WoW or FFXIV? Not in general, but for me?

Community General Discussion
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Yah, before you downvote me into oblivion, this is just a personal question and anecdote, not meant to really say one is better than the other. Endwalker is good, and Dragonflight is good, and therein lies the problem: I only have the time a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶u̶b̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶e̶y for one.

I much prefer WoW’s class design and class design philosophy, and it feels like there’s way more to do in WoW’s endgame, which is obviously very important. However, recent WoW expansions have felt… unpolished? For lack of a better word. That, and I much prefer the story, customizability of FFXIV, even if some of their mogs are… lackluster, to say the least.

FFXIV has all that I said going for it, plus the housing system, which is nice, and the ability to flex all ‘jobs’ on a single character. But those jobs feel very shallow and one-note, which can make trodding through what endgame there is (see: not much, at least in comparison to Dragonflight) a bit more tedious. WoW’s class customizability really makes it feel like there were infinite possibilities… even if 80% of that infinity isn’t viable.

WoW has taken a lot of pages out of XIV’s handbook in recent times (which is fair, as almost every MMO ever has ripped entire chapters out of WoW’s), and the more I play the more I yearn to be immersed in that world again. But last time I played XIV, I felt the exact same thing toward WoW. I can’t keep doing this flip flop thing, as I want to devote my free time to one and get to high level content. Not possible to do it with both as I have a full time job.

There’s also the matter of the funny companies making both games… Blizzard seems to be on the rebound when it comes to PR, while Squenix (the overarching company, not the team making XIV) seems to be falling ever deeper into sketchy crypt-nosis… Kind of the reverse of 2021, huh?

To those of you who play both or have played FFXIV recently, what are your thoughts? Are there changes coming to XIV to bring the endgame up to WoW’s level? Should I just sunk cost myself into staying in DF at this point? Am I just being dumb and indecisive? Or am I just blinded by the thought of Viera in 2B leggings?

(i will give out my gold if i end up going back to xiv, you can cite this post in the future)

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Neither.

Pikachu I choose you!

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I’d consider a Pokemon MMO.

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What did I do to deserve this?

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My apologies. I got sidetracked by that comment. I always thought a Pokemon MMO would be a gold mine.

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It is. Pokemon go

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So, here’s my suggestion:

If you’re waiting on FFXIV to reach WoW’s endgame level, you’ll be waiting forever. The fact of the matter is that FFXIV is not a game that’s designed to be raid or die. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an endgame, but it’s not the intent of the developers to make endgame the only thing worth doing. It’s deliberately pulled back and minimalistic so that you have space and time to participate in other aspects of the game. Yoshi P has even gone so far as to say that it’s not his intent to keep you playing the game forever.

Simply put, I don’t think FFXIV will ever be “brought up” to WoW’s level because I don’t think that’s what the devs want. If that doesn’t appeal to you, stick with WoW.

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I’m thinking more like a real AAA MMO and not a mobile app.

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WOW is like the best game in the world now.

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Too expensive to start AND maintain. Mobile is cheap

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If the .x patches of EW are anything to go by I’d probably stay away. The story is just…awful, the new features they’ve added are just dumb, and they’ve been making a lot of decisions lately that just leave people scratching their heads.

Idk what’s going on at CBU III, if they’re stretched thin with sending people over to FF16 and other projects or if they’re moving too many people around, but the post MSQ stuff for Endwalker is a pathetic joke.

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FWIW, I wouldn’t be too concerned about this affecting FFXIV. YoshiP has actually said there won’t be any NFT shenanigans in FFXIV, if that’s what you’re referring to.

Totally agree on this point.

And this one.

In the end, I flop back and forth. I have houses in FFXIV, and now that they’ve turned the auto-demo back on, I’ll have to sub mid-February to keep the houses from being demolished. I do love FFXIV, and when I log in for the first time after being away for months, it actually feels like coming home. I love it that much. BUT, as you say, WoW has more to do for me daily at max level, especially being the solo-player that I am. So, here we are.

:dracthyr_shrug:

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It’s not that bad, but I would say it’s probably less of a resource issue and more of a direction issue. It’s pretty obvious they’re setting us up to go to the Thirteenth and deal with the void and whatnot, but previous post-patch story content always had an anchor. Endwalker ended the story they’ve been working on for the last 9-10 years, which means they don’t have that anchor anymore and are attempting to set up a story that probably needs more than what we’re being given to set up.

Does that excuse it? Obviously no, but I would say the problem is more or less not having a cohesive foundation to place this next story on. Come the next expansion, I think it’ll be fine because they’ll have more space to toy with their ideas.

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Im staying with wow. I just like wow raids dungeons better and its gear and its stats choices that I can pick for my character for my own build that makes the game pretty fun for me. In FF 14 There isnt really different class builds just as you stated. Their lack of difficult dungeons sucks and their regular dungeons are too easy. Also FF 14 lore is very very boring. I ve cleared few expansions and I have no idea what’s going on and I dont want to know. In wow I had quests, raids and dungeons that made me actually research on what happened.
In FF14 the gear choices are horrible and the open world there feels meaningless beside the treasures but that gets boring too since the treasures loose on their values as the game goes on. Their dailies are horribly long and really not fun to do. The only thing i like in FF14 is their crafting and perhaps savage raids but I still prefer wow raiding.
They homogenized all tank jobs and the animations are overdone with effects. As for DPS classes you wont differ much as there are no sub specs making raid team more tedious to build. Wow is more action packed without long global cd like ff14 has with specific roation that you have to follow. Me and my friends migrated to wow after 3 years of playing of FF14. We dont miss Ff14 and I dont think we will come back to it. We did try since we were mmo hungry tho but it was so boring we gave up and thats when we decided to try wow. Most people just RP in FF after clearing END game and use bots to play music for claps on their bards.
Also legit some of us were falling asleep while playing FF unless it was savage raid but that was about it.

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I’ve been playing world of Warcraft for over 10 years and I’ve been playing ff14 on and all for a year getting through the story. For me world of Warcraft is definitely much more polished and has much better quality of the game overall from the mechanical standpoint and from art standpoint.

Ff14 feels like it was made with cheap assets and designers weren’t really trying when they were creating the creatures in the world and the world seems confined and small at least in the ARR. It also feels like nothing really matters in terms of game mechanics there. I don’t really feel stronger with better items I just see some numbers increase in my character page and that’s it. Most of the game seems to be just reading the quest and the story and just traveling from point A to point B and doing more reading and between that doing very short fetch quests. There’s none of that MMO grind feeling that you get in WoW, barely any combat. I have no use of any reagent items I loot, I have no sense of gold (gil) value. I can’t really tune out playing FF14 like when I play WoW. I need to be in reading mood. It’s very much a single player story mode game.

However I do like some small things and ff14 like for example their mount customization and the fact that mounts can be your pets and you can train specialization with them and you can name them. You set stuff like zodiac sign of your character at creation screen. There’s a separate class quest line through the game. All those little things that add small bits of RPG. It feels like a heaven for a roleplayer.

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Hello Kitty Island Adventure or bust.

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If you want end game content ie raids and m+ play wow if you want side content and mini games ie housing and saucer play ff14.

Both games offer something unique and don’t really do the other half all that well.

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I go back and forth, but I never unsub from FFXIV.

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I play both.

I think as of now FFXIV is a better game with a lot more going for it. They are also planning a graphical update for the next expansion which looks beautiful so far. The community is also top notch. It’s pretty uncommon to run into toxic players there.(People will tell you otherwise :roll_eyes:)

I think WoW is going in the right direction though. It’s just been a rough launch for DF. Which we couldn’t afford… But underneath the exploits bugs and live beta testing we have been doing they are setting a foundation and it’s very much improved upon when compared to Shadowlands.

I feel much more of a connection with the community in FFXIV and participate in end game content. With WoW I enjoy the nostalgia, combat, and casual pvp. But if I had to pick or suggest an MMO it would be FFXIV.

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Ff14 is you like the social experience, side things to do, and casual style with an amazing story.

Play WoW for endgame and grinding stuff out.

Ff14 is much more welcoming than wow but you still gotta get through arr which takes a while. After that the story takes off and you’ll start to see more modern things such tribal quest revamps.

I will note that professions/jobs are much much easier to level in ff14 than WoW and much less complicated. Raids also have less mechanics than WoW with greater tells. So ff14 is more about doing things right with less randomness then WoW. You also get sent right back to the boss start after a wipe while WoW forces you to walk back.

If you aren’t aiming for end game WoW then ff14 may be the better game for you.