I miss when guilds would just do pvp for the fun of it , not particularly to get a mount or achievements or rating /ranks just for fun.
I miss when guilds would do raid achievements whilst the tier is current , now if you even propose to try to do one , everyone moans and complains " no I just want to clear as fast possible , get loot , then go back to forums and reddit and tell people how WoW is so bad and anti social"
I miss when players would send you mats to make guilds flasks , pots , cauldrons , but because everything is so damn cheap now , it’s like just go buy them for yourself.
I miss when players could play a spec / class they wanted. Now it’s like you’re an evoker go why are destruction ? Why are you disc ? Why are mistweaver ? Why are you playing Rogue ?
I miss guild chat , I miss that green text. Now everything is on discord. Events , sign ups , everything , it happens people are unaware , yet we are in game everything evening. You find out an event is canceled , not enough signs for it on discord and it’s like hey we online we didn’t know. So checking discord has become a job in itself.
My guild is doing all kind of professions stuff together. Including providing for consumables.
We just play what we enjoy.
Discord can be on a 2nd screen. And it is accessable when you are not online in the game (for example at work). It is way easier maintainable than ingame. We are more unaware about the things ingame than in discord. I am also often missing guild chat while playing. Discord has way better chat-overview.
Profession wise, guild orders made it even easier to get stuff made by others, it’s great. They just stick an order on and someone capable can pick it up and make it for them.
I know, right, it is really confusing.
But I am still surprised how people are often hanging out there like if it was in a real place. Some people chatting, some dancing, some RPing, some are actually playing music for others to hear, some are crafting or shoping.
Usually in WoW these days, the major cities have people just doing the practical stuff like trade and storage, some crafting and other than than mostly AFKing.
I do not know if it is the age of the game or something else, but I see so much footage of people hanging around in Storm/Og inside and outside the gates that is a large contrast to now in Valdraken or the older cities. At least on my server
I wanted to like FF but I have tried twice now and just didn’t take to it
Though I wouldn’t expect to see that many in Org/SW considering the current expansion capital is Valdrakken. I only ever seem to go to Org if I’m passing through to get somewhere else.
Having said that I’ve generally never had random conversations with people around me even in WoW. Occasionally if we’re all waiting for some spawn. The couple of times I tried to ask people stuff in FF didn’t really get any answers either. I could ask my friends though. There is a similar newcomer type channel in FF but that moves at a million miles an hour that I didn’t find it helpful.
When it comes to this FF, you either get hooked into the story and its world or it just wont stick.
Yes the lack of a general channel is a pain in FF14. You often have to rely on the novice network or the Free Company (aka Guild).
I might end up finding my way back to the novice network by becoming a mentor (it is easy for the professions version).
When you find one of the people who are willing to help with something, they often really get out of their way to help. It can be really humbling.
Of course it holds no value to you, you didnt do it.
For people that know that they did it it holds value to them.
Thinking that you are the same as the people that do it because you bought a boost is only a thing in your mind. No one else thinks you are the same.
Its obvious that you bought a boost to anyone with eyes. if you have 430 ilvl and you are 9/9 Mythic then you bought a boost
I think it also depends on how people find the server tick system to be, and whether they can hold out until they are finished with the base game.
As I personally found 90% of the base game’s story extremely boring. Heavensward started picking up the pace and the story quality improved as well.
I am also finding the dungeon system to be irritating as well. You setup your hotbar with your abilities at 60 for example, but if you end up going into alevel 16 dungeon you suddenly find yourself stripped of 60% of your toolkit, and thus your rotation is different entirely based on what level of dungeon you got into.
the first arc is pretty borring, then it picks up a lot in Heavensward, then it drops a bit in Stormblood and then it launches upwards like a rocket from Shadowbringers and after.
Yeah it is quite irritating to lose a lot of the toolkit based on level. But this is the way they avoid obsoleting the older content.
I think this began around WoD. This was when they started to systemise gameplay with a check-list of tasks to complete.
WoD had:
Daily cooldowns on your Garrison buildings.
Scouting Table with a daily objective to go complete.
NPCs turning up with vendor items or with quests.
The Mission Table to complete daily.
Then Legion had:
Emissaries telling you which WQs to do.
Scheduled Invasions every 18 hours setting your calendar up for you.
AP grind.
An endless treadmill of gear from various sources all with titanforging and random sockets.
M+ taking over as the king of all the sources of gear and AP.
After all this Players no longer logged in and pondered on what they wanted to do. They had a check list of tasks to complete before they could even begin to think about what they wanted to do.
So many player no longer remember how to do stuff for fun or to set goals for themselves.
Not possible people have fun doing these things no?
Something can be challanging, and fun. They dont obsess over m+ scores, they simply enjoy pushing to the limits and use it to gauge another players experience.
Its fine if u dislike that, your absolutely allowed to not find it fun, but to speak on behalf of a games audience seems wild
Players have never had to ponder on what they want to do, WoW has always been a theme park mmorpg.
From vanilla objectives have always been the method of putting content in.
But they do? Lol.
People dont push m+, attempt heroic / mythic raids etc etc because of a lack of “personal goal or fun”.
If u start a season saying “imma get 3k rio” thats a personal goal lol. If u say ur gonna finish a heroic raid. Thats a personal goal. And plenty have fun pushing for these things.
It may be a part of it yeah. Altho I think ‘making your own fun’ was somewhat lost years before. I’m guessing it has to do with intrinsic motivation vs extrinsic motivation, rewards can mess up intrinsic motivation. And then enjoyment and creativity suffer. Some really interesting research has been done on this.
WoW is a theme park mmorpg was since vanilla. Lol. The games always been level to a maximum level. And obtain gear via specific content.
Youve never had another approach
I mean yes levelling, proffessions and gold making have lost alot of weight in terms of relevence to the game. But they still are objectives and not choices realistically.
Wow hasn’t been fun for a very long time. If you’re looking for a good mmo experience I’d suggest giving classic hardcore a shot. It’s surprisingly fun, world is full of people, people group up and help each other, it’s just a great mmo experience. I feel like retail is a lost cause at this point.
I’d say from TBC on that was the case. Vanilla WoW was much lighter on that aspect, probably because leveling took quite a while unless you optimised it. Many didn’t do that and just went slowly. Because you go slow anyway, might as well do dumb stuff for fun in between. Many didn’t raid, or only stuck a toe in it here and there. After vanilla the mindset definitely changed to a more streamlined and optimised path.
But levelling is still a theme park experience? Lol.
Its on strict guide lines to exactly how u accomplish the task lol, you couldnt level via proffessions nor pvp back then, which meant you basically still were bound to specific objectives.
Every task had a fixed objective, its just aspects can be considered more casual friendly in vanilla because it offered deeper experiences outside of raiding because levelling was difficult and proffessions ment something aswell as gold farming led to somethjng
Since I came back in Legion (I quit few weeks after Cataclysm), I haven’t touched Mythic, haven’t done any raid above LFR, haven’t played arenas and hardly did any other PvP. Play the game how you like.
I do like collecting mounts, titles, transmogs, pets, toys… up to a point.
I wouldn’t buy those boost for anything.
People have different kinds of fun and if its not there anymore: quit, take a break, play something else… whatever works.
Play the game how you like.