I suppose it has a lot to do with me not wanting to reclear content 500 times?
/shrug
Doesn’t matter how engaging you try to make it, I ain’t gonna wanna do the same few dungeons 500 times to where it gets boring no matter what.
Who should tell him what is really going on in that piece? Should we tell him? lol It is a bit spoiler heavy.
Go for it. I’m curious to know what the context is.
you can use [spoiler]text[/spoiler]
Probably not, I only put it up because:
… but I guess he did ask. Still, it IS one of the biggest twists in the whole story.
Okay, SO.
The game’s story revolves around an ancient race of very powerful people who could create stuff using magic. At some point, there was a split of two factions, and the one who won split the world and all of the people into 14 shards and so each person is 1/14th as powerful as the ancient race used to be.
A few of the ancients escaped the Sundering, and you meet one who remembers the old, old world.
You follow him through Shadowbringers (the expansion) and near the end of the .0 patch, he leads you to this underwater area, and he re-creates a city called Amaurot from his time, which is where this piece plays.
It’s a conjured memory, a city frozen in time, re-created by this guy’s magics from his memories of a time 10,000+ years ago before the Sundering.
Put it up for a minute, and edit it out again, I’ll just copy/paste on my side 
you got it!
No need, I figured it out.
The forum is REALLY jank with tags. There MUST be an enter keypress before and after the block.
Literally no other forum nor HTML code requires tags to be on their own lines.
I feel like I was pretty close based off the music alone! (And that’s a nod to good composition.)
Well, seems the spoiler tags got sorted out… but here’s another approach, two key scenes/speeches from the villain of that story arc. Just be aware…
Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqkL7z3yx08
Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l86mzD15xc0
And the dungeon immediately after part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QNkBMhk1vI
nods You had a similar idea, though not quite. hehe. But yeah, the music really does greatly add to the whole scene.
Oh yeah. That dungeon was just… /chefkiss
It was priceless.
Lots to listen to.
I liked the dungeon part. Felt like a scenario.
The cutscenes linked as major spoilers show off just how awesome the VA was in regular cutscenes in Shadowbringers+.
Having played both for many years since they began. I waffle back and forth on which one’s combat I like more. They are just so different. FFXIV is slower paced, methodical and careful. While WoW’s is FAR faster (Sometimes too fast with Heroism and other forms of haste for my liking) and It feels like I am flailing about on the keyboard like mad half the time… and yet it feels so much more Crunchy and satisfying. Could be the sound effects for some of my abilities. Not sure.
I will say I prefer FFXIV’s class balance. I know people love their skill trees (I hate them) but that’s a personal thing. FFXIV has one way to play each job, you either learn it or you don’t and the game does a good job of teaching it as you level. WoW is far more reactive and relies on skills proccing at random for a fair few specs and I don’t love that.
I will say I MUUUUUUUUUCH prefer FFXIV’s Boss encounters in both Raids, and Dungeons. They are so much more engaging from a mechanical level than most of WoW has to offer and they teach the player how they work so much better. Then you get into Savage Raiding which, to me, vastly out clasess anything WoW has to offer at all. But again, this is personal taste.
I like Tanking in WoW more than FFXIV, but I like Healing in XIV more than WoW.
I am also the rare individual that finds the MSQ to be the most uninteresting, boring thing in existence and I HATE any time I have to go through it to get to where the fun of the game is. I think this is where WoW works better for me. It’s shorter, it’s got characters and lore that I like and can actually remember, and it doesn’t (IMO) overstay it’s welcome. Plus, I can actually FIGHT SOMETHING while going through it. I cannot stand FFXIV’s quest structure it drives me up a wall.
I prefer WoW’s world and how it’s laid out to FFXIVs, I find almost every zone in XIV to be the same thing. It’s a vast empty area with a couple random mobs in it you’ll never want to interact with and I spend more time running from person to person to talk to than I do actually caring about the zone. WoW’s are more compact and are more interesting visually a majority of the time. It’s a small thing but the fact that they are mostly connected is also a plus
In the end, I like both but for different reasons. Dawntrail didn’t work for me though so I left and returned to WoW after a 3 year break and I’m having fun leveling alts and running Delves. I just WoW but with the encounter designs from FFXIV.
And maybe remove skill trees and redesign each class to have a more logical rotation buuuuut that’s just me being selfish.
I’ve played FFXIV off and on since 2.4… really got into it during Shadowbringers when I quit WoW during BFA… and I pretty much agree with everything the OP said.
Both games have their pros and cons and cater to different types of MMO players.
For me, I actually like Tanking in FFXIV (at least for Raids and Trials), but I will never touch Tanking in WoW with a 10ft pole. For Healing, I think both games are even for me.
I do like how FFXIV handles the gear treadmill and itemization. Since you can eventually just buy your full set with Tomestones, there’s never the - “I’ve been farming this boss for months and never got X!” - that I get in WoW. Like, despite being my main for the entire tier, my Evoker NEVER got the legendary. I lost count how many times I killed Sark on Normal and Heroic. If this was FFXIV, I would’ve gotten enough tokens / totems to just buy the legendary at that point.
I will say, though, that WoW has more creative itemization with Set Bonuses and Trinkets and… what’s the term for them again?.. special, non-legendary weapons that have unique effects, like the bow from Rasza.
I really like the markers in FFXIV, too. The universal marking system they use makes it very clear what’s about to happen. No need for addons like DBM screaming at me.
WoW is a very mixed bag when it comes to encounters.
For example, I remember the first time I did my first dungeon (not counting the rookery) which wound up being the Priory.
The first boss? I was looking for mechanics, but other than killing his lieutenants first, he was just a tank and spank that lasted about 2-3x as long as a normal mob would.
Second boss? The guy inside the church entryway? Other than he throws his shield at someone randomly and silences them, I didn’t notice him having any mechanics at all.
The boss lady at the end? She teleports halfway into the fight and you have to chase her down and break her bubble to get her to quit channelling and she occasionally fires a beam from the window at you.
Like… no mechanics whatsoever. And I remember some other TWW dungeons being the same. Bosses either have no mechanics, or the mechanics they do have don’t have time to fire, or they are a total non-issue and end up being ignored.
But yet high end raids sound like you NEED addons to tell you what to do or you will die.
Could we like, have a middleground?
In XIV you need to run the same Savage fight over and over until you get the mechanics completely right, especially as a Party Finder raider. I remember I was stuck in Honey Bee Lovely’s “enrage to clear” for 3 weeks, running it several times a day, because people kept failing on earlier mechanics. I remember completely turning the music off because while cool, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
And then you get to reclear every week the same 4 fights over and over for a chance at loot. While I appreciate that XIV’s gearing system is pretty much just loot rolls, it also has the problem that you can attempt just once a week. And there are cases of a single person winning all 4 items and everybody just leaving with the pity book tokens.
I suppose you can say roulettes there offer more variety in daily content to run, but I can’t really stomach jobs getting scaled down to bland pre-level cap rotations, and the level cap Expert roulette forces you to run the same 3 dungeons over and over.
I still feel that there’s more diversity here in WoW.
See, here’s the thing: I am 100% uninterested in gear treadmills.
All I care about is getting “some” gear that I feel like I’ve progressed a decent amount, but I very quickly hit the line where I go “this isn’t worth doing it over and over again”.
I only feel the need to clear a raid once or twice and then I’m done. I don’t care what gear drops that I don’t have.
In XIV, I just want enough i-level to be able to Q up for the next patch’s dungeons/trials/raids.
In WoW, I just want to make a couple alts that can handle most entry content smoothly and pick up a few upgrades here-and-there and see most of the dungeons/raids/story.
Well, these are Normal and Heroics, possibly M0. When bosses live longer, like in a +10, they certainly have mechanics. Hell, City of Threads final boss is extremely tough for the average player.
I haven’t tried any of the new TWW dungeons outside of a couple with the Followers. I was speaking more from the raiding I did back in DF. Some bosses I feel like they (the devs) couldn’t stop themselves from coming up with new mechanics. Fights like Larodar and Nymue I felt like they had just one too many mechanics piled on top of each other.
Nymue was especially annoying. Who’s the dev who though making a boss that summons green bushes spawn on a green floor while avoiding green lasers was a good idea?
I get that, but yet at the same time, why must Normals and Heroics be absolutely braindead? Can’t we have at least some interactivity going on there?
In XIV, you see more interactivity in like… halfway through the game than you do in TWW Heroics.
Like, if you stand in stuff (or otherwise ignore mechanics) in XIV, you will die. Even if you’re doing level 70 dungeons (max level is 100 now).
The content is still easy but you do have to pay attention to the mechanics starting near the end of Heavensward (Lv60) and into Stormblood (70). Maybe earlier for some raids.
Heck I still see wipes in Crystal Tower (Lv50 raid) esp that bone dragon.
As storytelling methods go, “you are a random adventurer who just happened to be there while plot was going down” and “you are the god-gifted chosen one”, are both perfectly valid options.
WoW’s problem is that it’s spent the last bunch of expansions trying to do both at the same time, and it just doesn’t work. We keep acquiring important sounding titles like Champion, Hero, [Class hall leader], Maw Walker, etc, but we are still just side characters in other people’s stories. TWW isn’t our story. It’s Magni’s story. Anduin’s, Alleria’s story, and we’re only there to help with chores.