Took a break from FF when SL came out. At the time FF was in a content drought so figured I’d play SL while I waited for FF 5.4, but god did SL make me miss the narrative of FF.
Just for comparison, the MSQ in 5.3 where Elidibus basically takes you through key moments in ARR, HW, and SB, makes you realize that your character is the “main character”. There was a quest in Bastion that reminded me of this where you fought your memories, but they were just Scourge, Alliance/Horde, and your escape from The Maw and the NPC says something like “ To have experienced so much”, like that’s not even a fraction of what my WoW character should have experienced lol.
WoW dungeons and raids spoiling covenant stories and main story, the fact that you are just called “Maw Walker”, so many things that show WoW is a dead game in the sense that there is no creativity or good story.
I just went to play other games. I got a bunch of game time as an xmas gift. I’ll renew once the balancing gets sorted out.
It’s a misconception that Shadowlands was intended to be an answer to FFXIV gaining popularity. Shadowlands is an answer to Battle for Azeroth and its myriads of failures, and in that regard I think it’s a success.
When it comes to story, Blizzard needed to better the way they tell stories in WoW. They had a pretty dense story to tell in Battle for Azeroth, but they foiled the delivery on most of it, all the way to the final cinematic. And they need to do more storytelling because they pretty much ran out of Warcraft I, II and III lore to exploit. Even the Burning Legion is gone.
While they needed to be better at story, Blizzard never intended Shadowlands to compete with story driven MMOs like XIV. Where are my 40 minute cutscenes? Where are my trial fights for story villains? WoW’s strength is and has always been competitive PvE content like raids and mythic+ dungeons. Not story and world building.
(PS: I didn’t read the OP post completely since it looked like it was going into Shadowbringers spoilers and I haven’t played XIV since that moon lady boss in Stormblood, but I guessed it was about how the story is not as good as whatever is in Shadowbringers.)
I tried FFXIV. After less than a day I was wondering why anyone would willingly play it regularly.