A single patch in FFXIV has almost as many changes as a big patch/expansion in WoW.
Developers actually make contact with players instead of balacing through a spreadsheet. Don’t also forget that the developers themselves announce the changes via stream and answer questions. Meanwhile we have silent devs who tackle problems only when a next expansion is to come, blue posts who just answer useless crap and don’t even talk about the game’s problems,while having the audacity to say they listen to the feedback.
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The difficulty levels are helpful, but WoW has been vastly more casual friendly in expansions past, especially those with valor vendors which allowed casuals to cap VP weekly in either heroic dungeons or LFR and just buy the gear they needed.
This iteration of WoW’s endgame is probably the least casual friendly it’s ever been: raid loot drop rates are terrible (soon to be improved by 33%, at least) and the primary gearing method is the vault, which is basically a weekly raffle where you buy tickets by pushing progressively harder content.
Casuals can get the 197 covenant set, sure, but that’s basically where it ends. As a one time hardcore raider turned casual raider, my hunter has hit a gear wall. After weeks of 7/10 CN normal, he still has seven slots that need upgrades but keeps getting the same blasted pair of pants again and again, from the raid AND the vault, if he gets anything at all.
Also, the anima grind is a joke: someone calculated it out and it’s somewhere around 200,000 anima to unlock everything for a single covenant, that’s a minimum of grinding 2 hours of anima-only WQs every day for close to a year, and that’s time not spent on actually working on gear progress. To add further insult to injury, most of the available sets are just recolors of the covenant set.
Is it any surprise that casual players would look at this situation and say, “Nope, this isn’t for me any longer.”?
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I just started playing today and I’m level 2!
No kidding I dinged on the 1st quests and then had to go click a crystal thingy that’s part of the transport network I’m guessing.
I have NO IDEA what I’m doing, it took me a long time just to invert my mouse axis. 
So having reached that second level I’m probably going to keep going and see if I can survive the attack of a thousand cutscenes! 
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Pray return to the waking sands.
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It’s because FF14 is very good.
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I am “quitting” / I am displeased cause of the game itself and the design direction it is going to, as well as the leadership ain’t built by gamers anymore, it’s made up of people who wish to take the fun out of making games, and focus on money.
Can’t say I have found any other game to move on to, either.
It’s just… apathy.
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FFXIV is pretty good, I enjoy it for the story and content but once I am finished with all the new content I just go back to WoW.
Would be nice if FFXIV took WoW’s transmog system instead of having to store it in the glamour dresser.
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If they could do it without drastically changing the appearance of the game, which would likely kill the experience for me, then I would very much like it to happen, as well as upgraded servers.
I recently updated my FF14 Mogstation account and subscribed for a month. I’m honestly waiting on one of two things to happen in WoW before making the switch and cancelling my WoW sub:
- Joining a guild that socially keeps me involved, even when the game doesn’t
- Blizzcon Udpdates that give hope for content other than Mythic grinding and weekly raiding - like adding more balanced PvP battlegrounds that are more interactive, like Ashran and AV used to be…but balanced.
FF14 has a storyline that really adds to the game. WoW lost me with storylines having any real impact in BFA.
Ugh…and Rivendreth travel…step 2 feet, mob. Move again, another mob pack. Then add elevators, funnel pathing stacked with mobs…just…I dread it every time.
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The main problem with these contents is the inadequate network resources, blizz servers choking on wpvp or any content that includes more than 20 v 20.
So they built shadowlands on the downgraded network services coupled with sharding, which breaks any immersion. When you look at the barebones of the scaled network services and the contracting out to third party server farms, you see that they have destroyed the illusion you are in a huge world.
Sandboxes are much easier for them to operate.
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Wow is only held up by players who are using tokens (gold is esy) to keep a sub, are loot addicts or have invested too much time to quit.
FF14 has just way more value for your 15 USD than wow has.
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What’s better ESO or FfIV? I noticed Classic had a thread that wasn’t flagged. Just wondering thought from other gamers cuz my experience is limited.
On the flip side of that. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if those were the biggest and most pressing issues people posted about here?
Instead we have to beg devs to listen about balance, broken game systems, and sparse loot drops.
I’d kill to only worry if there will be bunny bois or not here lol.
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It’s a slow start if you’re used to MMOs for sure. However, those cut scenes and the vanilla story set the ground work for some pretty amazing story telling later on.
Also welcome to a pretty amazing community of people. You’ll find jerks anywhere, but no where near the degree you will here.
Lastly, the combat absolutely does pick up once you begin to get off gcd abilities. It actually ends up being much more engaging that most other MMOs I’ve played.
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This was my experience too. A friend kept asking me to try the game, and I actually leveled a character to around that level and then quit. It just felt like I was stuck in one small region, doing the same type of quests over and over.
A couple of months went by before my friend decided to dig into it deeper and find out why I didn’t like it. Once we talked and he explained to me that I shouldn’t do every.single.quest.everywhere but follow the job(class) and story quests only, it felt a lot better. Also yes, he said the same thing about the expansion and he was right. Slogging through the base game was worth it once I got to the expansions.
Due to how I feel about SL, I’m debating on picking up FFXIV again and perhaps switch back and forth a bit. I love WoW and right now I just do other things in the game that I enjoy but as far as the expansion so far, I don’t like it very much.
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Good to know, I’ll be sure to pay attention and have some patience.
Thanks for the encouragement!
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I’ve tried the game out a few times but cant get over low level combat and how slow it seems. I like to play MMO’s and level multiple classes, sometimes duplicate classes. I wont hesitate to delete a character that is close to level cap and reroll a new one if i need the character slot. In most MMO’s i might have a small handful of characters at max level so i can do max level content. But a lot of my toons i like to play in low to mid level stuff. But because i dont like FFXIV’s low level combat my playstyle wont really work. Its a shame too cause I like some of the game world i saw in FFXIV. Uldah is a nice capital city and so is Loma Limsa or w/e its called.
I’ve seen a lot of FFXIV players say similar things to what is said on here about how “it gets better at higher levels”. But it would be nice if the devs there could revamp the low level experience.
I dont think one is better then the other really. Its more on what you want out of a game. I’ve played both at a casual level and not to max level but I’m thinking of heading back to one of them since shadowlands is a dude and both games have new expansions coming.
ESO is action based and has massive flexibility in builds. It also has a focus on PvP in a large zone. I havent heard much about what raiding looks like in ESO but I dont get the sense its a focus (could be wrong) With the level scaling you can take in all the content at your own pace and have fun.
FF14 is tab target and PvE focused. So more like WoW in that sense. You have the flexibility of being every class on one character but within the class there is little to no flexibility. Apparently the raids aren’t good enough for serious WoW raiders but they are there and they seem fine for most regular players. PvP is there but constantly being reworked due to lack of participation.
Both games focus on trying to keep content throughout the game relevant and active, unlike WoW. FF14 rewards players for doing lower level dungeons for instance.
Tbh FF14 under yoshiP can pretty much shut down the gaijin NA servers and still be pretty profitable as the Japanese domestic market is big enough to maintain profitability. Ever wonder why konami is making fat stacks using its IP on pachinko and gacha games?
The needs of Le gaijins like you will always come 2nd to the JP casuls that mainly play catgirl simulator. Need proof? Just look at how many dungeons/ raids FF14 releases in an expansion vs WoW.
This is highly debatable. If you’re even a midcore raider in WoW, M+ focused player, or rated PvPer, there’s not really much there for you unless you want to go casual for some reason.
If you’re a casual, then absolutely, there’s a lot more small goals to work towards and SE has fully admitted that their primary focus is casual content by deprioritizing the 2nd ShB Ultimate. I’m disappointed that they did this, but they’re prioritizing a type of player who really isn’t favored in the current iteration of WoW. FF14 deserves the attention of that audience too, tbh.