When a game prides it self of having a story and the only MMO that has it that is compelling and pretty good, with the release of Dawntrail, I felt disappointed even though my expectation for it was going to be boring, not disappointing, not bad or good either at least on the story side. I felt like the pacing was all over the place, I feel like Wuk Lamat took way too much screen time and you have others that have way less of it and had very little development, Bakool ja ja got redeemed way faster then sylvanas and I felt like the scions were done dirty that expansion.
On the gameplay side of things, I feel like the changes going into Dawntrail were kinda underwhelming… at least for the jobs that I play, the dungeons and raids are still good but I haven’t play FFXIV months ago after Dawntrail released, I kinda fell off relatively quickly and was bored of it, didn’t even make it to start of savage tier.
Though to understand the FFXIV refugees, from what I understand reading the forums and other places and as mentioned in some posts, Dawntrails story didnt live up to what came before it. Another thing to mentioned is that the patch cadance in FFXIV has seem to be getting longer, Dawntrail released on July 2nd 2024, 7.1 released on November 12nd, thats roughly about 4-5 months, I dont know the previous cadances was like before Dawntrail but I feel like 4-5 months is too long. Another one to mention is that the formula that FFXIV has been using since at least since ARR from what I understand is getting stale.
Honestly I dont think that many FFXIV players would come here, its honestly the other way around, sure there will be some that would check it out, was recruiting for my guild and picked up a FFXIV player new to WoW a year ago and does stuff with us sometimes but I just dont think many FFXIV would come here.