SL norm 7-8 times to revered a fun goal to grind? If they were wise, they would have made gaining rep more varied.
Drosul isn’t wrong. This TBCC game is worse with very little to do. The world is small and uninteresting. the reputation and honour grind is brutal. The PVP scene is particularly bad. The team based arena system should be upgarde to the modern system.
And it should be “fixed” soon with the change they made in TBC : make heroics keys obtenable at honored
And, the grind may sound brutal but it’s just because it’s not gatekeeped.
You can farm as much as you want a rep unlike retail where everything is limited daily/weekly.
You can’t fix this. Even if you give free PvP gear it won’t increase the arena participation, in fact it may make it worse because it’ll remove the “10 matchs/week teams”.
Most of “true” PvPers don’t play/tryhard MMORPGs anymore.
Classic had a pretty major decrease in population over it’s course. And how many people are playing it now? Not counting SoM since that’s a different beat. Seems like classic mostly just had a huge initial population of people chasing nostalgia who left once they got their fill despite it being #nochanges.
