I’m having a sub, and I received the 2002 error several times as well, it doesn’t change much 
The majority of any game’s population will be it’s soft-core, casual playerbase. FFXIV caters A LOT to people who want to play an actual RPG with a story. It caters A LOT to people who are looking for a huge game to play, with a huge story to get immersed in.
FFXIV, by the devs’ own admission is designed so there’s no wrong way to play it. Want hardcore raiding? Go ahead, it’s there. Want casual stroll through an amazing RPG story? It’s there for the taking. Want to just unlock classes, transmog? There. Want to focus on professions, life skills, trading? There.
The way FFXIV keeps its old content alive is amazing and it simply is an insult to compare it to WoW. You can log in right now and experience raid progression for any raid you want. You can queue with an unsynched party if you want to blast it for the loot, or you can queue with a synchronized party if you want a more accurate experience, or you can queue with a minimum ilvl party if you want to relive some “mythic raiding” days of old.
Meanwhile in WoW, the entire old world might as well be deleted. While you’re leveling up, you CANNOT experience a coherent narrative. This has been the case ever since I came back during 7.3 and then 7.3.5 - every 10-20 levels, the campaign you were doing would be cut short so you can go to another expansion. In Shadowlands it’s even worse - you get to experience 2 zones, then off to the Shadowlands.
This causes players to not care at all about the game’s world and narrative. It is clear Blizzard does not care one bit about the player experience while leveling.
FFXIV is good because it gets players to care about it. Nobody cares about WoW, especially Blizzard. Blizz only cares about you doing the 8 dungeons and one raid. All other content you need to be bullied into doing. If you don’t do Torghast, you won’t be able to do your dungeons. If you don’t do your renown weeklies, you won’t be able to do your raids.
It’s bad.
Your view of FFXIV is filtered through your WoW lens. In fact, FFXIV is a much, much different game. It will take you months to just experience the leveling, and because the game is not obsessed with “endgame” like WoW, it almost feels like playing a giant RPG.
Meanwhile, the leveling in WoW exists exclusively to waste your time. There’s no other purpose to it. It is garbage, it doesn’t teach you how to play any class. It is only there to justify the existence of the level boost.
Unlike WoW, FFXIV takes care of its old content, causing an expansion to feel like an expansion to an already giant game. Meanwhile, with each expansion, WoW seems to be getting smaller, because all non-current content might as well be deleted.
We’re not gonna mention how FFXIV’s gearing system is superior, how every class has a class campaign, most of which are good enough to justify you rolling every class just to see it.
FFXIV gets people to care for its story, for its world and characters and people get invested in it. Just like WoW used to do. This is what made WoW a giant back in the day. Not farming 8 dungeons for 2 years, but having people CARE. Nobody cares about WoW. Evidently, even Blizzard doesn’t.
7 Likes
You made only one mistake, fixed it for ya.
2 Likes
Want pvp? Yikes 
Because WoW PVP is balanced… yea
Want fluid combat? Yikes 
There is already so much info about the differences between these games, so I’ll instead say this. If you are planning on trying out the latest expansion and have a normal daytime job, I would not recommend playing right now. The queue times are insane. I get home from work around 3 in the afternoon and already then I can expect 3+ hours of queue before getting in. If you are home after 5 in the afternoon you can pretty much forget about playing at all that day, because those queues will be 4-5 hours instead and if you get disconnected at any point during that time and are not sitting ready in front of your computer to instantly log in again, your spot is lost and you get moved all the way to the back of the line.
The only way to log into the game without insane queue times is doing it early, like before 10 in the morning.
Your spot is reserved for a short period of time if you log back in. I’ve tested it and it worked.
The biggest issue was the 2002 error but it’s gone already.
EU was not able to receive additional servers due to some shortage, so we are basically screwed 
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That’s true but in most cases you can’t really leave your computer while sitting in queue. So it’s doable but I wouldn’t recommend trying the game right now if your only option to play is afternoon/evenings.
Cjoregast is a mandatory piece of content. Ffxiv is better aboot one matter which is : not forcing players to log in on a daily basis, which wow fails at since Legion. And classes are better designed, in terms of rotation.
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Honorable mention: When I first discovered the daily quest limit is a thing in FF14, I was shocked. Not in a bad way tho, it basically can’t force me to do all the dailies for hours every damn day.
Which is nice, in my opinion. Got enough PTSD from WoW dailies thx.
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I hate you for saying “Yikes” not once, but twice.
It is interesting that it’s there for people who want it, but I will admit I haven’t had any luck getting into a party for it. I guess if I looked into the party finder I’d find some people for it, but otherwise… Yeah, it’s not that active. Did see in the patch notes that it got some work put into it, so it might be worth having a look.
Combat seems pretty fluid to me. Or rather, more methodical rather than hyperactive. I’m not sure which I prefer.
The point is not whether it is active or not, the point is that it is pure garbage and I doubt that will change.
The PVP is actually very fun and very much alive! I enjoy it way more than I do WoW’s. It has a very cool 72 player 3-team pvp mode on top of the smaller pvp modes. The arena focuses more on blasting, fighting, movement and less on crowd control. Let’s be fair - WoW’s arena is all about cc-ing one player and hoping to blow them up in 2 seconds. It’s really not exactly fun, especially for the person getting blown up. Dying while being unable to control your character is peak anti-fun.
All classes have different balancing and skillsets for the pvp. Where the pve has tons of class complexity, long and complex rotation with lots of procs, the pvp mode for every class has much fewer and different skills. In pvp, FFXIV classes work more closely to WoW classes. This is because you cannot be expected to set up and execute the long rotations in pvp. It’s as if the game has actual… game design, acknowledges pvp and pve have different needs and designs around those needs.
Meanwhile, Blizz even barely cares for the pvp.
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It is ridiculous to compare ff14 with wow pvp at all. While playing wow pvp adrenaline is constantly working, while playing ff14 pvp I struggle not to fall asleep. I guess ff14 pvp is for 50+ gamers.
It wasn’t a 2002 error it was genuinely because I was a free player and was being removed in favour of paying players.
If it was just a standard error I would have persisted with my free account rather than buying a months sub.
Because to Yoshi-P’s credit, he understands that mmorpg should move away from daily login and fomo if the scene is to thrive. Maybe some Blizzard designers should embrace that, more especially with wow playerbase aging.
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You really fine wow pvp so fun and interesting???
No, it isn’t. I did farm arena in 9.0. It was fun, but it wasn’t really adrenaline-fueled. You just get all the addons, you get on voice chat with your mate, and you blow people up. It’s nice and easy, you can play it for 10 hours a day and not get tired. I know, cuz I did. That’s not adrenaline.
If you want adrenaline-fueled pvp, I highly recommend ArcheAge. Easily the best MMO ever with the best pvp ever, the best open world pvp, too. The tab-targeting combat is insane, the game is very fast paced, while commanding you to execute very complex commands and combos, skills constantly proccing into each other. It is amazing. When a zone falls in a state of war in ArcheAge… that is adrenaline-fueled pvp.
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Also another advantage of FF is while there is tons of stuff to do, nothing feels mandatory. There are some daily bonuses tied to doing random dungeons, raids, etc but I don’t find myself stressing if I miss out.
There is no borrowed power grind or time gated content where you fear falling behind.
For me personally though I found that classes can get a bit dull over time because you have no variables to mix things up like talents, legendaries, set bonuses, etc. Also, if you choose to be a Paladin in FF you are a tank. Period. So while it looks easier on paper to multi-role in FF, you need to level up and gear 3 specs (or jobs) to be equal to 1 class in WoW.
I also found that the combat lacks a bit of depth in terms of utility and CC. It’s mostly focused around throughput and dodging mechanics. The only hard CC in the game is a short stun which is mostly reserved for tanks. This keeps the class balance in check, but at the cost of combat feeling a bit dull. At least for me.
The TL;DR for overall impression is that FF shines where WoW does not and vice versa. WoW has in my opinion more engaging combat and class design, and a broader range of end game options through raids, M+ and PvP. FF basically has raids or trials (single raid bosses) for those who care about difficult end game stuff. Their “expert” dungeons are equal to Mythic 0 in WoW and the PvP is a joke because the engine is quite slow/unresponsive and there is almost no CC.
FF has better RPG elements such as storytelling and depth to systems like gathering and crafting. FF also has a slight edge in terms of transmog (or Glamour as they call it), mostly because you can dye your gear and you have lots of options for non-armor like appearances like suits, hats or other outfits which complements the RP aspect of your character.