I suppose it had potential, but it turned out to be MOTS with angel and devil skins and a less convenient Shattrath/Dalaran. With weak crafting and alt-hostile design choices. Bleh.
MMOs have PvP too, if you enjoy that sort of thing.
Right - but I meant that’s part of the problem. For those that don’t want PvP or competitive content, MMOs are screwed (or well, players like me that don’t want to bail between expansions are). It is the PvP/competitive aspect that can extend existing content for much longer.
Seems to me that the issue is players want to improve their characters. Once you get to the level cap, character improvement becomes a gear grind, and some of the best gear is gated behind group play. WoW has tried to mitigate that with the group finders but that loses the social aspects and a lot of random players are just assholes.
WoW does offer alternative activities. You can be a pet master and catch and level them all. You can dive into crafting. You can grind rep for cosmetics. You can do WoW’s theme park PvP, which does have gear rewards.
I do think WoW could crank out new content faster, but new content that doesn’t offer character improvement will only go so far.
I’ve done what Stusser has remarked on. The last 3-4 expansions I’ve played through the content, dicked around with the endgame stuff for a bit, and unsubbed. I’m fine doing that, but that makes me a solo player.
We’re in week 2 of the new affix and… it’s the same mini-bosses bosses and the same powers. This is already old. If you’re not a tank and therefore not doing your Prideful homework, Tormented is a worse affix.
Nonetheless, I find pushing M+ keys to be pretty fun on a variety of characters. I’ve been lucky to join two teams in the last few weeks that are pushing M+, so hopefully I’ll get S2 KSM relatively soon. We’re already doing +13s.
They’ve changed up the order of the mini-bosses so that changes it up a bit. I’ve also grown to really appreciate a couple of options that rogue has, like the Dagger of Necrotic Wounding and the shield choice that absorbs quite a lot of damage once you get it.
Fought all the raid bosses except the last two now and they’re pretty fun. I’ve heard the final boss is pretty rough for melee so that might be a pain in the butt though.
That’s the thing. WoW’s direction actively fights that.
There’s one big difference between FF14 and WoW. In WoW all content is irrelevant, it’s a speedrun through the last expansion, and it’s done. FF14 FORCES you to play through ALL the expansions, linearly.
One game makes its actual content relevant, the other makes irrelevant. In one people become engaged and care, in the other they become disenchanted.
I don’t really understand this. If I’m a veteran FF14 player and a new expansion comes out, do I need to have my character replay all the previous content? Can’t I just play the expansion? That’s how WoW works.
Mmorpgs that survive more than 10 years don’t survive just on veteran players.
If people speak about FF14, today, it’s not because the veterans woke up. It’s because the game is creating new interest and reaching new players. Otherwise everything would be silent on forums and news.
Yeah, I am not understanding this criticism. WoW forces vets to play through the expansion content in the same way (I assume) FFXIV forces vets to play through its expansion content. If I started WoW today, I’d still have to play through the content in the same way I am playing through FFXIV as a new player. There are differences in how the content is played (and what matters) but I am not seeing an overall difference in how leveling works for new players.
With that being said, the end game in WoW (for me) is raiding and all of the treadmill matters for raiders. When that treadmill becomes uninteresting, we stop raiding.
Keep in mind that HRose predicted that WoW was dying more than 10 years ago in his blog. He’s not an unbiased source. He needs it to crash and burn so he can be proven right all these years later. Never mind the fact that WoW is probably one of the most lucrative games ever made. I bet their revenue since 2004 is near $20 billion.
That’s not true at all from my recent experience starting up on a new server for Shadowlands . I didn’t play through all the content, all the expansions. I didn’t see Burning Crusade, Lich King, Pandaria, etc. I didn’t really see any of their dungeons. It’s pretty much turbo speed to catch me up to the current expansion, then play through that. Given how much content they have, I can understand why they want to fast track users to the current content, but still.
FF14 doesn’t work that way. A new player goes through the whole game, they see the story from start to finish and the content of the previous expansions remains integrated and part of the experience, not deprecated like it is in WoW.
Yes, the current WoW leveling experience is that you get from 1 to max by playing through the previous expansion and then the current expansion. After you do that once, then you can level through any of the expansions you want on new characters.
They did this because the criticism in WoW was that new players needed to play through eightish expansions’ worth of completely dead content, populated only by a handful of other new players and alts, for 120 levels. And they kept buffing the leveling xp, so you’d be lucky to get halfway through a given expansion’s storyline before you were high enough level for the next one. And since there was no reason not to move on, you would just abandon that storyline in order to get to max level, because that’s where the focus always is.
As SadleyBradley points out, that is really not a fair take on the current content. Prior to Shadowlands, you actually had to do what you describe and it was a very long slog through content. Thankfully they squished the levels back to 60.
Edit: i will say that I will probably have little interest in slogging through FFXIV content on an alt, but, from what I understand, I won’t have to do that because I can use the same character in different jobs. That is a material difference and one that would make WoW a better expereince.
lol yep, I was about to say we’ve been reading these same posts for fifteen years
Heh, right now in WoW you can’t even change specs, let alone classes. Well, you can, but if you want to play well? Well that usually requires switching Covenants. And levelling up your renown to fill out your Soulbind tree. Oh, and you’ll probably need to craft a new Legendary too. You’re looking at 2-3 weeks (depending on how much grinding you do) to become fully effective in your new spec.
Oh and if you don’t like it? Well now your old Covenant considers you a “Betrayer.” So switching back to it is even harder than switching away from it.
Yeah, no thanks. I’m sticking with the specs I’ve got and if I stop liking them then I’ll just quit.
This is a double-edged sword. I am mostly focusing on MSQ and Job quests and I am like 10 levels above the MSQ. Also, I don’t unlock expansion quests until I’ve completed the previous story. I keep thinking “oh, I’m level 37, I unlock the next expansion in 13 levels” but that is so, so wrong.
This is where FFXIV made a really great decision. While the zones themselves might be sparely populated, the dungeons remain relevant forever. So yes, FFXIV makes you play through 80 levels of content, but that content is A) all tied to a main story and B) not dead.
FFXIV strives hard for “journey over destination”. WoW ended up being ‘race to endgame’ (I’m not entirely sure that was their intent/design, but how it ended up).
Can you solo the dungeons?
This is an accurate statement. Also, because you can level all jobs to max level, you are your own alt.