Basically title, does the new Microsoft acquisition shift anyone more in favor of FFXIV instead of WoW for a long term home?
For me, I’ve played thousands of hours of WoW and maybe a few dozen hours of FF. I did like FF, but I didn’t think it was as good as WoW. I thought it could become my main mmo if WoW ever stopped being fun. The thing that always made me prefer WoW was that it has a less invasive cash shop than FFXIV. But now with Microsoft owning Blizzard, a lot of people are speculating that the cash shop in WoW will probably become a lot more pronounced. Does this make anyone else want to move to another mmo, or any other thoughts?
I don’t think too much about the company that’s making the game. Sometimes I think about the people. I usually think about how much fun I am having in the game and that’s the priority for me.
It could be made by very smart and coordinated lobsters, and as long as it’s fun and I like it, I would probably play it!
Totally, I agree. For me, it’s the prominence of the cash shop that affects my ability to have fun in the game. I guess a better way to rephrase the discussion would be, would Microsoft increasing the visibility and capability of the cash shop in WoW affect people’s enjoyment of the game enough to switch mmos?
Microsoft has made zero harmful changes to any of the gaming companies it has acquired while Phil Spencer ran the team.
Seems like something that isn’t a problem.
I am not expecting any changes to the store, but if there was going to be a change, maybe a year from now they introduce a more encompassing “free” tier of WoW, similar to the free tier of ESO, so that they can “technically” have WoW on Game Pass while still charging their regular sub fee to most people, the way ESO does with crafting bag space.
GW2 monetizes cosmetics and the newest expansions but the game is technically F2P and it’s fantastic.
ESO does the same with cosmetics and newest expansions, but the sub fee on inventory means calling it “F2P’” is technically true but pretty misleading.
I think WoW might benefit from the ESO model. The ESO store also has much less player resentment because a paid game subscription includes a certain amount of store-currency each month, so anything you want in the store you can technically get by just waiting for enough “free” store currency.
The big downside to the ESO store, like GW2, is some items are behind loot box gambling, which is total cancer and I hope never comes to WoW. Phil Spencer has been vocally anti-loot box so maybe ESO will eventually rid itself of that situation, rather than have the situation metastasize elsewhere.
This is a great post. I think there are right ways to do F2P, the examples you show are pretty solid and I’m not even too upset about FFXIV’s F2P option either. I always liked the idea of just paying for the full package, like what I imagined we were getting from WoW, but the truth is that especially after SL our sub fee isn’t really paying for much.
Probably nothing much will happen with the aquisition. The most hopeful things players will probably get is Kotick leaving and maybe Microsoft tossing some more money for better resources for WOW and other Blizzard games.
The big thing is MS is out for money, and probably plans to use Blizzard as a way to sell their games through Battle.net. Already it has options for COD games and Crash Bandicoot, so we may see more non-Blizzard games on it in the future.
But like most people, Blizzard is likely just part of the package deal of the huge aquisition MS made. However, I doubt they’re not going to invest something in hopes for a huge return.
I didn’t get into FF14 at all. The aesthetics down to the combat, it’s just not as good of a product to me. That is of course just my opinion I have friends who swear by FF14, it’s just not for me.
It’s kind of surprising since I’ve been an insanely big fan of FF since it came to market (I’m old enough to have played the first game when it launched, I believe it saved the company). But the MMO just… I dunno it misses on too many marks for me. The combat just feels bad.
Honestly, that wouldn’t be great for the MMO genre. There is value in having multiple companies contributing their own flavor to the genre to keep it fresh and new when one game becomes stale for whatever reason.
If all MMOs were to fall under the same roof, you run the risk that they’ll all follow the same design principles eventually, their models will eventually converge and at that point would jumping from X to Y really provide anything new and refreshing?
This applies to any software regardless of genre.
It’s also plausible there will either be a convergence of the XBox App with Battle.net into some new application or even the folding of one into the other. It’ll depend really on which ends up being the most mature in the end.
If the cash shop is why you don’t want to play WoW, you probably don’t want to see the one for FFXIV, lol. https://store.finalfantasyxiv.com/ffxivstore/en-us/
I like both games. Will continue to play both games. And hope the acquisition allows Blizz to hire more talent and fund more projects. They lost some project leads that they need to fill. And Ybarra just addressed everyone to say they are looking to fill those positions. So I hope all this helps. https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23763775/putting-our-teams-and-players-at-the-forefront-of-everything-we-do
No, i’m already in favor of FFXIV over WoW because WoW has been literal hot garbage for several years/expansions now, while FFXIV is pretty dang awesome and is only improving over time.
If anything, MS gobbling it up in the near future gives me hopeful optimism for the future of WoW. Maybe they’ll clean house and hire people that actually care about the game.
Sorry, misread. But if WoW ends up producing more content, it won’t matter. People don’t care that the shop on the site for FFXIV is there because of content cadence. If this game could get back to Legion cadence, that’d be a win.
