As a WoW Player, what do you think about FF XIV?

[Dispraise]

Short answer: Haven't tried it, don't intend to, can't even begin to pretend to make any sort of comparison between the two.

Shorter answer: I don't.

[Grevie]

After playing wow for 8 years, I switched to FF14, i find the game way more interesting than WoW.
In my opinion the game is superior, people complain about the 2.5 GCD, but some classes will
lower that with skills that they get later, plus when you raid you will find out than some of the
battles are as hard and some fights in WoW Raid, that being said if you check the patch trailers
you will find that SquareEnix add Alot od content per patch, that every patch looks like an WoW
Expansion. I really invite you to Watch every patch trailer, total it will take around 1hr watch them
all. Plus the game will get the NEW EXPANSION around july this year.

I bought WOD last december with some hope and i played that month and quit, the game lose that magic,
and FF14 got me in already, you always will find stuff to do, not just sitting in your garrison.

So, that's it for me FF14 is Superior, and i invite you to give it a shot.

[makiiholic]

Leveled all classes, spread on 3 characters. You can level all of them in one character but I liked having a dedicated set of classes.

Pros
Stunning graphics
Amazing story
Fluid and full character animation (very important for me, very fluid animation on skills, skills like bard's wind bite, every monk ability)
Compelling content and enemies
Nostalgia with all the playable classes
Profession system is superb (seriously, it's not like one click -done- like wow)
Housing
Off-raid content
Convenience in travel
The community
Hildibrand and Nashu. HILDIBRAND AND NASHU. Yes this deserves a whole point to itself. One of the funniest questlines in my whole gaming history.

Cons
Invisible Walls
Disconnected Zones
Content dying quickly
No swimming
Poor UI configs/setups/malleability.
No danger at all outside.
The 2.5GCD DIDN'T bother me at all. What I hated was the delays in the enemies and sometimes my actions due to poor routing. It's not SE's fault but there it is present. What I meant by delay is that the timers on the boss doesn't match the ground indication, meaning that you can dodge the "cast timer" on the boss, quickly move back to your old position, watch as your old position blow up to kingdom come and take no damage.

Overall, FFXIV has the potential to be an absolutely beast MMO, but content gets burned too quickly.

[SodiumChloride]

My blunt assessment of differences,

Pros

Pretty
- Not perfect but better than WoW who is stuck in the early 00s.

Decent story
- Not Shakespeare but better that the utter rubbish that is WoW's lore.[1]

Decent content pace
- SE seems to put out something new every few weeks.

Housing
- As requested; not the "developers' version" of it that no one asked for.

Travel
- Teleporting like in just about every modern MMO, i.e. no retarded sit there for 5 mins doing nothing flight paths.

Crafting
- Actually interesting in that there are rotations and gear for it.

Cons

SE can be quite slow to response to player feedback - assuming they response at all.
- You aren't going to find anyone like GC over there - that said, GC isn't at Blizzard anymore either, so ...

RMT spam
- They have got to fix this but as usual it's going to take a while if ever; personally I just turn of all tells, I'm an asocial loner anyway. Don't bother reporting it on the forums, it can get you banned for 10 days.

Botting
- Don't bother reporting it anymore. Nothing gets done anyway.

Housing
- Current system seems to have scaling issues, i.e. there is a housing shortage at the moment. With luck they will fix it soon.

Stuff people complain about that I don't really care

GCD and animation lock
- I got use to it pretty quick. Maybe I'm just that good.

Invisible walls
- Don't see why it's big deal. Unlike WoW that lets you go almost everywhere and block of some areas (a blacklist method). FFXIV blocks of everywhere and allows you to go to specific areas (a whitelist method) - it's just like single player FF in that way; think FFX/FFXII/FFXIII. What's wrong with restricting players to interesting areas that are actually properly filled out? Quality > Quantity

Disconnected zones
- A bit annoying with the loading but it's ain't a deal breaker. Has the benefit of allowing you to skip the "boring" parts of the landscape when traveling - the exits go directly from one zone to another skipping all the empty-roads-where-nothing-happens and what not.


[1] WoW's so-called lore is nothing but a derivative, incoherent ripoff of Game Workshop's stuff.

[Faroth]

The expansion artifact armor for each class was shown at Pax East.

HOLY AMAZEBALLS.

[Strangebrew]

The expansion artifact armor for each class was shown at Pax East.

HOLY AMAZEBALLS.

New artifact armor?

Oh jeez, i need screenshots of BLM and Astrologian

[RohanV]

Kinda off topic, but there's not exactly much "merit" to be gained in pure grinding. You can call it fun or say you just enjoyed it, or whatever, but you're kinda deluding yourself if you think there's any legitimate merit, prestige, or anything similar in simply grinding things out.

I disagree with this. Dedication and steadily working towards a goal is underrated, and deserves to be rewarded.

That being said, FFXIV generally rewards people one of two ways: skill or dedication. If you go for skill, you can beat the EX Primals and Coil and get pretty much the best gear and weapons. If you go for dedication, the grind is long, but the rewards are almost as good.

I think it's a really good balance between the two paths.

[Alopex Major]

I haven't got a chance to try it yet myself, but several of my WoW guildmates play it and really enjoy it a lot. They tend to hang out there on non-raid nights rather than WoW.

I will have to see if there's a trial or something since I'm already at two sub games (WoW and SWTOR) and can't really afford a third.

[Lillpapps]

I haven't got a chance to try it yet myself, but several of my WoW guildmates play it and really enjoy it a lot. They tend to hang out there on non-raid nights rather than WoW.

Just a normal day in FFXIV.

[Raging Penguin]

Was quite upset missing out on Lightning's event, but it's a good game.

[Kathranis]

Overall, I have the same impressions that many of the people in this thread do:

Great presentation (art, music, writing), similar to WoW in most of the right ways but different enough to feel like it's own thing, and it's a real love letter to Final Fantasy fans. They also pump out way more content than WoW, way more frequently. They even offer veteran rewards based on how long you've subscribed. There's a lot of stuff I absolutely love about this game, which makes what I'm about to say particularily heartbreaking for me.


The first big downside for me is that the gameplay feels slow and clunky compared to WoW. Since it uses the same basic mechanics (tab targetting, hotkeys, rotations, cooldowns), you just can't help but compare them, and WoW's mechanics are simply far more refined on a technical level.

Movement in FFXIV feels floaty (perhaps due to a higher level of detail in animations), and there's always a slight but noticeable input delay when characters start, stop, or jump. There's also input delay on the commands, which combined with animation locks and really glaring synchronization issues with how enemy attacks are telegraphed (warning -> damage calculation -> animation instead of warning -> animation -> damage calculation), can make the gameplay feel really clunky. Couple that with the 2.5 sec cooldown and, in direct comparison with WoW, it just doesn't feel as good to play. Maybe in another few years they'll improve their netcode and correct some of the combat issues, but I don't know.


Another problem is the queueing system. FFXIV groups come in fours, so there's only room for two DPS in every group, which equates to a shortage pf tanks and healers and insufferably long queues for DPS. When I returned to the game late last year to level a rogue, I found myself sidelined by queues that took well over an hour.

Which leads to another big issue: gating and attunement. Unlike WoW, where dungeons are optional side events that usually round out zone storylines with a climax, the dungeons in FFXIV are mandatory to progress the main story, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't take forever to queue for. This is a huge problem, as you can't advance the main scenario questline until you complete them. Game progress literally halts while you wait.

Beyond that, endgame content is heavily gated through attunement. Dungeons are locked behind quests, some of which are locked behind other dungeons. Some features require you to advance your Grand Company rank, which requires you to complete your Hunting Log, which requires you to run dungeons. You see what I'm getting at here? You're constantly being forced to do something else before you can do the things you want to do.


True story: I logged back in today for the first time since Warlords of Draenor dropped (free login campaign) and thought, hey, I always wanted to finish making my Relic Weapon for my Dragoon, just to go with my AF armor (honestly, this is the only gear I really care about getting). I stopped playing at the Chimera step.

So I log in, try to refresh my memory on my rotations, queue for that, and the 5 minute average wait time turns out to be a 30 minute wait. Whatever. Fine. I had a decent experience, got a couple commendation and completed the step. Go turn it in, get sent around a bit, find out I need to do Amdapor Keep. Find out that to unlock Amdapor Keep I need to do a quest. Go to quest giver, find out I need to complete another dungeon to unlock the quest. Queue for said dungeon, 30 minute average wait time.

And that's when I remembered exactly why I quit last time: I thought to myself, "If I had logged into WoW instead, I'd have already cleared two wings of Blackrock Foundry and I'd be that much closer to completing my legendary questline."

I shouldn't have to stand around for 30 minutes doing nothing on a Saturday evening to do a dungeon to do a quest to do a dungeon to do a quest. Triple Triad is an okay time waster, but there are other ways I'd rather be spending my time.

I want to enjoy playing it. I really, really do. It's just that I spend too much time not having fun whenever I play it now, and it's a disenchanting experience.

[Icaras]

(EDITED) It's funny that you mention the legendary ring when you say you hate being forced to do THING1 to access THING2.

Step 1: You HAVE to do a DUNGEON to complete a QUEST. HAVE TO. You have no choice. You don't do it, you get no ring. Now of course you have an epic ring, but not the legendary and you're not done. If you want to progress you HAVE TO run 3 more heroics (not normal dungeons.) AND you HAVE TO grind 1000 apexis. Now if you just want to get raid drop currency grinding stages, well too bad because you have to do all the previous steps 1st.

Ultimately, the difference here is that with WoW, you are already fully comfortable with both the game, your toon AND what you need to do...but with FF14, you're not. I suspect that's why it seems like such a chore to you, whereas the very same thing in Wow doesn't seem to be. I also find it a little strange you find it upseting to do all the dungeons, for example because if the game is new to you...why would you NOT want to run a dungeon to earn PVE rewards? I mean, sure it's a little annoying to have to do them (Which as stated above, is kind of an MMO thing) but...it's all new, wouldn't you have wanted to do the dungeons anyway?

BTW: Queue wise, the only time I've (consistently) had queue issue was when I didn't have the group finder set to look for all languages. it defaulted to just english, and as I play on a japanese server (Better latency than US servers for me) I was cut off from the majority of my server's population til I realised. After that, my queue times are sometimes longer than normal...but that too happens in Wow, and you're liar if you claim otherwise.

[Bristae]

I have a confession, at 32 years old I have NEVER played a Final Fantasy game! even as a kid I never saw the appeal in the game. Could say I overlooked it more than anything!

So which fantasy is really the FINAL one?? that was my thinking for years... I'm 39 and I have really only played to completion FF2(FFIV) and that was enough for me.

[Gandrake]

(EDITED) It's funny that you mention the legendary ring when you say you hate being forced to do THING1 to access THING2.

i love the game but some of the attunements are really bad, i really wish there were less of them

to do fcob you have to have completed scob which is one of the reasons i quit the game. i had to take a break to sort my rl issues (where im living, why my car is broke down, how im going to keep making money) etc... didnt have time to worry about games. and ultimately i really didn't have the patience to pg through the rest of scob.

its the kind of thing people say stupid shit like "if u couldnt do x why would u expect to be able to do y?" but honestly it's all the same shit and doesn't really vary in difficulty. Turn 6 was easier than Turn 2 and Turn 7 was easier than Turns 4 & 5. While relevant, of course.

i log in from time to time and am playing with rl friends now but it's something that has always annoyed me on patch day. have to do 2hrs of pointless bullshit quests to do the new fight. by the time i care enough to do them, my fc is finished farming them or only want to play with the people they have trained to do the encounter.

[Faroth]

Few things to note here, just from my opinion:

The first big downside for me is that the gameplay feels slow and clunky compared to WoW. Since it uses the same basic mechanics (tab targetting, hotkeys, rotations, cooldowns), you just can't help but compare them, and WoW's mechanics are simply far more refined on a technical level.

Ironically, after playing FFXIV I came back to WoW for the free weekend when WoD released and WoW did not feel like it played as well at all. It didn't feel enjoyable, even almost clunky as well. And I don't think WoW is a clunky gameplay, it's just that when you're used to one thing, changing to something similar but different is jarring. After playing the new one for a while, it feels smooth and natural. Or at least for me it did. Going from that free weekend (or free 4 hours since I hit the level cap and felt there wasn't a point in the rest of the weekend at that point) back to FFXIV there was similarly a feeling of difference, but it quickly passed and settled back in.

Movement in FFXIV feels floaty (perhaps due to a higher level of detail in animations), and there's always a slight but noticeable input delay when characters start, stop, or jump. There's also input delay on the commands, which combined with animation locks and really glaring synchronization issues with how enemy attacks are telegraphed (warning -> damage calculation -> animation instead of warning -> animation -> damage calculation), can make the gameplay feel really clunky. Couple that with the 2.5 sec cooldown and, in direct comparison with WoW, it just doesn't feel as good to play. Maybe in another few years they'll improve their netcode and correct some of the combat issues, but I don't know.

I haven't noticed these issues much except when melee attacking an enemy that's running (following a tank) and you can't get a hit off. Suppose that helps a tank avoid the all out DPS pulling threat, but it is annoying at times. But as stated in other comments regarding the combat, once you get the flow of ability > reposition > ability > reposition, etc. then the pacing makes sense. Later on there's also more situational awareness and on the fly decisions in your rotation that might have to be made (paritcularly with ninja) that also factors into how these pieces fit together.

Another problem is the queueing system. FFXIV groups come in fours, so there's only room for two DPS in every group, which equates to a shortage pf tanks and healers and insufferably long queues for DPS. When I returned to the game late last year to level a rogue, I found myself sidelined by queues that took well over an hour.

Worth noting that the over an hour queue was not "dangit, DPS has long queues" but "Sonofagun, 70% of the tanks and healers are playing rogue now too!" It settled back down. DPS queue times tend to be 15-45 minutes depending on what you're doing (Expert/high level/low level queues).

Which leads to another big issue: gating and attunement. Unlike WoW, where dungeons are optional side events that usually round out zone storylines with a climax, the dungeons in FFXIV are mandatory to progress the main story, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't take forever to queue for. This is a huge problem, as you can't advance the main scenario questline until you complete them. Game progress literally halts while you wait.

For those considering the game, Party Finder is your friend. Use it. Or make friends. Don't just rely on randomly being queued with strangers you never have to speak to again. Players aren't as mean and nasty as WoW often is in randoms. Players get a bonus for running things you've never done, so they're also often willing to help.

True story: I logged back in today for the first time since Warlords of Draenor dropped (free login campaign) and thought, hey, I always wanted to finish making my Relic Weapon for my Dragoon, just to go with my AF armor (honestly, this is the only gear I really care about getting). I stopped playing at the Chimera step.

So I log in, try to refresh my memory on my rotations, queue for that, and the 5 minute average wait time turns out to be a 30 minute wait. Whatever. Fine. I had a decent experience, got a couple commendation and completed the step. Go turn it in, get sent around a bit, find out I need to do Amdapor Keep. Find out that to unlock Amdapor Keep I need to do a quest. Go to quest giver, find out I need to complete another dungeon to unlock the quest. Queue for said dungeon, 30 minute average wait time.

Which dungeon was required to unlock Amdapor? I...don't recall. It's been a while. >.<

Worth noting, all attunements are a lot like what people were asking for in Burning Crusade: you only do them once since you don't need alts. And somehow the majority of FFXIV players aren't claiming there's nothing to do and 5-9 months of no new content. Maybe because the game has an inherent pacing.

I shouldn't have to stand around for 30 minutes doing nothing on a Saturday evening to do a dungeon to do a quest to do a dungeon to do a quest. Triple Triad is an okay time waster, but there are other ways I'd rather be spending my time.

This is perhaps an example of why I love FFXIV. It's an MMORPG like MMORPGs used to be. Not Single Player Antisocial Behavior Among Others MMO. (Sorry, that one's snarky).

But it's legitimately true. This game is built on old school MMO principles. You're supposed to make use of guilds, Linkshells, and the friends list. Not just queue up and expect immediate service.

[Museigen]

I gave FFXIV a playthrough, all the way to the current coil of bahamut when I played. The major differences that a WoW player will run into are the GCD being longer, movement feeling a little floaty/laggy and the raw time investment required on some things. The GCD feels slow at first and will turn a lot of players off, as the game goes on you unlock more abilities off the standard GCD and it feels a little better but still slow.

The movement doesn't get better and is something you just have to get used to, additionally there is a heavy "lag" feeling to movement related mechanics. You can be completely out of a ground effect when it fires and it will still hit you. The basic way to handle it is to pretend the abilities cast bar finishes at 75% instead of 100%. If you are out by 75% you're good, if you only get out between 75-99% you will get hit regardless.

The third thing is something you either love or hate and nothing in between. There is a lot of grind revolving around a lot of RNG. You can get your strongest weapon without ever really raiding which is good for multiple progression paths but it's so much RNG I just raided without it. People whine on forums about taking a week to complete their relic and they can shove off. You grind events called FATEs in certain zones for a chance at drops, some people do 1-3 and get one. Some do 20 and walk away with theirs. While leveling I only did ~50 fates according to my achievement progress. Grinding for my weapon I peaked around 2000 (with the help of friends doing some for my sake while I was at work) and had 1/4th of the drops I needed. No, just no, no more.

Additionally, one thing that had several of my friends give up was the leveling itself. There is a LOT of talking/scenes/traveling, I mean several metric ass tons. Some people love the story and more power to them, for me and several of my friends it was pretty bland. The problem with bland story and lots of travel is, holy crap boring. Some quests are "Talk to A for 8 minutes who sends you to the far corner of the world to talk to B for 5 minutes who sends you to another corner of the world talk to C for 5 minutes who sends you back across the world to talk to A for 5 minutes." The process takes hours and the only thing you do is talk and run around. Repeat that a hundred times and you're done leveling. If you don't get drawn into the story it's absolutely awful.

If you trudge through the leveling and get used to the movement and GCD the end game is actually pretty solid. The only issue I had was the lack of more content/gear-per-slot. I played quite early and they've added more content, but when I played there was literally 1 item per slot per item level. There wasn't any mix and match or stacking of a stat over another. It was, there is a cloth gear set for ilvl X and it is the only choice per slot to wear. The next upgrade is X+5 and there is only one choice per slot to wear. Someone who's used to "Progression" in WoW will very quickly run out of end game in FFXIV. Not to say it's not enjoyable, it was, but you will burn through it super fast. It's blunted even further by having 27 difficulty modes of the same bosses as progression.

I'll probably go burn through the content again on the expansion launch.

Edit: I should have put this in the "Takes a lot of time section" but to support a comment above I should mention the groups are 2dps/1tank/1heal and this significantly increases queue times. Considering people are no more inclined to tank or heal in this game than others be prepared to wait.

[Faroth]

On those go to A and talk just to go back to B, the dev team acknowledged it got a bit heavy, particularly around 2.1 or 2.2 I think it was. They've toned down the amount of unnecessary travel a lot and are making quests a bit more meaningful on having you go around (as meaningful as MMOs tend to be with quests).

They even poke fun at themselves in the story quest later on by referring to one of the worst parts, seemingly repeating it and the NPC says they're just kidding, they'd not bother a hero of your stature with something so insignificant.

Preparing a banquet....*shudder* Never again......never again.....

(And yeah, I'll admit to watching on this thread. I'm enjoying the hell outta the game and like talking about it at this point) >_>

[Frozenbeef]

Of all the mmos i've tried i haven't even looked at final fantasy...i played a final fantasy game when i was younger and hated it so much that it put me off final fantasy forever :S Isn't it just an identical copy of aion anyway? :/

[Faroth]

Of all the mmos i've tried i haven't even looked at final fantasy...i played a final fantasy game when i was younger and hated it so much that it put me off final fantasy forever :S Isn't it just an identical copy of aion anyway? :/

Aion's just an identical copy of WoW is just an identical copy of EverQuest anyway, right?

Out of curiosity, which one did you play that was horrible for you?

[Frozenbeef]

Aion's just an identical copy of WoW is just an identical copy of EverQuest anyway, right?

Out of curiosity, which one did you play that was horrible for you?

Final Fantasy Tactics, i was like 7 and used to playing games like sonic and crash bandicoot , to me that game was slow, boring and left a permanent bad taste in my mouth :s