Playing Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV made me realize just how good World of Warcraft is. The combat mechanics, the content like dungeons and raids, the characters and its interactions, the voice acting… basically everything. Despite Guild Wars 2 having decent combat, it’s quite laggy. Sometimes you don’t feel like you’re having an impact. In World of Warcraft, if you press a button, you can feel that it made a difference, but not in Guild Wars 2. And if you use your ability and turn your character to the side, you still use your ability and it goes to the target you aimed at, which reminds me of early 2000s Asian MMORPGs, it felt like I was completely lagged. My warrior’s skills came out in a clunky way, nothing was fluid.
Entering a fractal dungeon in Guild Wars 2 or a dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV made me want to return to World of Warcraft instantly and spam mythic+ dungeons. And the raids? There’s no comparison.
When I clicked on characters in Final Fantasy XIV to interact, most of them didn’t even have interactions or voices. The storytelling is excellent, but that’s all the game has to offer. I played until the end of Endwalker, and it was enough to never want to open the game again. In Guild Wars 2, I reached the endgame only to discover that it revolves around PvP, but even the World vs World is practically dead, and the PvE is ridiculously easy. The hardest fractal has the same difficulty as a mythic +4 dungeon. A game for casuals where you can complete all the content without much thought, just pressing a few keyboard buttons with your brain turned off.
Playing other MMORPGs made me want to return to World of Warcraft immediately. Playing other MMORPGs made me realize how unique and good World of Warcraft is, even with its various problems.
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You seem like someone who enjoys the endgame loop of WoW.
And no game does the WoW endgame loop better than WoW.
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GW2 does its best with its limited budget, and it’s a very fun game to play. It’s my favorite game of logging in to murder things and it doesn’t cost me a dime to do that. The meat of GW2s endgame isn’t Fractals, Raids, or Strikes. It’s the open world content, there’s a lot to do all the time.
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I’ve tried to like GW2 but never play it more than a week or so at a time. The world events, personal story are pretty cool, but the general art style isn’t my thing and the UI is way worse, and no add-ons to change it. Some of the classes are pretty neat like the Mesmer and Engineer but the spells tied to weapon type I’m not a fan of, especially classes where you have to switch a lot. I tried a few fractals but it felt worse than wow dungeons for sure. I tried FF14 even shorter amount of time, just the general look/feel made me want to not play. Wow really is still the best from what I’ve tried of mmos and why I come back to it even after long breaks.
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GW2 was fun to play through the first time, but once you reach that end that’s…it.
FF14 and WoW are the last bastions of MMORPGs that ask little more from you than a monthly sub fee. FF14 is fun to play through for the story and cool fights for a few months every xpac, but it simply lacks the depth that WoW has.
It makes me mildly sad that there are lots of MMORPGs out there that are actually genuinely fun, but their predatory practices makes it hard to enjoy them once you hit the paywalls, especially since they eventually wind down to only having whales left.
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I prefer FF14’s ability rotations and class fantasies over WoW. I also like their raids better. I don’t like how much time it takes to complete a raid in WoW. The trash clearing and run backs. I do like how fluid WoW feels over the other games and the games aesthetic, but WOW’s story has gotten too much into sharing feelings than I’m comfortable with.
One issue I have with WoW combat is how little damage auto-attacks deal and how many button presses needed to deal any meaningful damage to a mob. WOW plays better in that regard on the classic realms compared to retail. I also HATE the scaling in WoW and how meaningless I find leveling up and gearing up because of it and the seasonal model.
GW2 has many design elements I don’t like, which is why I’ve never reached max level. But I did like the classes and their concepts/mechanics. The first Guild Wars was awesome though
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If you are expecting the end game loop to just spam dungeons and raids like WoW then yeah I can see how you feel that way.
Raiding is not a big part of gw2 and never will be as most of the player base is very hostile towards raid type content. The majority of end game is focused on open world and WvW (essentially epic battlegrounds but way more organized).
Gear progression pretty much doesn’t exist as once you get your legendaries you are done gearing forever and no amount of new content will change that (it is a grind though). You basically just farm stuff for the cosmetics after a certain point.
Preach did a pretty good lets play of the game a couple of years ago and when he finally realized the game is not a WoW clone and should not be approached or treated like WoW he started enjoying it a lot more.
I love guild wars/guild wars 2 and it would be my only mmorpg if it had decent raid content. So I just play both WoW and Gw2 
I’m tired of comparing different games designed very differently from one another as if they’re comparable in the first place…
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This is what it comes down to for me. I’ve played ff14 enough to know there’s WAY too much story for me. I’ve played gw2 a ton, and I absolutely love the game. The endgame just isn’t as good. I’ll take it over ff14 anyway though. Gw2 actually has very good transmog, and I don’t usually get into mog, but it’s great there. And the casual content blows any game out of the water. It’s the endgame that doesn’t quite do it for me
I don’t play FF, but I do swap over to GW2 and ESO when WoW gets dull. I will say, for me personally, both GW2 and ESO do most content better than WoW. But, their combat and general engine feel is bad and clunky compared to WoW. ESO would be my main game if the combat wasn’t so bad.
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I agree that WoW has the most engaging combat , the responsiveness is unparalleled. but ff14 has the best music and soundtracks by far , plus the UI and controller support . gw2 has the best action /tab combat for its money and development IMO
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Only played a little bit of GW2, it was neat, but didn’t like how… open everything was. I would have liked more structure. I get the appeal though, and the player base was pleasant and helpful.
FF and wow have parts I like and parts I don’t. I used to play wow only for the end game loop of M+ but even that has become stale. Without that major draw, I’ve been playing way more FF and started to like its combat more. It’s more structured and abilities feel like they actually have an impact. Also helps that FF has a social player base and just visually looks better.
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GW2 isnt too bad, since it is free except buying the game and xpac. So really got nothing to lose on that one. I like playing World of Warcraft time to time, helps bring back good memories since the beginning and dont care about the classic, cause it is ugly!
I dont like those Asian games such as FFXIV, feel silly and stupid!
On the other hand, ESO isnt doing too bad, they are making good progress and profits to keep the players (mostly) happy. Even free to play as well, except for xpac, addons, etc.
There isnt very many good MMO-RPGs out there.
The combat is the best part of WoW.
But, playing GW2 and FF14 makes me wish WoW worked as hard as they did on story and worldbuilding.
Also, I feel GW2 PvP (WvW) is simply better and more fun than WoW’s, even if the combat isn’t as good. The ideas are generally better.
Issue I have is no singular MMORPG has all the features I want- it’s spread out between several different games.
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Are you serious right now? The biggest complaint I get from my worgen is that hes too far away during combat.
The GW2 story post path of fire is awful.
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GW2 does world building and world bosses better than WoW does. The world is very lively and you pay attention the npcs are having some very interesting conversations. My favorite world boss is Tequatl the Sunless there are events that lead up to the boss that you must do and the boss fight itself is not just a tank and spank. Failing to kill the boss has world consequences. Just like failing events have consequences as well.
FF does its story telling better than WoW. It has that single player RPG feel in an MMO which is nice. Learning a class by doing the single player scenario spoiled me because it is the best in game tutorial I have played MMO wise. FF profession system was also interesting where professions are treated like classes.
WoW is a good all rounder that really excels at end game content. Over time that focus on end game came at the expense story and world content which are RPG staples. WoW is still a good game but it does not really give much RPG in terms of world or story content. There really are after thoughts and end game content is the goal which can get repetitive and cause burnout.
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I have tried gw2 multiple times. I could never make it past level 10.
That game is just not for me.
When mists of pandaria came out i just shook my head and went to look for something else.
Aion was that something else, back then aion was a decent mmo. But the pvp and constant ganking by heavy geared people made me hate the game… so i had no choice but to come back to wow and i hated it, but wow was like a drug you couldnt stop. Wod came around and i eventually found FF14 that was launching. I needed something else because i was fed up with WOW.
I fell in love ff14 was fresh to me with good story and decent combat.
I still remenber what naoki yoshida game director said, “i didnt make ff14 to be the game you have to keep playing every day, its okay to take a break and come back when you want to.” So… legion came around and my brothers begged me to come back and try it.
Legion made me fall in love with wow again…then here comes bfa and shadowlands… ff14 helped through those times and Shadowbringers…chefs kiss.
If blizzard decides to make an expansion with stupid systems i will jump ship to final fantasy 14. I love both games for what they offer. They both get my money.
What yall dont understand is. Yoshida made ff14 for the gamers. He plays the game himself with his own static team and loves the game and gamers.
Have you EVER seen ion hazzicostas and blizzard devs apologize for giving us bad expansions? No? Or when they mess up like giving us a buggy game? No? They have no love for the players the way Yoshida does. Go watch Yoshidas apology video and listen to his tone of voice. You can tell he is sincere
5 Likes
This topic comes up one to two times per year, and every time, I make the same response. These games are difficult to compare because they are fundamentally different.
WoW = MMO with some RPG elements.
FFXIV = RPG with some MMO elements.
GW2 = (never played, no comment)
At one time, WoW was more like FFXIV, but has shifted priorities over the years.