Subjective, Black Desert is notorious for the intense amount of grinding required… unless you just buy everything via their ingame store…Blade and Soul also relies on it’s in-game store for revenue.
Imho, that’s the real reason some peeps keep evangelising some of these other franchises, they simply don’t like/can’t afford paying a sub…and do like either P2W and/or other players paying for their new content development and to keep the servers running…so ‘fun’, translates as ‘FREE!’…it would be less disingenuous if they were honest about that fact.
Well everyone talking about that very friendly, non-toxic FFXIV community, but whenever some discussions starts about wow vs ffxiv (in reddit, youtube, etc.) - these ffxiv players are so toxic and offensive towards wow players, I am kinda happy I am not playing ff, if the community is like that
Oh and also in 2hours having 110min to read text/run and 10min to fight - that’s not for me.
If the discussion stay there is ok. I found the community in ff better than wow INGAME. i was scared at first to be forced to run dungeon for the story… but there wasnt toxity at all in my runs. so for me is ok
BUT
This is the thing that kills ffxiv for me. I die by boredom and i cant play more than one month in a row.
Y probably in-game community is different story than reddit/yt
My mmorpgs where combat/action oriantated, now after 15years of such games is hard to switch
i feel you. After battling against mobs every meter in the last expansion, now when i quest in empty spaces with npc willing to talk A LOT, i feel uncomfortable.
OP pretty much missed all the important points.
The Thorgast of FF14 is not mandatory for any endgame content, which makes it optional.
If you want to do it, just do it, that’s all.
And unlike in WoW, in FF you can do any dungeons/raids/trials from any expansion on any level. And you can get several rewards from it.
WoW has TW… like mage tower, four weeks in one year or smth like that? No thanks.
Also, FF devs wont trash the previous contents just like in WoW. Huge differences.
Arguably it is only completely free if you want to spend a lot of your time relaunching the launcher and watching as you get booted out of the queue again.
I wouldn’t mind this part too much but the fact that the launcher is closed each time you get booted form the queue and have to wait for it to ‘update’ before opening and allowing you to try and queue again gets pretty stale, pretty quickly.
From my experience of FCs in 14 people appear friendly but seem to be pretty shallow. For example if there’s drama (which there seems to often be) or if someone leaves, it’s rare if people in that FC will talk to you again. So from best friends to zero instantly.
Also be careful about being negative in anyway about the story to anyone, because some people take it personally and start being toxic.
Also just from my experience, people seem to be competitive and individualistic about doing content (if it’s savage and extreme) so be prepared to achieve it by yourself.
Alot of it is simply herd mentality. Be it the state of wow, the company anything which causes streamers or big names to cause mass hysteria
Not alot of people are morally obligated to keep playing anyway as they shouldn’t be. For some people it’s very easy to quit when their circle of friends die on it too
Adding to this, it is entirely possible for someone to play both MMOs and have fun. The whole “us vs them” narrative is as bitterly toxic as it is infectious.
Im a story person and Jesus Christ, the narrative and its presentation in FF is an another dimension. They literally drown you in dialogue and cutscenes that are meaningful. They have solid, cinematic camera work. They treat the player character like an actual person. If right now i interact with Jaina in Shadowlands, its like we are total strangers, despite me questing for her since Theramore Isle in vanilla wow. Over in Eorzea? It just makes sense. The story makes sense. The character motivations make sense. Its consistent. Its logical. I still cant wrap my head around how they just gave you an animated cutscenes where they explained to you how life, souls and the cosmos works, long before they send you on your first cosmic adventure. Over here in Azeroth meanwhile every new story developement has people scratching their heads in confusion, because some part of it inevitably contradicts previous stuff.
Oh, and armor dyes. Imagine just being able to express yourself in a roleplaying game.
