Im opening myself up to a lot of criticism (nothing new) but Ive noticed something over playing the past 3 weeks in FFXIV. I have made more friends that actually talk to me in game and have conversations with daily, just in the last one week of FFXIV than I have in WoW since at least WoD.
Is it me? Is it the game? I always hear people in WoW say “just play with friends, or make your own group, or join a guild.” Thats proven very, very hard for me in WoW (it wasnt in vanilla-to around cata/mop for whatever reason)
Are the communities that different? Arent we all just gamers at the end of the day, no matter what game we play?
Could be that Im actually making an effort in FFXIV? I feel like I really made an effort in WoW. Ive been in dozens and dozens of guilds that all either die or seem already dead. But not in the other game? What gives?
I don’t play FFIV but here is my experience being new all over again in WoW. I didn’t know anybody resubbing back at the end of BfA so it was a solo experience for me getting acquainted with game again and adjusting to the changes since I last played.
In SL, I’ve made more in game friends just from the content we do and that’s how I rebuilt my network. It isn’t a forced or making an effort type of connection. Whether you run the table and pull off a win streak in arena from someone looking for a partner in the community finder or had a good m+ run with a group you joined in LFG, those connections happen organically and you end up adding them or vice versa to play with future.
My experiences with those players have been always goal oriented towards the game cause you need a group to succeed in high end content. For me it doesn’t start with “How’s the weather today?” or anything like that to a random person. Just let your play do the talking for conversation starters.
I’ve found playing in WoW is similar to how a lot of European and Japanese people describe social interaction with strangers. Often very formal, and does not occur frequently.
In FFXIV I kind of had the opposite feeling. I actually used a friend list and people actually do enjoy talking to one another in that game. It’s weird. At first I thought they were scamming me but then I found out nope, they actually are genuinely nice.
Not the game per se but the people in it.
The game really brought in a sense of ‘‘leave me alone, i wanna get this done, i need the best people for the job, see you never’’. People got worse with time.
FF on the other hand kind of tackled it pretty quickly and encouraged a different mind set amongst it’s player base.
Glad your making friends at least
I wouldn’t count on the WoW player base to make friends or even have encounters where the two of you chat.
Classic is a prime example of that with non shared tags, diminished xp and limited quest npcs/objects
You giving your loot to someone in your pug is counter productive to your character progression
Wow also has so many avenues of things to do and so many different difficulties of it that if you make friends with someone who does content way harder than you its hard to be like hey can i join you on that +19 and if you’re doing +2 they probably don’t want to queue and ruin their vault or whatever that system is
Bricked pugs are the perfect place to make friends. I pick the person I liked the most and whisper them “Hey I think you did a good job thanks for trying” and then bam friendship opportunity!
Server and Retail vs Classic could have influence on that. In retail I’m on a crappy ghosttown server. Its been years since i’ve been in a guild in retail. I found one the first day in tbc with an active roster that chats in guild chat.
i havent made a friend in ffxiv over the past year and a half of playing every couple months. i dont make friends in wow either. probably has something to do with im not even trying to make friends.
It’s a sign that one game is still ongoing, while the other is in it’s eclipse. There’s isn’t a lot you can do except keep trying in FF instead. WoW has become a single player game with a queue button.
So i dont think its community, as much as i want to think these communities are different, reality is, wow and ffxiv are the same community other than FFXIV having a more self aware push to be friendly and a more willingness to friend others.
I really think its nothing more than a grassroots community push to not be toxic like wow and nothing more. Im more friendly there than here, not because i care about reddit posts asking community to be nice or anything like that, but really because im sick of wow and no community so when i go to a new game its the first thing i try to do, i dont try in wow anymore.
Ill keep saying this, once you get past the façade its just as rotten as here, its literally the same people for the most part.
You will make friends easier, youll have a better time sucking in dungeons, people are more chatty generally, but you have to stay in the lines or you quickly learn that it really is just a façade.
I think i gave up on wow community around legion, where i resorted to just accepting a random invite guild, never seeing any chat or interacting with them again…and that was fine for what i was doing at that time. However every time i try to find a wow guild it ends up im in some sub guild thats Ruin Raiding related and no one ever chats but apparently super active for raids, despite no one active in discord ever either.
I gave up here, and im sure many others have as well. I think its nothing more than wow players giving up, and FFXIV trying hard, as a community overall.
Wow could do something like this, a movement to be kind…but wow players wont care.
I’m gong to give you an answer and I don’t mean to be insulting, it’s going to be blunt. Hopefully you don’t take it as me just getting a few cheap shots off on you. The following comment could be stated towards many people who don’t believe there is “community” here, so it’s not a only you thing. It’s also just my opinion, which means nothing in the big picture.
We don’t know each other aside from the forum, we know nothing about each other. But given how you seem to be overly negative on the forum, it is you. It’s 100% you.
If you have such a negative attitude in-game WoW as you do on the forum then very few players will want to be around you. That goes for irl as well. People don’t want to chill with negative people, negative people bring everyone around them down. Given that you just started FF recently you probably aren’t as negative, so players will give you the chance and you can form relationships. The moment you turn negative and start complaining about everything over there then the same will happen there, you’ll start to have a hard time making friends and finding players who want to chill with you.
Take my comment as you will. Like I said I’m not trying to get cheap shots on you, I’m simply giving my observation of how your attitude is here on the forum as that is the only thing I know of you to get a feel of how you are.
Attitude means a lot in almost everything. If you try to stay positive and keep a positive outlook on whatever then things will stay brighter. If you go in looking for problems and wanting to see the bad in everything then that’s all you’re going to see. Very few people want to be unhappy, so they don’t surround themselves with negativity.
So you are not taking this opportunity to sneak into a FFXIV community then be an meanie head (adult word is censored yay america!) to them and make them forced to kick you which will probably make about 3 guild leaders cry.
Because you could do that, you could break them…if you wanted…
