Greetings all,
I know gaming forums as a whole tend to be on the more negative side, which is to be expected when being critical of what we hold dear - but i’d like to give a perspective of someone who has spent a lifetime circling around the MMO landscape. There is a question at the end, as i’d like to see where others stand.
My primary gaming genre over the past twenty years of my thirty year gaming career has been MMOs. I am relatively late to WoW, first trying it only briefly when Mists of Pandaria was about and then sinking some more time into it at the end of BFA.
I’m surely missing a few, but i’ve played the following; LOTRO, GW2, OSRS, RS3, Albion, Lost Ark, ESO, SWTOR, BDO, FFXIV (Up to conclusion of Heavensward), PSO2, T&L, New World, Tera, Rift and countless other extinct ones like Wildstar, Warhammer and instanced MMO-light such as Warframe and Destiny 1 and 2.
Without a shadow of a doubt WoW is absolutely my favourite. None of these other games; perhaps with the exception of ESO in its prime, comes even close.
There are certainly features other MMO’s reign supreme in; i’m thinking FFXIV roleplying, GW2’s flying mechanics and ESO’s housing (for now), but as a whole WoW really has all basis covered.
My question is, how do you compare WoW to other MMOs you’ve seen or played and what have you put the most time into /played? (best guess).
I played Rift from Beta up until about a year ago when it just got too depressing to be there alone.
I’ve played SWTOR since launch and still do.
I played Wildstar for a while until I hit a point where everything was gated behind unlocks and noped out.
I played ESO in Beta, noped out, then tried again later and noped out again.
I played GW2 for about an hour and noped out.
I played FFXIV for two hours— most of that was spent in some huge city, listening to NPCs whine at me about their problems and deliver their mail, finally got to kill 5 ladybugs and my ranger looked like a mage on 80s sparkle dust… and noped out.
I played ArcheAge in Beta, thought it was spectacular (we all did who played Beta), then they launched it as an entirely different game and it sucked, so I noped out.
Played Aion until I had no choice but to PvP and noped out.
Played LOTRO for about an hour and noped out.
Tried to play Warframe and everything moved so fast that I couldn’t keep up. lol
Ff14 has a better leveling experience but felt worse to play moment to moment. I also think it’s a lot uglier.
GW2 was very pretty but I felt it didn’t live up to the hype on release. The dynamic questing was a complete lie and I felt I had the exact same rotation in AOE and st while leveling.
Everquest was better back in it’s prime (imo), but for a totally different reason. WoW is way more modern, convenient, and streamlined, but interpersonal relationships mattered a lot more back during EQ; players were largely held accountable for their actions.
Ninja-looters and trolls were blacklisted and it wasn’t just a simple reroll to get back into the mix because leveling up was the main part of the game and took time as well as social skills.
I can’t do fair comparisons any more. It takes me too long to really settle into an MMO.
I did putter around in New World for a while on a sanity break from WoW a few years back and enjoyed the fishing so much that I did seriously consider not returning to WoW. With their rebranding and relaunch, I’m a bit fuzzy whether I’ve lost my character or not.
On a more recent break, I found myself not feeling up to another MMO and instead trying some small Indy games of various genres.
I liken WoW to that meme of Splinter with the 4 ninja turtles as babies at the top half and splinter being guided by the turtles as they grew up and he became elderly on the bottom half.
Because that is essentially WoW and its history. It wasn’t the first MMO but it absolutely learned from them and improved on them to become the dominant game bar none and then slapped down every other contender…until it mostly survives on inertia and sunk cost fallacy as other subjective superior offerings, feature for feature, exist that if WoW had to compete in a vacuum against those competitors would lose soundly.
FFXIV is a great example. Granted I haven’t got to play FFXIV for 2 or so expansions now, taking each game facet and comparing them against WoW as directly as I can FFXIV comes out as the FAR superior game…except when it comes to mythic+ which I don’t think FFXIV has anything for let alone a chance to compete in…
And that is, in large part, because WoW doesn’t come across even as an RPG anymore…it’s a glorified esport with an MMO foundation where everything is hyperfocused on the endgame and the supposed prestigious and “competitive” environment (a joke with mythic tryhard raiders needing addons and especially cheap auras to do all the actual mental load involved in an encounter).
I came on and enjoy myself the slow burn RPG. Every character I have is built with a backstory in mind and thought put into spec and how they would present in the actual WoW world…one of my biggest gripes is the lack of any actual real choice even and how certain classes flat out should not be even accepted as heroes but alas…FFXIV is a great game that is intentionally slower and makes you earn things…and by contrast WoW you can have a new character spun up and moderately geared by the time the patch launches in 6ish days…I would’ve quit long ago but I’ve got a 20 years invested and a rather disgusting amount of hours and account progression built into the game and the prospect of starting over in a different game…just could never bring myself to do it.
WoW is a great game and a real testament to how Blizzard cleverly and wisely moves and shifts with the culture. It was the casual/easy game that took down the titans of Runescape and Everquest and their uber grinds and harsh penalties and hellish demands for IRL life planning and when WoW was showing it’s age and newer and higher quality games came out…pivoted out of the space into newer and rather unfulfilled spaces and keeps their finger on the pulse of society and builds that “good enough” product to at least token appeal to a wide enough base and cleverly bases their reporting metrics to shine on that unique success viewpoint. Any new entry to any market has to try and steal customers with something that is already established and easy to make progress in and even get back into but with the constant threat now of FOMO to boot (which works whether you think it does or not). Sure if you aren’t all that invested, it’s easy to pull away.
Dabbled in a few others, but the biggest contender for time (and honestly, my preferred game between the two) is FFXIV.
To put it simply… I have a bit of an acrimonious relationship with WoW. Enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay and just running around the world, but completely and utterly LOATHE the trainwreck that is the systems-based post-leveling content. It’s a great game buried under a mountain of crap content that I’d rather see fall into a molten caldera than participate in.
Comparatively, FFXIV is structured much more like a game from what is arguably my favourite genre - story-driven RPGs, are you could simply say “JRPGs” because that’s generally how Japanese developers make them. You’re more at home thinking of FFXIV like another Final Fantasy title than trying to approach like you would WoW or most other MMOs. The moment-to-moment gameplay is competent and good at what it does, even if it’s not as “snappy” or responsive as WoW.
But if you want to sum it up another way… like story-driven RPGs first and foremost. “MMOs” and “online group play” are little more than the quirks I put up with to focus on what I enjoy, which is usually a well-written story.
Most of the mmos ive played dont exist anymore or are so obsolete they ate unplayable with modern resolutions. In the 90s most mmos had heavy pvp elements. WOws original concept was a pvp mmo as well. Until recently wow wasnt as accessible as other mmos. The most accessible was ffxi followed by lineage 2. However lineage 2 was too pvp centric. There were a lot of mmos that were more rpg centric than wow ever has been.
Although wow is considered the number one mmorpg i still think there are better mmos but for some reason they just dont get the market share to become popularized.
I think the only MMO other than WoW I truly enjoyed was ESO. Played FFXIV for awhile but after Endwalker the story just ended for me Dawntrail is a colossal failure so colossal Yoshi P has been encouraging people to try other games. SWTOR is alright when I can get friends to play with. But despite all that I always come back here.
FFXIV has a better story and community, better looking gear/characters, and I personally like crafting in FFXIV better than WoW
WoW has better everything else pretty much, even though I probably enjoy the story in WoW even more just because I’m more of a fan of the Warcraft universe than the FFXIV one.
Every other MMO I’ve played was pretty “meh” in comparison. City of Heroes was probably the only one that came close to those 2, but that was about it. Aion and Lineage 2 were alright but grindy as hell.
WoW and RuneScape are the only two MMO’s that have successfully made me a repeat customer.
With WoW, it’s easily the combat. I initially got into it after a friend introduced me to it as a kid. Having already played and loved the Warcraft RTS’s, I fell down the rabbit hole as soon as I started playing.
There’s been multiple MMO’s in between breaks, and some I’d love to give a shot again if they hadn’t been shutdown or reduced to almost no player population. But none of them scratch the mix of social interaction and engaging combat the way that WoW has for me.
It did once upon a time now the story is atrocious.
I didn’t really like the community there almost everyone there is “too nice” if that makes any sense. WoW community I know where I stand with people whether they like me or hate me. FFXIV community just seem like they have ulterior motives with being overly nice and it’s a bit creepy.
No that makes zero sense to me actually. I like that in FFXIV I can just basically join any Free Company or static and never have to worry that there’s people in it who openly say they hate queer people.
In WoW I have to join a guild that advertises as “LGBTQ+ friendly” or there’s no guarantee there isn’t some bigoted weirdo in the guild/raid group.
That’s what I mean when I say the FFXIV community is better.
The games I have played for a year or more - in Chrono order
Ultima Online - the classic PvP experience.
Dark Age of Camelot - loved it
EVE - Stopped when I realized I didnt’ want a second job.
Warhammer Age of Reckoning - played until doors closed
City of Heroes - Great mechanics but not my game anymore.
Pirates of the Burning Sea - niche
Neverwinter Online - played until they shot themselves in the head and killed it.
SWTOR - still play
STO - still play
WoW - still play
I preferred the PvP in DAOC and Warhammer.
And for gameplay and mechanics, I still think SWTOR is the best around. But the population is miniscule compared to WoW.
STO has awesome concepts with the Duty officers, “Bridge Crew” and other bits and pieces. WoW tried to steal some of the ideas with Garrisons but failed miserably. I still dabble with it.
I think there’s a group that have private servers going somewhat keeping the game alive. I think there’s also another Warhammer MMO in development. Now if they made a WH40K MMO I’d never play anything else.
I try not to compare it to other MMOs anymore, I hate or otherwise burned out on every other MMO out there, the few that I’ve liked no longer exist or had crap account security like GW2 or Aion.
I never got to play Everquest when it was new because I got hooked on WoW first, it doesn’t seem all that appealing to try and visit now, same goes with runescape.
When WoW finally dies I’ll just be done with the whole genre.
