It’s endgame structure is similar to an older era of WoW (notably, Cata and MoP). Apparently they’ve admitted that was their inspiration when they were revamping the game for A Realm Reborn. I always figured, because it’s blatantly obvious, but someone told me today that they said as much in an interview or something too.
That’s the reason so many disgruntled WoW players click with FFXIV. It’s basically just alternate WoW.
But FFXIV isn’t really better than WoW. It does SOME things better. And other things worse. And yet other things just… different.
The very basics of combat are the same. It’s a traditional tab target MMO. The major difference is, of course, the full second longer GCD. It makes the early game almost unbearable. I’d almost recommend playing a caster just because at least you’ll feel like you’re casting a spell instead of just… waiting. But certain classes have passives that reduce that GCD, and FFXIV relies a whole lot on off-GCD abilities to weave between the longer GCDs. You don’t always have them up, so it never really bridges the gap to WoW’s combat pacing, but it does help. And lastly, WoW leans into filler spam / proc fishing a lot. FFXIV leans into combos (typically 1-2 and 1-2-3, sometimes with branches). Ultimately I prefer FFXIV’s class design better, but it IS very rigid (zero customization) and I understand that it’s easier to design unique classes when you have, you know, maybe a 3rd of what WoW offers.
Let’s see…
Endgame / Gearing Structure. Crafting aside (it’s mostly for catchup unless you’re rich enough to pour money into RNG bonus gem slots - but it IS much much more in depth which many people enjoy), it’s basically…
- Dungeon Spam for Justice / Valor equiv.
- LFR Raids for rewards between JP / VP ilvl.
- Ex Primals (1 boss raids) for rewards between JP/VP ilvl.
- Savage Raiding for BiS.
Ex Primals IMO are sorta Normal Raid difficulty - but like a later boss, not Shriekwing. Savage Raiding from what I can tell from an outside perspective is probably closer to Heroic than Mythic, but let’s just say it’s somewhere between them? Anyway, very familiar, I think.
What else…
Story. That’s probably where it differs a lot. FFXIV’s MSQ (the mandatory story) is almost literally ALL story. As in, you’re going to be sitting there reading it. 90% of questing is running from point A to point B to read some dialogue. The story is much more in depth than what WoW offers and manages to be more grounded most of the time despite being a Final Fantasy game, but it’s going to be a love it or hate it type thing. If you can get invested in the story, cool, it won’t be a chore. If you can’t, it’s going to be a massive chore every xpack/patch to unlock everything you need to unlock.
I’ll end it on Housing. FFXIV has it. WoW doesn’t. It’s an adequate housing system once you get into it. Nothing spectacular, but it’s a half-step up from something like BDO which is probably bare minimum for Housing. It does have a Guild and Individual version both using the same system. The downside of all of this is that the method for actually GETTING your housing plot is quite literally the worst thing I’ve seen in video gaming in my entire life. Play on a server with any amount of people and you will LITERALLY have to bot if you want any chance of actually buying a plot, no matter how much gold (gil) you have. Basically, plots are finite and when a plot opens up because someone gave it up or got auto-kicked from not logging in for however long, there’s an RNG timer that no one can see before it can be purchased by someone. That timer IIRC is up to 48 hours. In that time, anyone that ALREADY has a house can freely relocate to that plot if they want to. Which means the place THEY moved from is now the only open plot on the server. And the timer is reset. So there’s potential for an infinitely resetting timer that no one can see all the while 12 people are running bots / macro loops to spam the signboard every second hoping to beat the other bots to the punch when the RNG timer is up. Freaking. Awful.