The huge amount of vitriol I’ve seen for LFR and LFR players over these past few days is honestly astounding. And I really don’t get it.
I recently returned to WoW after taking a 6+ year break to play other MMOs. My main MMO in that time, which I still play, is FFXIV. And no, I’m not here to discuss which game is better. I’m here to just simply talk about FFXIV alliance raids and their reception in the FFXIV community vs. LFR and its reception in the WoW community.
Alliance raids and LFR are similar. They are queueable raids at a casual difficulty. The main difference is that alliance raids stand completely on their own. There is no “Savage” or other high-end difficulty attached to them.
What does the FFXIV community think of them? In general, people enjoy them. They are meant to be fun, (usually) optional pieces of content that has something to offer for everyone. Even high-end players participate because they want to experience the storyline of the raid or get gear drops for glamour.
There is no hatred for alliance raids or the casual players who enjoy them to the same degree that people in the WoW community hate on LFR and LFR players. There are some high-end FFXIV players that don’t care for them, of course. And others have voiced that they would like for alliance raids to have a higher difficulty attached to them. But for the most part, people don’t sit there and trash on alliance raids and insist that the people who do them shouldn’t get cool gear or fun rewards.
So, why is this the case in WoW with LFR? Why is the existence of a queueable, completely casual raid difficulty a bad thing? I’m genuinely curious whether anyone has a legitimate argument against it. (I highly doubt anyone does. But please, go ahead and attempt to prove me wrong.)