I know. What a shame. The only thing I ever found fun about the MMO portion was the RP community. I’m not sure how it is these days as I haven’t played for about 2 years, but it was pretty active when I left, and I imagine it still is. Housing helped a lot with that. Not that Blizzard will ever learn that lesson or toss any favors to the RP crowd…
Edit: I will say I was pretty attached to my light-side IA. Some of that was the voice-acting and the ability to choose responses. Yeah, some of it was generic, but overall it really helped me feel immersed, like my character had THOUGHTS and FEELINGS about what was going on. I felt like he became more and more jaded with both sides, especially after some major plot twists and betrayals. And then the Sith were ALWAYS screwing up everything and once again, he gets called on to go be janitor to clean up the stupidity before the Empire came crashing down because of it.
If FFXIV had something like that, I may enjoy it enough to slog through the story.
This is pretty much my take. Even on ‘go collect X of Y,’ there’s still the chance of running across angry mobs and engaging in more gameplay than ‘left-click to scroll to next text paragraph.’
ARR is a slog because it’s quite literally the “hero’s beginnings” (boring origin story and all) before the actual meat of the tale and, unlike Blizzard, Square isn’t willing to completely retcon and ignore all the lore they had built up to that point just so they can write a new Rule of Cool and make the starter experience streamlined.
Unfortunately, this also means the beginning of this MMO is god awful and it’s just the way it is. Having to basically warn people, “Hey, uh, the first 50-60 levels are awful” when starting an MMO is definitely not a great selling point.
But the truth is that everything afterward is a great experience. Such a shame it has a terrible terrible start.
See that’d be the case except most people outlevel the hell out of the beginning of Heavensward with the revamped ARR. My friends were almost level 60 by the time they actually started Heavensward.
I’d even say it’s not the 1 to 50 that is the worst. It’s the post ARR/pre-HW that really bogs down. There’s some tedium in 1 to 47ish… then 48 and 49 are kinda meh because you run out of MSQ quests till you hit 49. Then again when you hit 50. But you get several trails and raids… then the post-ARR starts and it’s ABISMAL until you reach the very end with the Ul’dah…stuff…that ties it all together and you’re just like… Da-yum! And it makes it all worth it… …kinda.
The combat is overwhelming at first but honestly i doze off a lot with how rhythmic it is. Jusy like WoW, it is all patterns and muscle memory. Being intimidated and psyching yourself out for not getting the hang of something a few days to weeks in vs. months to years on something else will make everything seem hopeless and bothersome.
Flip it around for a FFXIV main trying out WoW and they’d get the same feeling.
I just leveled RDM to 80 and honestly I just kinda doze off a lot because it’s the same buttons in the same rhythm which makes the mana easier to manage. Like 1,2,1,2,1,2 then 345,67 then back to 1 and 2. Im having a blast on Machinist and I think you’d like Gunbreaker. Tanking isnt all that bad in ffxiv.
I mostly chalk that up to FFXIV have fairly vaguely designed recent history. Outside of the Eorzean Alliance/Imperial War, which resulted in a sort of retcon rewrite that nobody quite remembers, history is fairly vague.
Races have little tidbits in their naming conventions and distant histories, but for the most part, have all integrated into the mostly Hume societies around them. They all have much the same traditions, follow the same religion, speak the same languages, wear the same styles, etc. All the major cities and everyone from them fall into pretty classic niches as well: Uldan are all about money and trading, Limsa Lominsa is full of pirates and sailors, Gridania is rangery/druidy, Ishgard is GoT, Orthard is Asia, etc.
The most fleshed out in game society that isn’t dominated by Humes is probably that of the Au’ra, who are a fantasy take on various Asian pastoral steppe peoples, but the number of people I’ve seen who actually RP as an Au’ra from the steppe are few and far between.
Assuming you meant Hyur, it’s actually the other way around!
Population wise, only Ala Mhigo has a Hyuran (specifically Highlander) supermajority, with Midlander Hyur just barely coming out ahead of Wildwood Elezen in Gridania.
On top of that, one of the defining aspects of Midlander Hyur in Eorzea is that they don’t really have their own cultural identity, and are instead well-known for integrating into pre-established cultures.
tangentially do Roe and Lalafell have a defined place of origin? All I could tell from the story was like… “they’re from some islands elsewhere” or something. And are there any underground areas for the drow elezen?
Only Ala Migho has a *supermajority but in all the other cities, Hyrur (yeah, that’s what I meant ) are just as populous or more than the next most populous race. Outside Eorzea, they’re definitely the supermajority.
And while on paper, it’s said they don’t have their own cultures and aren’t the majority, in practice, the races are all basically generic faux European/Asian fantasy humans Hyur in any other setting and whenever you go to any given Eorzean city and interact with characters, the most common one among them are local flavorful race and Hyur.
And that’s why the character origins are generally so flexible.
Lalafell are just from the islands of the South Seas (and also founded Nym and Mhach), Roegadyn are from Abalathia’s Spine or the Northern Empty (they also lived in Meracydia too though). That the areas aren’t visitable is because that’s basically their super far away origin background and those places all got destroyed by calamities.
) are just as populous or more than the next most populous race. Outside Eorzea, they’re definitely the supermajority.