It’s barely even disruptive with the rate they appear these days. Maybe once or twice a week, people have a momentary “sir this is a wendy’s” giggle then it dies off and gets forgotten.
I was initially tricked into thinking it was beneficial to have every class available on a single character. It worked ‘okay’ at first but over time that just meant giving the development team the excuse to strip any and all unique flavour from the classes in question. A problem that grows more intense with every passing expansion.
It was also a novelty to have each crafting class be its own thing but then, again, it was so heavily streamlined over time (along with the rest of the game) that all the flavour there vanished as well.
It’s also a pretty terrible game for role-play, as the MSQ assumes your character is the biggest hero ever and most aspects of the game world revolve exclusively around that very same hero. At least in WoW, you can easily justify being a generic footman in the army.
Entire zones in FFXIV are built around only being accessible by a handful of individuals.
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Another thing I dislike is the zone separation system setup.
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I agree with this.
I quit for FFXIV in BfA (8.1 to be exact) and didn’t start playing WoW ‘seriously’ until 10.0 again. It was really easy for me to just join back to WoW, no incredible grind or anything to just catch up and play with my friends. Was really helpful when I was still raiding in FFXIV.
I actually personally prefer RPing in WoW over FFXIV as well, even if FFXIV has housing etc. It’s just easier to get back into RP as well? I’m not really a big fan of the social life RP that seems to be the norm. (Granted I haven’t really tried it out!)
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FFXIV has its issues, world design being the biggest offender (plenty of zones look lovely but don’t feel alive, aren’t explorable, etc.) but other than that I prefer it to WoW in just about every other way.
People aren’t wrong for liking one or the other more, and both have their upsides. It’s easier to find random RP here, for example, and to explore the world. I’m in an FC that goes on adventures with big, long-term story events so I get plenty of that over there, but RP certainly doesn’t flow as naturally when you have to go to pre-arranged events.
However, part of my issue with WoW RP is that I struggle to take Azeroth as a setting seriously anymore for the most part. I can’t take all the pop culture references and Gen X humour.
When it comes to game content though I more or less ignore most of it in WoW because I just don’t enjoy it, whereas I love raiding and the like in XIV.
Given I’ve got a foot in both games I’ll give a bit of an opinion
FF14 is a good game, sure, but WoW is ALSO a good game, neither one is superior to the other because BOTH have their flaws.
FF14 is so incredibly alt hostile, you can’t mail things between your characters on the same server, you HAVE to go through every single expansion in order so you can get to the current content and you HAVE to start from scratch with every new job you decide to play.
WoW used to have the same sort of levelling style sure, but now you can just pick one expansion to level through and when you reach the cap (usually 12-10 levels from max) you can start doing the current expac.
And while you have to start fresh with every new class/character you make in WoW, the specs the classes have don’t mean you have to get a whole new gear set when levelling, just run with what you have.
The AETHER CURRENTS system in HW onwards is so damn painful to fill out just to be able to have faster mount speed/flying, compared to WoW that only has you learn riding skill at a certain level up to max (But NOW you get the riding speed automatically at certain levels).
I’ll keep it there just to not turn this into even more of an essay BUT
Both games are good, both have their flaws, is one more respectful towards ones time than others? I doubt it, but in the end tis an opinion.
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I think it offers some great benefits when it comes to levelling and new players since it´s pretty nice to be able to switch to different class if you decide the one you´re playing isn´t for you (or if they release new class), but once you´ve figured things out and get to endgame, all the issues start showing. Your bags start filling (it doesn´t help that their version of transmog still requires you to have the physical item) and you are unable to get the rewards from the content you want to do more than once per day/week. It feels like FF14 views gearing alt jobs as part of the core gameplay loop (at least for casuals) where you´re meant to gear your main, then go for your alts in each season.
Which means, if you´re one job player, you run out of things to do quickly (unlike in WoW which overall is designed with people who only play one character in mind too), but if you´re altoholic, you won´t be able to get everything in reasonable time (unlike in WoW where you can be no life sweatlord who gears up 5 characters in first 3 weeks of the patch if you want to).
Final Fantasy 14 is more ‘respectful’ of someone’s time because content is a side-thing you can do, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. If you intend to use the game for anything else than appearance hunting or roleplay, you will find yourself quite underwhelmed by the end content experience of the game, and it is meant to be that way. The Lead Developer has even mentioned that if you run out of things to do, that’s not their problem, and that you should unsubscribe if you’re not fine with that.
Most of this ‘respect’ for your time often comes in the shape of those who feel their time respected being new to the game and having nearly a full decade worth of content ahead of them before they truly get to experience FFXIV’s content drought, or the FOMO of holiday per-year exclusive gear in a game where appearance hunting is one of the main forms of end game, or the fear of losing a piece of housing after having grinded your soul out to get it, and so on.
Whether you like one MMO or the other more is one thing; but more respectful of your time? Please. If they had any interest in that, do you think Square Enix would be selling a game on a monthly fee?
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i will add on to what i said earlier in that: i spent those many hours in the game because i thought it had a genuinely remarkable story. heavensward? kino. azim steppes? kino. Shadowbringers? standing ovation. endwalker? kino. villains? if wows had half the rizz that gaius, zenos, emet selch or fandango had we would be lucky. story wise it is a beautiful game.
but thats ignoring that until level 60 your skillbar will be one of the most uninteresting assortments in mmos today. i PITY people who saw what dragoon looked like from clips of estinien and got what lancer and early dragoon now is. like wow the game has suffered from skill removals over the years.
And i speak again as someone who did level every job to 80 in shadowbringers for the Amaro mount doing so granted you: it quickly highlights how when your not running for weekly tomestones your endgame content amounts to just levelling. when you cant do that your options run out fast. most people are altoholics on some scale. this game does not support that. at all.
if you made it all the way to current content i hope you genuinely feel the investment was worth it. if like many you couldnt face the ARR slog, even with the 1-50 questline cut down, couldnt blame you.
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Hi it’s me.
I think maybe I could’ve gotten through it if I hadn’t levelled through WoW prior. The story did intrigue me but after the nth round of fetch quests and kill quests with very little to break up the monotony I called it quits. Limsa is great though and it’s theme is a banger.
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I love both XIV and WoW, and neither can really fill the others niche in my heart, so I’ll keep playin’ them both.
Don’t really get the point of the thread, but hey, so long as discussions going right
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honestly the music department is something i cant find fault with from start to finish. soken and the music team pump bangers every expac and its almost inhuman how the quality never really dips.
revenge of the horde gang rise up
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I don’t think you can compare the two games tbh.
WoW is an MMOrpg whereas FFXIV is RPGmmo.
I think each game does something well that the other does bad, ex. combat in FFXIV vs WoW where WoW by far does it better, meanwhile encounter design is for the most part chefs kiss in FF while WoW’s is such a mess and so reliant on WAs its not even funny anymore.
Both games have some FOMO, but WoWs is BY FAR and large worse than FFs, at least if I miss an outfit from an event I could spend a few € on buying it or nabbing it on sale whereas with WoW I’m 
out of luck. I don’t think either system is good, but at least one game gives me the option.
And for people being all weh weh 100hr ARR, frankly you can skip every cutscene, watch a recap and enjoy the good content. People say you shouldn’t skip well, do it anyway, who cares.
MSQ being obligatory is a peeve though, sometimes I just wanna hop straight to content on my actual alts and I can’t bc I am gatekept vs WoW where ilvl is the only bar.
Again, two different audiences can’t compare the two. And I can say that from a viewpoint of having done hard content in both games.
Editing in to say, people piling on FF’s low lvl combat as if WoWs low lvl combat isn’t god awful either. Both games only play well at max and that is a matter of fact.
SUCH DEVESTATION!
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FF14’s community is amazing and very welcoming until you have a disagreement over how the levelling works.
Granted I’m not the smartest tool in the shed, I did do some afking, and I occasionally tried out some features like the Golden Saucer, it took me roughly around the same time to do the 1-80 mandatory story content in FF14 Shadowbringers as it did for me to level one of my WoW Classic Vanilla characters.
It doesn’t matter how fantastic your storyline is, who wants to sit through 4-5 days /played of story campaign to join their friend who went “hey man come join our raiding guild!”
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The only reason I didn’t read the OP post was that it just didn’t seem respectful towards my time.
Except FFXIV doesn’t really carter actual RP.
No dedicated RP servers, no speech bubbles, and if you use an addon to add the latter it’s ban reason, just like every other RP addon that could actually make RP more feasible is.
And all the races looks like anime humans in carnival costumes.
WoW is not perfect for RP either, but at least it does some effort to make it feasible, and it is still the best current MMORPG for it, and at least it does allows adding addons to make up for what it does lack to make it the perfect media for RP.
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I aint reading all that
I am happy for u tho
Or sorry that it happened
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That’s not what they mean. It’s that it’s an RPG video-game - one that’s heavy on the story etc. - not that it’s a game built for RP.
RPGmmo is absolutely the right way to describe it. The game very much feels like a Japanese Roleplaying Game with an MMO at the end.
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I’ve also never actually met anyone who’s been banned for using RP addons on FFXIV. The unofficial rule just seems to be ‘don’t advertise it in our faces and we won’t penalise you for it’. SE are more concerned with stuff like DPS trackers.
Case in point, I use a load of RP-related plug-ins without any issue whatsoever. Including one that adds speech bubbles.
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The only ones you can actually get in trouble for are ones used to harass other players. Even if you use damage meters, so long as you don’t bully anyone with them you’re fine.
I will also say that, while the game certainly makes it far less intuitive, some of the best RP I’ve ever had has all been on FFXIV. I’m not here to defend Yoshi-P’s honour or anything (unless he asked me to o7) but, while WoW is certainly much more accessible in terms of RP, I find the setting quite lacking.
Funnily enough, even some things like manners of speech are a big thing I noticed in XIV. WoW NPCs don’t have a consistent way of speaking - you can get a knight who talks like an American teenager while his friend talks like an actual knight of the realm. Stuff like that is a lot more standardised over there and it influences RP rather nicely. Makes the world feel more believable, even if it’s not as explorable (which I wish it was).
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