Story is better. Crafting and mogs are better. Community seems better. Its known to be suspended for being a crap person. End game is worse and gameplay is worse (i.e. slower and clunky).
Well I took a gander into the game. Was met with a sea of cute anime men, and sexy cat and bunny girls.
So do you really want me to tell you why I think its popular?
It attracts the anime/tumblr community, thats no secret. Its a better community IF thats the community you vibe with.
Can confirm though, Drama over there is freaking ridiculous.
Being FFXIV an story driven MMO I didn’t find that annoying the first couple of times 
but you’re probably talking about lvl50 Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium.
I wonder if you are aware those dungeons had skippable cutsecenes? but square-enix made them unskippable to punish speed runners for skipping the cutscene and leaving newbies behind (which would force newbies to either be left behind and enjoy the cutscene… or skip and follow the group)
The solution was pretty stupid I know, considering they already have a way to lock player movement until the whole party is ready, in my opinion it would have been better to let players skip the cutscene but lock them in place with a small ring (like the one that is used at the beggining of the dungeon) until everybody has either seen the cutscene o skipped it… that way people can du silly stuff like dance, do emotes or whatever.
i haven’t played the game in a long time, but last time I did people already found a way to escape the cutscene… so by the time everybody was out of cut scene the boss was already half dead 
damn… sorry for the long post
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They switched their audio to French because it’s faster. I tried it a couple times and it does indeed work. You get out of the cutscene like 30 seconds faster. But I used to meme and die because I thought it was funny.
I personally enjoy the dense narrative. The combat is “good enough” depending on your play style. It can be as complicated as playing a piano or as simple as hitting a couple buttons over and over. Depends on the class you pick. I really like how they indicate dangerous incoming attacks on boss fights. Much easier to “thread the needle” when staying out of bad, but also a lot more punishing when you mess up.
The music is top tier. They really know how to hype up a boss battle. I never turn the music off in FF14.
The crafting is much more involved and is played like a class rather than a simple profession.
Everything is tied to one character(classes and crafting). This is a mixed bag for me. I like having alts and alts in FF14 are a slog. You’re meant to play all the classes and professions on your one character.
The dungeon finder is pretty great, though takes a little getting used to when forming PUGs. But just queuing it pretty great. You can even solo in the new content if you really want to, though I still recommend getting into a player group. The NPCs are not the most efficient and if you die, it’s automatically a wipe.
But if you don’t like anime and can’t handle that kind of drama and humor, don’t bother, honestly. If you’re a big fan of Final Fantasy in general and 13/15 didn’t do it for you? It’s actually a nice substitute even if it’s an MMO. Most of the game you play solo.
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FF14 is not a japanese cartoon, it’s an MMO.
ez pz
go figure, I didn’t know that… and back then i was too lazy to look it up. I just AFK until cutscene was done.
Yeah most people just afk through it. At first we did it to speed kill the boss, but then we felt bad because it ruins the new player experience. So I started just attacking him and dieing for the laugh it would get when people came out of the cutscene. It made it slightly more fun for me.
People like it because it’s an anime game. It is not better than WoW.
*Meaningful Professions
*Player housing
*Community isn’t full of social rejects harassing people
*Old content matters still
*Skills matter
Game appeals to people whose game focus isn’t raid end-game. If it had a decent PvP system, I’d be over there already.
It’s filled in the gaps of what WoW’s needed for years, and WoW refuses to do the bare minimum to catch up.
As I raid less and less, I’ve been more interested in picking it up simply because there’s so little to do that feels meaningful for a solo player now. Raids are just “press 1-2 buttons and the boss is dead” for old content.
And hopefully that game’s popularity finally spurs WoW to actually put in content that’s been missing like player housing and old world content not being useless.
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Yeah my first time through those lvl50 dungeons, I didn’t experience a single boss fight except Ultima Weapon. I think the first one you do, I managed to queue enough cutscenes to be at the exit by the time I finished watching them all with a bunch of commendations.
The final fantasy genre has been around as long and longer than warcraft is big factor. Their lead dev remains very connected with its playerbase he went out drinking with players at the last last Las Vegas convention, and he has always said nice things about warcraft and respect for this game.
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Wth does FF have to do with anime? Am I missing something?
This is incredibly untrue. Savage raids (mythic level) released every patch. Trial bosses nearly as often.
They think “it jApAnEsE iS AniME” , and it shows. People will talk about anything even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.
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While their 24man raids are more casual fun man do I really enjoy them and they attract players and new players to do them…less pressure is big selling point I find.
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Oh yeah, 24 man raids too lol. Those are definitely more casual, but FFXIV releases “hardcore” high tier content more often than WoW as well as more casual content more often.
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Spend some time on their forum and see- there’s a massive variety of discussions going on, most of which are positive.
Then spend time on WoW forums and it’s nothing but the same handful of discussions, almost all being negative.
I think in LFR an average of 5 players leave per run, even with no wipes. In FFXIV’s raid finder players will stay even after wipes.
In FFXIV dungeons players are often respectful, in WoW dungeons players will often start arguing and insulting each other if so much as a single extra mob pack is pulled beyond the absolute optimal way to do the dungeon.
There’s considerable other differences in actual game design too- but just from a community analysis I consider the WoW community to be the literal worst part of the game, even when compared to all the awful stuff Blizz does like their endless treadmill corruption/necklace grind systems. Meanwhile, despite being an overall good game FFXIV’s community still manages to shine even more due to friendliness and helpfulness, and positivity even when failing.
This doesn’t mean FFXIV is perfect- it’s a fairly stale game, it doesn’t change much from xpac to xpac, which is nice for those that want something to not change (imagine if WoW was still like Vanilla-WotLK era and how much some people would love that), and change can be awful (BfA changes proved that) but some can be very popular (look at how beloved Mage Tower and Class Stories in Legion were, two things Blizz hadn’t done before).
For a massive online game- community is a pretty major factor, and WoW’s community not only is one of the worst Blizz does nothing to encourage decent behaviour and at times seems to fester the worst types with their tone deaf approach to esports, botting, and even their inciting of faction vs faction with the BfA advertisements. This community is hostile to the other faction, hostile to their own faction, hostile to new players, hostile to casual players- it’s just hostile in every way possible and that is an extreme turn off to a lot of people who think games are meant to be fun.
All the while, the Blizz community seems focused on ultra competitiveness and hardcore difficulty despite the game itself being imbalanced, generally more grindy than hard, and severely lacking in gameplay that makes that intensity make sense.
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oh wth you had me at nier crossover. Nier was super fun. Does it do gestalt too or just automata?