World of Warcraft: Current Year

The game engine, and the way it deals with combat encounters / the camera and interactions with the World / NPCs is still rooted in the console heritage & system designs from FFXI.

It's so obvious if you've played FFXI, and it's not surprising that they didn't stray too far, given the primary intended audience. Before ARR, FFXIV didn't even have jumping. Even now it's still a psuedo-3D "corridor" game just like FFXI was, just much more heavily disguised.

I've had three serious attempts at it, and it's always been the engine/combat that drives me away. I STILL find fighting mobs on a low level WoW character infinitely more engaging and fun than combat in FFXIV at any level, regardless of skillset. I really wish that wasn't the case.

The only thing about FFXIV that resembles FFXI is the aesthetics. The fuck are you talking about?

Lodi said:

Made it up to Shadowbringers, can confirm it was still boring. I don't understand the appeal at all. Even WoW in its fucked up state is far more entertaining to me.

Not knocking you if you like FF14, but it's not for me. I would love to steal the housing and crafting from it and put it into WoW however.

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I disagree with the narrative that Shadowbringers is the best shit ever. For me it was just alright. Learning and raiding with different DPS and healing jobs at end game is pretty fun though.

And to be honest, getting through WoW Shadowlands was easier but it’s all forgettable. For the many parts of Shadowbringers that I found boring, at least there’s a lot of other decent story parts that I remember.

Chersk said:

To top it all off the combat is probably the worst out of all the popular MMO's and I've played them all.

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been said, but you do need to max out for combat to be clean rotation wise on some classes.

Chersk said:

I think ESO is a far better game to take that approach with unless you're really into JRPG's. I am definitely not.

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Agree with you 100%. For Single player RPG experience inside of an MMO, ESO shits on any other game out in terms of story and solo experience.

And yeah it shits on FFXIV in that regard, but I won't say ESO is a better game than FFXIV

Neranja said:

You know World of Warcraft is royally fucked when people are discussing how unenjoyable a different MMO is, or how the third game is better. In it's own thread. After a content patch drops.

The cold hard truth: You can have the better game and the better combat system, but it does not matter if a) all you have to do is grind to get to the "good" parts, and b) if your community is toxic, especially to new players.

Grinding in an MMORPG is somewhat ok, but with the playerbase becoming older and (hopefully) responsible adults with a real life, the grind for the main vertical content progression should be less and less with time, not more and more.

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I think we're mostly talking about FF14 because people who like it or passionately dislike WoW have come into the WoW thread. Also, more pathetically, we're talking about it because some random influencer decided to show his disdain with WoW and we are all reactionary sheep.

At the end of the day, I think the theme park mmo is just old and we're all bored because we've invested entirely too much in this shit.

Nothing is going to please everyone, obviously, although if people are into stories at all, it's pretty tough to imagine Shadowbringers having zero appeal. I mean if you're someone who spacebars everything, etc when it comes to that stuff, obviously you're already out before the discussion even begins. It is hardly just the MMO players that rate it highly, many JRPG fans who never played an MMO before rank the ShB story up there as the best of the last decade, if not ever.

But it's not for everyone I guess, and frankly quite a bit of it relies on the backstory they have been building up since ARR. Very long wait on the payoff. Not everyone enjoys that slow of a burn.

I personally enjoy both games when they're good, it just feels like the FF devs are finding ways to improve on their formula (if you're into it) while Blizzard kind of continues to ruin WoW by weighing it down with too many extra systems, etc.

Merrith said:

I personally enjoy both games when they're good, it just feels like the FF devs are finding ways to improve on their formula (if you're into it) while Blizzard kind of continues to ruin WoW by weighing it down with too many extra systems, etc.

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promising the return of set bonuses with a raid emphasis in SL, and then shitting out a socket system killed WoW.

do what you promised and talked about instead of pulling the rug again with another system

Asmongold means literally nothing to anyone who has a life. These games are not that important.

After a 17 year run, it doesn't surprise me that WoW has "shit the bed" a bunch of times. It's astonishing that it's even still this popular.

What I disagree with is this idea that FF14 is some great alternative. Maybe it is for the less initiated? It offers almost nothing new, and does very little that matters better than WoW.

Also, hot take: JRPGs never had good stories. CRPGS ate their lunch. I say this as a fan of the gameplay of JRPGs. Maybe Xenogears had the parts for a great story but that second disc ruined that.

I will say that while the socket system sounds like set bonuses, I thought the actual "return of class sets/bonuses" wasn't actually happening until 9.2. That isn't to say the new system can't be judged on its own, just that it likely isn't their actual "return to sets" they promised.

So two years into the expac then. Not bad for a small indie studio

It's just horrific what 9.1 has done to guilds. I have several endgame alts in various progression guilds. 0/400 rosters decimated with only myself online. Guild chat all backdated, people calling out to each other asking what happened. Occasionally one of the guilds will post a MOTD update saying come join this other guild. It's like swinging from trees.

Just 4 weeks ago these guilds were teeming with life. 100 people on and running high keys and raiding with two teams.

I haven't even logged in to do progression pre-9.1 content unlock all week. I just can't get up for it.

jayrebb said:

So two years into the expac then. Not bad for a small indie studio

It's just horrific what 9.1 has done to guilds. I have several endgame alts in various progression guilds. 0/400 rosters decimated with only myself online.

Just 4 weeks ago these guilds were teeming with life. 100 people on and running high keys and raiding with two teams.

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Honestly I let my sub run out awhile ago, but why would people have been playing a few weeks ago but suddenly aren't now? It was pretty boring by the time I quit, I can't imagine it being teeming with people still that close to 9.1 unless they were solely trying to clear the raid or something before dipping...with everyone suddenly leaving now that there is new stuff to do.

Merrith said:

Honestly I let my sub run out awhile ago, but why would people have been playing a few weeks ago but suddenly aren't now? It was pretty boring by the time I quit, I can't imagine it being teeming with people still that close to 9.1 unless they were solely trying to clear the raid or something before dipping...with everyone suddenly leaving now that there is new stuff to do.

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Might be waiting for the raid tier to come out, but I'm thinking it's people opting out of 9.1

If you can't do pre-9.1 content unlock chores, I don't know why they'd all come back for the raid tier. I'm PUGing everything the past 2 months.

You need to have a 18 or 19 key timed this week for next week to maintain prog, and nobody did it. There was a concrete reason to log in this week, to maintain placing with regard to M+. Maybe they just are doing the raids only, I don't know.

I preferred to continue 9.0 progression, even though I was running out of content. It's really hard to get up for this season.