Exactly.
Literally worse than WoW.
Okay.
That one player buying 5 tokens is still enabling 5 other players to play the game. And WoW’s profitability has gone up from what I understand.
Blizzzard has not been making “panic actions” like they ordinarily do when they’re “feeling the pain”, so I don’t really buy into your narrative that “the data is a lie and they’re suffering under the covers”. Their attitude and actions seem to reflect confidence in Ion’s vision of the game.
Switching jobs is a boon and a bane at the same time. It’s convenient for some people who have no desire to even try other races, aesthetic or not.
On the same token, you can switch jobs but those (for example) who were former WoW players and are (for example) career Ret will not be playing a paladin in FFXIV as anything other than a tank.
People who played the game’s predecessor who were career DRK were bummed that they came to the next thing and were not only forced to use a great sword but were also forced to tank if they wanted to keep on the DRK train.
The MSQ won’t ever really get more complicated than running around talking to NPCs, you’ll be doing that all the way up until current content. ARR does have a bit of a reputation though for being a bit meandering and nowhere near as engaging as the more recent stories.
It’ll get better in terms of quality, but it never really becomes a difference in kind. If you can’t get into the story it’ll be a tough slog.
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FF14>WoW
WoW
Story: sucks
Chores: aplenty
Alts: good luck
Dungeons: fun
Raids: great
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heres my screenshot album (dont click if you want no spoilers at all)
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I forgot how bad that game looked w/o shaders.
I need to go update mine.
If you have an Nvidia video card, I recommend using Nvidia Freestyle over Reshade. It works the same but doesn’t absolutely demolish your FPS. I think Reshade has the potential to look better at the highest points, but it will like I said, destroy your fps.
Dude, we all get it, you don’t like FFXIV, and for some reason the fact that some WoW players like causes you discomfort, but…you saying that all of that above is “optional”, is idiocy.
The only way that entire list is optional in WoW, is if you’re playing Classic. You’re sounding crazy, and you aren’t ‘defending’ WoW at ALL, my dude.
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I don’t like WoW either. I just think FFXIV is worse and people are exaggerating it.
Timing their release dates to match their competitors. Throwing TBC Classic out when it clearly wasn’t ready on release with the numerous bugs and breaking their promise of “giving you enough time to enjoy the prepatch” while making it half the duration of the shortest prepatch in the entire game’s lifespan which was BFA’s 28 days with 14 days because of an earnings call and conveniently that’s when Ashes of Creation announced their first public Alpha phase. . .
Rushing out Tomb of Sargeras on the same day as Stormblood’s release date, could be coincidental, then rushing 8.2 to meet Shadowbringers, still coincidental maybe, then the day of announcement for patch 5.4 of XIV deciding to delay Shadowlands for two weeks so they could conveniently drop Castle Nathria on the same day as 5.4. . . Too many coincidences for any reasonable person to not think it was calculated.
Oh no, the company isn’t suffering monetarily. I was pretty clear about that. Just it’s incredibly telling when every time they talk about how an expansion is doing 3 months after launch they want to talk about “new players” instead of player retention, refuse to tell us how many people are playing Classic compared to Retail. Despite Superdata (owned by Neilsen and having access to that data for ratings) accidentally disclosing 53% of their players were playing Classic exclusively 6 months after Classic dropped.
They’re doing fine on making money, people are buying tokens like mad. Their player retention is still garbage. That’s why they also had to change tokens in Legion to also be redeemable for 15 dollars of Blizzard balance as to encourage people to actually buy them because they weren’t worth jack when it was solely a month of sub time. However now that people can use them for Hearthstone packs, buying new releases, suddenly the demand shot up when COD games get released or Hearthstone releases a new set of card packs. Doesn’t take a genius to notice the trends.
Bottom line, MTXs are carrying this game’s revenue, it isn’t the playerbase. Is this a bad thing? Not really, a business is meant to profit after all. However this is also why WoW can feel more dead with each passing content patch but still be profiting heavily. You take tokens out of the equation and their money is just gone.
No, it’s more that they’ve quit caring and are focusing on other profitable ventures. Was it not telling back in I believe WoD when they stopped releasing sub counts and also said “WoW isn’t our main moneymaker anymore, it’s Hearthstone.” Which is another thing, they bundle all their games into their MAUs. They are trying very hard to hide how well WoW is, or isn’t doing. Given that they’re pretty open about bragging about how much copies of an expansion sell, then very hush hush about players after that point odds are it isn’t too pretty in the books.
Conveniently, tokens also were released in WoD as well, around the time they quit reporting sub numbers because they couldn’t explain losing half of their playerbase in a single quarter, then another 400k the quarter afterward. Hmm, we lost a lot of players, but hey look at this new thing you can buy that costs 5 dollars more than a sub, but it allows you to legally buy gold from us, really sketchy timing.
Either way, bottom line. WoW is profitable due solely to tokens and MTX. The players are not a main revenue stream because there’s few of them compared to what the game used to have. While I’ll be fair and say 3 million despite sincerely doubting it is nothing to sneeze at. It looks pretty bad when you remember this was a game that had double that a year after it released and at one point stood on 12 million. This game is a shadow of its former self and their excuse of when they stopped reporting sub numbers in WoD of “Well people see bad news, assume the end is near and also quit.” isn’t really favorable to the company’s ability to retain players. If the game was good, players quitting wouldn’t really matter, they quit all the time.
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When I measure two things, I use the same stick for both. I don’t use a straight ruler for WoW and a wet broken spaghetti noodle for FFXIV wrapping it around all the parts to fit my narrative.
Ultima weapon is cosmetic.
It is actually required you run it at least a time or two going through the story. Or, at the very least, it’s shoved in your face so many times you get the impression it’s something you have to do.
Which if you do literally anything other than world quests and LFR as your core gameplay, you’ll probably be aware you do it for legendaries. There’s no real alternative to Torghast, and it is required if you’re doing anything beyond the spoonfed content.
I mean, I dunno. Sure, you can spam dungeons to level, but Blizzard hasn’t exactly been great about freely permitting that as a thing.
Also, yes, the first time through Shadowlands you are forced to quest to level and continue the story chains. It was somewhat similar in Legion.
BFA didn’t require it, but BFA had its own other set of stupidity you had to abide to.
TLDR: The requirements for doing anything outside of the MSQ in FFXIV are literally exactly what you want to do, and that’s about it.
Wanna raid? Run Normal raids and get your gear, and get tomes from doing that anyways.
Wanna fashion up your house? Do professions or play the market board if you’re good with money.
Wanna do harder raiding? Do that, because it’s basically the same progression path as normal raiding, just with harder fights.
Wanna do Ultimate? The extra content you do matters even less because of the way gear scale works for that content, since it’s designed a particular way and forces an equal footing rather than you relying on being lucky with gear + (insert expansion feature) + (insert patch feature).
Wanna do whatever? Do whatever, whenever, without any consequence for stopping and starting. I’m working on 3 relics (soon to be 4 relics) on my character, which encompasses:
-Leveling up in Eureka by hunting mobs, filling out a challenge log, and doing mini bosses with people more than eager to chatter while we all do our stuff
-Farming raid content or large scale zone content with people who want to be there and want to complete it
-Farming tomestones for a weapon questioned akin to Shadowmourne or the Rogue daggers from Cataclysm.
ALL OF THESE ACTIVITIES ARE OPTIONAL. SOME OF THEM ARE EVEN GRINDIER THAN SOME OF WOW’S ACTIVITIES, BUT I CHOOSE TO DO THEM. I’M NOT MADE TO DO THEM.
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What does this even mean? What you are “required” to do all depends on what your goals are in game. I don’t play FFIX, but I guarantee there is a lot of things you “have” to do if you want your character to be optimal. If you want to raid at the highest level, you’re going to do those things, if you just want to collect battle pets and do lfr, you literally don’t have to touch any of that.
I feel like you’re basically saying if nothing gave any rewards, all of wow’s content would be amazing. If you like the content, do it. I like m+, I play several dungeons every week that I gain nothing from. If I don’t feel like doing torghast for the week, I don’t. If I don’t feel like doing Korthia dailies, I don’t ( 3rd day this week not doing them). Also unlike some people would have you believe, my characters don’t get blacklisted from raiding or m+ groups because of this either. As other people have pointed out, you’re using different standards to compare the same aspect of each game.
And it only matters if you raid. Even in raid content, the amount of “mandatory” related to “optimal” is hilariously low.
You basically will have a few things you do if you’re gearing to push at Savage content:
-Fill your tomes for the week (weekly clear of raid bosses + a bit of change in the way of a few random queues of current content for a day or two easily clears that for you earlier on)
-If you’re behind, either get an FC member or Static member (yes, they’re different) to craft you gear for a slot or two so you don’t fall behind
-Get your consumables (pots, flasks, food)
That’s it, aside from any preparatory work you do to learn mechanics by seeing what others did.
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MSQ.
If you want gear, you do your roulettes which take no time and cap tomestones weekly and buy those upgrades. That’s actually it but Crafted Gear is good enough to raid Savage in. World firsts for Savage are always done in Crafted Gear primarily.
That’s literally it. I’m not farming up random reps or doing daily quests because it gives me some passive effect for my character or chasing down legendary effects, or doing POTD so I can actually use those effects.
No, I’m saying that WoW’s content sucks and the only reason it has any engagement is solely due to the fact it’s pretty much required. Is it required as in a hard standard? Not really. Just like if I held a tire iron to your leg and said “Say this statement and I won’t break your leg.” Technically you do have a choice to not say it, but you won’t like the result for not doing what I want.
XIV has optional content that does really well, isn’t required or mandatory in the slightest. POTD does absolutely nothing to the player aside from achievements, killing time, and it can substitute as another means to level. It isn’t like my best weapon comes from clearing POTD floor 200 or it gives me some weird legendary effect that is my best one. I do POTD because I want to.
But that’s pretty much it. The last truly bit of optional content in this game of that magnitude was the Mage Tower.
Blizzard just can’t make content that’s good and that players want do. Instead they make boring content nobody wants to do and throw all your power behind doing it so they can say it was a success. If I open a restaurant and offer every customer 20 dollars who stops in, that doesn’t mean my restaurant is successful. Sure I’ll get more engagement, but it will be for all the wrong reasons.
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The fact that you and others think tokens somehow “don’t count” is why Blizzard doesn’t disclose this data. You are simply incorrect, and I’m not going to personally attack you but I’ll just say you’re wrong and you need to get a better understanding of how the real world and business work if you want to continue this conversation. It’s not really a wonder the developers of WoW look down on the community when they have such bad and incorrect takes. It’s actually kind of embarrassing how bad that take is TBH.
The TL;DR of this whole conversation is that you have a wrong understanding of how things work, and this is why you’re spinning up conspiracies to explain that which you can’t explain, simply because you refuse to see the simple and straightforward truth - Ion Hazzikostas is doing his job well.
If you google “FFXIV BiS Dancer” the first link you’ll find is a list for the optimal gear for my main job in FFXIV. (Dancer)
You don’t need to actually know what any of that gear is, just note that there are only two types of gear in that list - Edenmorn gear and Augmented Cryptlurker gear.
Edenmorn gear comes from the most recent raid, Eden. Augmented Cryptlurker gear comes from a vendor. You buy it using a currency called tomestones. These tomestones have a weekly cap and is earned from literally any max level PvE content, including the raids that drop the other BiS gear.
In order to enter that raid without that gear, I can either use crafted gear bought off the AH, catch up gear from Bozja, catch up gear bought with the cheaper tomestones (the kind that isn’t weekly capped) or gear from the most recent dungeon. (Difficulty comparable to a Mythic 0.)
So the only required content to be optimal in raiding is raiding, with many different PvE avenues to get my foot in the door there.
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Ultimately, I believe this is my issue so far. I’ve been paying attention to the story. I’m reading all the text. However, to me, the story so far seems like standard Final Fantasy JRPG. It’s just not my thing, but that’s what I expected.
That being said, I do think FFXIV handles the story way better than WoW. The story is way more easier to follow and is more coherent. Now that also being said, I prefer WoW’s story and world because I like Tolkienese high fantasy more.
On a side note, I do like FFXIV a lot and plan on sticking with it.
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“our game lacks content, but it’s all optional content we don’t have.”
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