So you’re mad noone will carry you to KSM/slime cat, huh?
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I’m a new player and I’ll probably be sticking around for a while since the current alternatives just can’t seem to stick the landing. Plenty of people tell me how great Final Fantasy 14 is but they’ll also tell me to buy the story skips for A Realm Reborn, Stormblood and avoid Endwalker until one is available for that as well. That just leaves two portions left of such a “great” game to actually enjoy…if you can even find people to enjoy those portions with.
Guild Wars 2 was my next choice but, again, ArenaNet wasn’t able to scratch that itch. Instead of putting more effort into getting the classes balanced and fixing bugs that have existed since the game first launched, they’d rather focus on a bunch of completely out of place cosmetics and making false advertisements. I mean, why wait to fly on a dragon when you can unlock one right now? Yeah, I’ve only played WarCraft for a few hours by doing a tutorial and paying some gold and now I have a flying mount. Good luck doing the same that quickly in Guild Wars 2.
I won’t even bother going into details about Elder Scrolls Online because…oof.
Yes! Keep the cosmetics, mounts, and anything not related to player power a prestige item for a few expansions and then find some way that other players that couldn’t or didn’t do the content can get them. The OP has a point in that this is one area other MMO games do better at allowing new or casual players a way to get cosmetic rewards they otherwise couldn’t. There are definitely other more important reasons new players don’t stay be that the story, the complexity of end game, or the community itself, among others.
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Blame Cataclysm. The story and timeline of WOW has been screwed up ever since.
They attempted to fix this with making new players go through Battle for Azeroth but that still causes problems. Especially since canonically, the Alliance is supposed to have won the war but nothing in the game actually shows this. If you play the Alliance side of things, they most definitely lost the war.
Just incase you took that mentality to write off FFXIV, Tried XIV in past and didn’t like some the design flaws, and have an interest in JRPGs. I’d like to take a moment to say, It’s not too late to try FFXIV. It’s done nothing but gotten better in it’s 12 years. Between them changing tedious systems, pruning down the poorer designed quests that aren’t key to story in the ARR 1-50 experience, Redesigning old content in a way the community can agree with and introducing loads of new content that is there to stay. Now is infact the best time to try FFXIV (if you don’t include the future).
Best part is you can try all the way up through their first expansion Heavensward for free. Hundreds of hours of content to try out before you commit with nothing to lose.
i am more on the camp that thinks that nrw players arent interested in wow because devs foster and actively develop sistems than encourage frictions among players and try hardism even at casual play.
- the fact that a lot of wow community is racist in some way or another and or intolerant towards lgbtqi+ people.
New players don’t stay because of the toxicity of most players. Nobody knows how to be nice and kind. in game and forums chat is just trolling and cruelty to new players.
It’s as simple as that.
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Exactly. Hell, even most of today’s veterans barely know of time locked items, let alone care about them.
WoW’s issue is that the new player experience is outdated. Exile’s reach is a GREAT first step, in that it help transitions newer players into how to play the basics of the game, but old content is not intuitive nor built for today’s WoW.
Some dungeon designs have held up well, such as RFC and SFK ( which barely saw revamps), whereas Wailing Caverns and Uldaman did not. Dragonflight’s pivot to a fresh and scalable Ulda is a step towards the FF14 model that works.
But even then, FF14 isn’t strictly better. As someone who loves 14, it is a pseudo action RPG first and an MMO second. Once WoW added cross faction community groups, there isn’t much functional difference between the social mechanisms for the two games. Once WoW lands Chrome time and pivots to that model, there won’t be much content reuse difference. From there, WoW is just one Cataclysm-style old world revamp away from mirroring the FF14 experience.
14 does crafting better, enough to force WoW to begin a revamp of crafting, though 14 largely nailed this better UNTIL Endbringers, where it took a major step backwards.
14 does pace a SINGLE story arc better over a decade, though WoW also delivered a single decade long story arc AND five or six distinct mini arcs. The lore in both games are amazing, with FF14 being very in the nose whereas WoW tends to have a LOT of facets where piecing things together more and more yields stronger appreciation.
So why does WoW stick around in the face of a modern era Titan such as FF14?
Because of the one major weakness 14 has, which is WoW’s greatest strength; combat and mechanics.
FF14 has started, as of the end of Endwalker, to pivot to borrowing encounter design more engaging in this lane. One of the biggest issues with FF14 classes tends to be how homogenized they feel or play out, whereas WoW manages to achieve viability across double to triple the offerings AND with mechanical/resource niche uniqueness, including healers.
Until the Sage class, FF14 basically lacked this entirely outside of one or two classes; everything looks unique, but feels like class soup.
As someone who also played FF11 religiously, this is perhaps the biggest step backwards FF14 takes. While WoW takes on the challenge of making 30+ specs viable each patch in the face of class redesigns and gear scaling AND borrowed power, FF14 has always struggled to achieve this UNLESS they make the floor skill level to play classes near trivial AND the skill cap between classes only yield a slight bump.
And in those cases, Red Mage is perhaps the best designed class that FF14 has after Sage, for this reason. Every time they TRY to break this mold, they break their game.
And that’s fine for most casual crowds, but less so for more core gamers. And as MMOs go on, the level of “core” rises with time.
FF14 is at a point where it is suffering from the pitfalls of early WoW design, and they are vehemently trying to avoid solving it the same way as WoW, and that’s limiting to players who enjoy personal growth.
And by contrast, WoW does that really well. You can always feel the growth in play skill of fine tuning your rotation, of your positioning, of having the ability to clutch and carry, not because your class does it for you, but because your mastery of the class shines.
And that strength lends quite well to VETERAN players, and less so to fresher players. But we also observe that between both games; fresh players who go through FF14 and wish to have a legitimate end game experience tends to get bored of that end game rather quickly, as gear carries a LOT more impact in FF14 than WoW.
And circling back to the crafting issue, Endwalker allowed EVERYONE to FLOOD the HQ endgame gear market with stuff that made all content fairly trivial, even if you’re a potato level player. Had they not introduced a harder raiding model, modeled after WoW, because of the WoW players who migrated…there is a very real chance the lull/exodus would have been steeper; WoW’s greatest strength, despite FF14 TRYING to RESIST it for YEARS…is ultimately what helped the game to avoid a major MMO fiasco that typically neuters most MMOs.
My point is, the comparison between the two is more or less JUST a preference, where both games are in the process of borrowing from the other to shore up their weaknesses.
FF14 is far better for new players…but quickly falls off for veterans; WoW tends to be the opposite.
Apple, meet orange
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As someone who has played a lot of both games, one thing FF does NOT do better than WoW is new player experience. The amount of time it takes for jobs to play halfway decent, the amount of time it takes to get through story to even be able to play with others etc is much longer. While they did add tutorials similar to the MoP/WoD challenges, Exiles Reach teaches far better how to play the game than FFs early quests do. Also for returning players, FF actively discourages making new characters to reacclimate to the game while Chromie time is excellent for replayability.
New player experience is not great in FF from a game systems perspective, but the community there is largely more laid back, less competitive, more friendly and less jaded than WoWs. Some of that is systems and some of that is just history. People view Yoship the way people used to view Blizzard. In time perhaps that trust will be lost too, but for now its a pretty happy casual game. So new players might have a better experience just on that basis, but there really is a long slog for a new player to get to the good parts in FF (granted the ARR rework helped but its still a lot of mandatory story to see or play new content).
As for time locked items, thats still true on FF with regard to some event rewards but now most of it is on the store, so while not available in game you can pay to get it whichm…and Im just guessing here…people here would dislike if WoW started selling exclusive old stuff straight up on the store. The way FF does.
because some of their designers are furries probably and have the ideation that abominations like vulpera/pandas, and gnomes should exist and to an even worse extent, are even considered cute.
/barf
this is aside from the fact, they cant balance various things properly, and push various less than ideal agendas down players proverbial throats too wrongly actioning them in some cases just for being different or going against teh mainstream, like oh no, cant have that 
Main reason, imo, is the ridiculously dated trial version. They should push the F2P cap to -10 levels of the previous xpac. So 50, now that DF is pushing to 70.
Level 20 happens literally two dungeons after the starter zone.
It certainly can be. WoW has this issue where it’s AMAZING if you’re good enough to play the content…
And most new players simply aren’t! Anytime I’ve been a guild lead and encountered this gap, I always assign the new players with a specific veteran, preferably of their class/spec if possible, to foster a mentor/mentee bond that’s more useful for their current level of growth than most community options.
The largest issue is how the content lanes are presented. Raid tends to be the lowest skill lane, but the perception of raids discouraged new players from trying
PvP is something most new players are discouraged from unless you REALLY push them, and ironically this lane helps them to grow quickest if they get over their fears.
And M+ is the odd beast. It’s good for newer players at lower keys, but newer players tend to shy from it until the community possesses more gear and knowledge. As a result, they lack experience and jump in…and what should be their crawl period, or even their walk period, ends up being an effective escalator OR a sprint. The former option does not FORCE them to grow. The latter option does force growth IF they wish to keep doing it, BUT…you have people in the content that aren’t where they need to be.
Except this content is also timed, carries rewards, and one person not pulling their weight on pushes penalizes the entire team. The new player isn’t necessarily met with toxicity when confronted, either, because toxicity is purely a social construct and the content they often encounter push back is content where the social norm is to be prepared and know your stuff to some level of proficiency.
Now, some players may be toxic when delivering that pushback, but this content isn’t designed to permit time to teach.
The time to teach and learn this content is in M0. And M0 is great for this if the player isn’t afraid.
And most new players are afraid to be proactive. So they skip their learning phase. Many new players want to jump in and lack the mindset of the content, but aren’t willing to cut their teeth on the learning content. Many new players will enter content above their level and get carried, so people take them into higher content than they should be in…and they don’t know the basics of interrupts or stuns or defensives.
And THAT is the crux of WoW’s issue all around. WoW was created in an era where the social expectation for ALL MMOs were to be PROACTIVE if you wanted ANYTHING. The landscape for veterans hasn’t changed, they cut their teeth when handholding was NEVER expected and they socially understand that their performance and outcomes are firmly on them.
New players do NOT operate this way. We are in an era where if the game doesn’t explicitly tell you WHAT to do and WHEN to do it or punish you HEAVILY for failing early on and often, for better or for worse, then said new players just meander around blind. They come from an era where the idea of having to go outside of a game for any reason is unusual, yet will do so constantly for non-MMOs when stuck.
And this isn’t a bad shift in mindset, but more or less just a side effect of gaming becoming more accessible to more casual gamers when MMOs were largely never designed for those crowds; this is why FF14 carved a niche for itself, and simultaneously, why FF14 struggles to sustain meaningful end game length until they started to borrow from the WoW model, which works for that space.
WoW needs a new player experience where new players have access to something of a “class mastery dungeon/system”. Something like a “Interrupts Course” that stamps a gold/silver/bronze, visible for all, but designed to illustrate the nuances of play.
Basically what the tutorial leves in FF14 achieve, but more publicly viewable.
Then, when you hit these disconnects, it isn’t on every other player in the world to hammer in the importance of interrupts or the CC options available; people can direct them to an appropriate in game resource to close this new player gap rather quickly.
And bonus points if they can revamp the leveling experience to incorporate this more. Such as achievements for interrupting a spell cast or using a defensive when you’re about to die. McGuffins to encourage the behavior more naturally
thats how RL is in general. think thats why people got issues like lots of anxiety. it is what it is though not worth the fast pace imo just what helps kill the game faster. can only keep long time players for so long before new players will be needed more. people do grow out of the game for various reasons not always a financial issue but lots of time; time issue.
like for me i got a child otw eventually i may quit for good to focus on raising my family. things that are more important to me next time i come back to play when that happens may be never
I hadn’t played an mmo in over a decade till eso a couple years ago. I then tried gw2, ff14, wow and new world during covid. Loved them all, EXCEPT ff14. Being forced to go through that slog of a story, plus the cringe af community made it insufferable.
Out of all of them, wow is the one my friends from eso and I chose to stick with. So, I dont really agree.
If you believe that and you’re only on the WoW forums to say this nonsense, then you have a VERY sad life.
I’ve seen nicer eve players in some recent dabblings there.
and eve is the home of sociopathic butthats supposedly.
I go lets pretend I ahve been away a few years. from serious play. and lets jsut get this out the way…it was WoW. whats my recap as I got 4 years of patch notes to look through.
I don’t want to read up 10 hours jsut to undock this here heavy assault cruiser. So give me the cliff notes please.
and i get it. with not much attitude most times. all games get butt hatts, eve is no exception .
which was how it was when I started long ago. get the noobs better. better noobs better fleets. less dying more wins. all good things in the big picture.
wow to me lacked this when I started. dude you suck. Okay…tell me how to suck less?
Git gud.
okay…how to git gud is what I want to know.
Aww hell no, I ain’t training the dude who one day could take my spot.
to me that is not how you make your crew stronger as a whole. something eve taught me as well. 25 solid " pro’s"…okay we need to function and win when they take the night off. so…lets get our noobs better shall we. the solid peeps got their jobs. it wasn’t about that. the goal was like ,say, all 50 in the fleet kicking butts and taking names.
edit: this applied to pve too. in wormholes you want all carebearing the best they can. As it increased the profit for the corp as a whole. The more it makes the more you make. Many wormhole crews work off communal setups. Dividend split at that end of cycle based on work.
This weird vendetta you have is a sign of something worse. Sane people would stop caring, stop playing, stop posting, move on. Think on that.
Does it? I can’t think of a single thing in the game that’s been permanently removed aside from the original pre ARR stuff, but it isn’t really FOMO because nobody wanted to play that mess and if people who stomached it enough got an unexpected tattoo for it I don’t care.
Holiday stuff comes back the very next year on the store permanently. All events get re-ran at varying points with their rewards intact. There really isn’t a single bit of FOMO I can think of. At most maybe the Garo stuff but you’re also given a year to get that and the only reason it’s not permanent is because it’s a collab with another company who has to agree to it.
I agree with this and I really hope they eventually do something where they split the current story now that it’s all effectively over and lock it behind NG+ then start everyone on a new story, same footing and make it scaled or something so getting into the game isn’t a nightmare. It really is a hard ask to tell someone to stomach 20ish hours to get through ARR which is agreed across the board as being the worst part of the game for anybody just so they can get to Heavensward where the story actually really gets good, then eventually Stormblood where the PvE finally starts to hit its stride.
Though really, all communities at the end of the day are cringe for some reason or another. FF14’s community is a bit too friendly to the point they’ll become excessively toxic if they feel you are being toxic and find no problem with this, I.E that “gender expert” furry who was trying to rally people to harass Asmongold ingame and ruin his experience by being excessively toxic because Asmongold would have been a bad influence on the game. Or the fact people in dungeons are afraid to tell healers to stop using Cure when they have Cure 2 available unless the healer specifically asks because some mentor is going to get uppity about you telling others how to play the game, who will also likely cry in Novice Network about their mentor roulette putting them in an extreme and people not knowing the fight that very same day.
WoW on the other hand is cringe but I’d hit post limit dissecting literally every subsect of player and how their level of cringe feeds into the whole overarching feeling of cringe with the entirety of the community at large. I think the most egregious example being Blizzard could crap out any garbage but if they throw a few tokens and dogwhistles to political topics in there you’ll have people calling it a work of art, but when you ask why they can only utter the word “inclusivity” or “representation.” Yeah, it will never not annoy me that I was expected to give a damn about Pelagos not because of who he is, but because of what he is because apparently what he is makes him immune to any and all criticism of being an uninteresting, boring character backed by subpar writing and was clearly only put in the game to grandstand about “being so brave including this kind of character” (then the fact the only thing anybody can really identify about Pelagos being scrubbed from the game in regions where those kinds of topics aren’t socially acceptable like China) because that is somehow an attack on a completely different community. FFS, the dude was a literal token in all senses of the word.
Not really a vendetta. just pointing out from many games…wow has some real winners.
Git gud with no guidance as to how to do that…is not really good advice.
do I git gud watching…pick a streamer you hate here?
Hell no, he is carried trash!
okay…back to square 1 for a new player. they want to git gud. Not many are leaving breadcrumbs.
Which is why wow community has issues. BOth games, really. PvP side especially. way too many assume people ahve run AB 500 times. and show little patience with those who have not. I do when there. But I am only 1 man…