That’s only when there’s a high volume of players so people with lower-powered machines don’t get lagged out. You’ll still see plenty of people.
I’m so tired of ppl feeding this crap.
I’m not even aware of such a setting but thats not ‘anti-social’, thats an option to help player performance.
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You’re so stodgy. You weren’t like that before the beard!
…an option which treats players on server / screen as expendable, interfering with the social structure of the game. This tells me they have not made it enough of a priority in their core design, as they are having to use band-aids like this rather than optimizing the game or network, or properly enforcing login limits to what is reasonable for the game (similar to the layering blunder) etc. - this was only one example by the way, the fact that it has heavy instancing, narrative story taking away from the focus on player story, and no real threat of PvP are other examples of it’s shortcomings as an MMO.
It’s fine, it’s an RPG first and MMO second I guess like many people have pointed out… I just don’t see it as a better game, or even direct competition for Classic WoW (or at least as WoW SHOULD be based on original design vision, not necessarily as it is with modern Blizzard’s compromising changes e.g. boosting and lack bot / gold sales crackdown).
Well, now you’re just trolling. It allows people with slower machines or consoles (remember, the game is accessible to both) to participate with groups (social structure) when they might otherwise lag so bad that they wouldn’t be able to join social aspects of the game.
Forget FF14. I’m playing the FF1-6 2D remasters on Steam. 
And imagine, even with that in place FFXIV is still far more social than WoW ever will be in this day and age. There is far more input from every FFXIV player in large gatherings, which may likely put some stress on a lot of player’s systems.
Imagine going into Goldshire on Moonguard as a mage, and just spam portals - it’ll make some players’ games lag. In FFXIV you have players playing music and the visuals that come with that, you have people spamming emotes at each other, you have people using job abilities that can be extremely graphical (luckily those can be turned off for others).
FFXIV may be heavily instanced, but atleast it is not phased.
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If you’ve actually played the game you would find these ‘band-aids’ never actually hinder any social interactions. Meanwhile Wow can still barely handle 40 people on the same screen.
A Narrative Story with the Player as the focus but okay.
Are you referring to there being no World PvP? Because World PvP apparently hasnt been all that great within wow in recent times.
Besides. The lack of faction restrictions makes playing with friends much easier since whatever the race they want to play will not be locked behind said restrictions.
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Because it’s treated like an RPG, not an e-sport.
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WoW has never really successfully been treated as an e-sport, that stuff is just an addon / sideshow / celebration of good players.
No arguement there, for retail anyways.
Not what I meant by player story. It’s not about you and the on-rails narrative experience in WoW, it was always about (in the early days, when they executed more properly on the vision) on the journey, which was something that incorporated the player into the community. You weren’t the hero of light or the champion of Azeroth, you were some idiot running around Desolace about to get stomped by a pack of Hyenas or some elite demon somewhere if the guy next to you didn’t step in and help.
That is obviously a great QoL change, however the bigger question is: are QoL changes worth losing a huge element of player identity and game cohesion? It is a core element of warcraft’s vision to be a part of said factions. Maybe it’s not worth the trade to just have a more convienient experience, but maybe it is. Either way there’s definitely room for improvements to factions.
Well, with Void Elves being turned into Blood Elves.
And pandaren existing, this matters less.
Another big reason why I main Classic. It’s more cohesive, a game that makes sense within it’s own vision. Retail is very fragmented in it’s appeal, jack of all trades master of none (except maybe raid content, but that hardly makes an MMO).
I’m not saying it isn’t a little cartoonish that all player-members (because it’s different for NPCs) of a given race are faction-locked… but at the same time Warcraft is a fantasy that includes real world medieval influence, and human society used to be heavily tribal… of course we still have those instincts today, the lines are just more blurred.
That appeal to our tribal nature (without having to affect the outside world, in the same way the catharsis of video game violence doesn’t have to translate to real world violence) is part of what makes the game and your character identity “fun”.
You say more social, I say less to do.
Why do you think people have large gathering and sit around doing jack?
There’s nothing to do.
Argueable.
Just like in WoW, most do not do the hardest content the game has to offer, so they stick to doing their daily roulettes and beast tribe dailies when at max level and finished all MSQ. When they get done with that, most likely takes a trip to The Golden Saucer to do many of the minigames there a couple of times, some will be very determined with the chocobo racing, to breed the perfect racing chocobo and some will be swallowed up in the triple triad or mahjong minigames.
And when that is done people will indeed either hang out in the main cities, watch the various bard players on their software run music players, or watch bards who actually play music without a third party software. They’ll sit around and chat with others rather than just afk, or they go to one of the many housing plots that have been decorated as a bar and/or tavern to chat.
Not sure why anyone would expect people to do chores all day long, it is a MMORPG, gotta give more credence to the online and roleplaying aspect of the game.
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This is ESPECIALLY the case if you don’t even do Extremes or Savage, there is nothing to do.
You do your 1-2 worthwhile roulettes and then what? I guess, sit around and act like the game is VRchat or Second Life, that you’re paying 20 a month for.
Most will likely do the normal raids a few times.
But really, this is not all too different from many other MMORPGs, and especially not WoW where the only side content are literal chores, rather than… entertaining content. A lot of MMORPGs seem to have failed at creating appealing side content, for the people who do not do the hardest difficulty, FFXIV does have some of this with The Golden Saucer, and housing if you manage to get a plot, but I usually do not count housing because it is so incredibly hard to get a plot in the first place.
No need to do it a few times, just the once. They drop 8 pieces of loot, you’re getting something everytime.
Successfully or not, the mindset itself is one of many reasons for WoW’s issues. They’ve always wanted to rake in the massive E-sports profits that they even made Mythic+ tournaments.
A silly idea to me.
Part of the reason for the great sense of Journey from early was because there wasn’t really a clear cut connected story going on in the first place. That would change later and… Eh… For better or worse.
FFXIV makes it very clear you are the main character of the story later on but the Warrior of Light concept doesnt become clear till later. So from the beginning you kind of are the random bumbling goof just trying to seek adventure for whatever reason befits you. You dont immediately become the ‘champion’ and when you do there is some level of a feeling that its actually earned through the story. That reason being it is a connected coherent narrative from start to finish that doesnt require outside material to understand. Plus you actually build a true sense of companionship with the other characters through the story which has been much much harder to do with Jaina, Thrall or Bolvar. Since it is a story heavy game, it possess its own form of that journey in its own way.
You cant replicate that wondrous feeling people felt when they first entered Azeroth back in 2004 or 2008. It is impossible.
Improvements I feel will never come.
Also, Idk about ‘Player Identity’ but the relevancy, narrative or otherwise, of the factions has been stagnant ever since MoP.
And due to further poor writing there hasnt been much of a joy or any real difference to playing either one of the factions. A lot of people havent been thrilled playing as horde while the Great Simp Attractor, Sylvanas start going on genocide parades. Plus long before her the Horde and the Alliance have constantly worked together to kill every major threat to the game including N’zoth.
Are we seriously going to go back to fighting even after we were supposed to “Break the Cycle.” As Saurfang would put it. We kept fighting each other after Mop because… Reasons.
Its a mess and so dont see the point of it other than World PvP which is apparently stagnant too.
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I haven’t done extremes or savage. I’ve been playing for a few years now. I still have so many things to do that my greatest difficulty is deciding which side questline or random activity to do next.