Originally Posted by
Kalium
I have played in Azeroth since Warcraft III. I love the lore and have years dedicated to WoW. However, the BfA story is not doing it for me. There are a few solid quest but the major plot points are meh to me. Drustvar was the highlight of leveling this past expansion.
I had heard a few rumblings about FFXIV and Twitch Prime has/had an offer for 30 days free... so I figured I'd give it a shot. Account creation is straight out of the 90's. But once everything was loaded up I set off. First thing I noticed was a much more robust character creation system. I also really like how the races all work together... only divided by national allegiance which is minor at most. No more insane race war. I made a nerdy elf and began to make my way into the greater world.
HOLY SHIT!!! I was not prepared. The music... O.M.G... I was 10 years old again playing Final Fantasy! The story was good but more importantly it felt very Final Fantasy. My Summoner hit 50 yesterday... a little over 2 days played. Then I unlocked my very favorite thing in the Final Fantasy universe... the Blue Mage. I have already hit level 18 and I'm loving it.
There are a few things that I feel FFXIV does much better than WoW:
1) Transportation... being able to instantly port to anywhere I've been before is amazing. Granted in WoW I love flying but in FF I feel I can get where I'm going and start doing it immediately.
2) Mount and run through enemies. WoW's daze and dismount mechanic feels so outdated by comparison.
3) Fully assembled enemies. If I need three spines of a local wild boars... I'm done after killing three boars. I know what a novel concept.
4) Non-grindy quest. So far the most I've been asked to kill something is eight times (which filled the requirements for two different quest). In WoW it's slay 15-30 in any given quest.
5) Change classes on the fly. The ability to experience everything with one character is very appealing. For WoW this would be similar to making professions, reputations, and most other unlocks account-wide.
TL;DR ~ WoW has always been a better iterator than innovator. I feel they need to take a few of these ideas and make WoW better. For the time being I'm enjoying everything Final Fantasy XIV has to offer.