FF14 is the better mmoRPG by far

[ralph2449]

I ve been playing FF14 for some time now and I honestly regret I didnt give it a chance earlier, the game is absolutely the better mmorpg in almost all aspects and it is by far the better game I would say for the majority of players(Tryhards probably wont like it). Even though I loved and still like Swtor it lacked many important elements to make it a prime mmorpg one can focus on for very long amounts of time, FF14 on the other hand has all those requirements filled.

Let me give a number of examples:

-Immersion: This game is absolutely designed to be immersive and make you feel you are inside that world, this is achieved through many things such as great story and many characters some of which you will care about and more importantly there's many details that enhance it so much. The world having its own weather, said weather affecting the world, your clothes and your hair, talking to an NPC while both of you are affected by the wind in the same direction adds a lot to realism. The devs have also focused a lot on subtle facial animations that reveal genuine emotions, many facial textures might be not be as detailed as some WoW models but the npc and characters are 10 times more alive because of said expressions.
-Encounter immersion: Thanks to the focus on immersion and flashy animations over pure performance you feel you are in that encounter yourself, whenever a huge dragon drops down the bridge and shakes it with its enormous weight or when a primal drops his giant sword on you, it feels like you are in that world thanks to the design and beautifully realistic graphics. I end up liking doing bosses because they feel fun and realistic and you feel inside that world.

-Class design: I was honestly very worried when I found out there's no talents or the infamous 2.5gcd yet classes are incredibly well designed with oftentimes pretty complex rotations and a ton of off gcd abilities and binds to the point there's people asking for pruning(No thanks) so the whole "2.5gcd" is pretty misleading, class design is really good and it takes way longer to master a class because they are way deeper than the average WoW spec once you reach max level, some have even minutes long rotations(so far more challenging than wow classes), first levels of course are pretty bad and slow since many classes dont pick up till 50-60. More importantly classes are fun to play and feel satisfying when you do well with them and classes are surprisingly balanced, unlike the WoW metaslave tryhards classes are balanced very well in ff14 so you can play whatever you enjoy. (Plus if a rare elitist ever whines you can report them for influencing your playstyle and get them banned)

-Class fantasy: Because the game focuses on that far more than performance the animations are simply beautiful, you actually feel like a samurai, you feel like a fabulous red mage with versatile spells, you feel like a ridiculously destructive black mage, you feel like a naruto ninja when you cast ninjutsu by making the 3 correct hand signs before executing them, the devs clearly worked hard on making the classes FEEL like that class because they care more about that instead of pure performance.

-Content: Where do I even start, there's so many things that you can do in this game it is crazy and nothing is forced, you do what you enjoy but as a casual player who enjoys doing a little bit of everything I have so many things in schedule to do outside of just gearing, I ll be leveling most DPS jobs i like on my single character, I ll get all beast tribes reps to max on a single character, I plan on getting into the extreme indepth crafting system, get a house one day and decorate it by farming stuff from all sorts of content, push solo palace of the dead/heaven on high at top floors (200/100), get some really cool mounts, finish all the different logs but that is cuz im kinda of a completionist and probably more I have yet to find

Even group content wise you have so many raids to experience even challenging ones if you do them synced, extreme trials are one of the most fun content I ve done because it is a single boss challenge which takes a while, you que for it on the DF(On japanese datacenter at least) and simply have fun beating a strong boss, I ve been doing extreme trials in each xpac simply because it is fun to do and will keep doing them for that, something I had completely forgotten since WoW is all about doing stuff for gear, not because it is fun, you need gear before you have fun, thankfully in FF14 gear is easy to get for casual players and casuals arent forced to have a pathetically low ilvl.

-Story: Let's be honest, WoW story is cool if you read it as a book or watch cinematics, the player driven story is an absolute disaster with murder hobos, meanwhile FF14 has put story first and foremost, the story is never rushed to an end, your character's actions make sense, the threats are ever present and arent magically beaten to get to the next expansion, many of the characters are really well written and interesting individuals you will feel sad about(Not all obviously but there's many different character types), it feels like an actual world rather than a "We beat le big bad, we happy, new xpac, new big bad, time to beat it rly fast with the power of friendship". Honestly there is little point writing this since the story is trillion times better compared to WoW

-Housing: Great housing, the amount of stuff you get and can craft for housing are so many and you have a ton of options when making a house and decorating it, sadly though new players are gonna take a while to get a chance at housing due to costs and demand but thankfully there's apartments for us millenials xD

-Crafting: We all know WoW has one of the worst and most boring crafting systems out there but you cannot imagine how ridiculously indepth and interesting FF crafting is, outside of having a ton of things to do you have crafting stats and you also have crafting rotations and skills to try improve what you make, a completely different world equal to normal classes which I plan on exploring indepth in the future.

-Community: WoW has one of the worst communities out there, full of elitist, addicts, metaslaves and many sort of casual/new player unfriendly types, global chats being a cesspool is pretty normal, ff14 is completely different, not only is the community friendly and very helpful but toxic people and elitists can easily get reported and banned to the point said elitists cry about "toxic casualism" so you know how much better the community is for casuals. If someone acts elitists or tries to push you towards a certain way of playing they can be reported and if they mention dps meters they will also get reported and banned.(You can use dps meters, I use one as well and it is safe as long as you dont mention it and use it for personal reasons rather than to shame or attack others). Unlike western companies Square enix cares about the community so they hire GMs to deal with toxicity to the point the typical trade chat gamer bro is found crying on reddit about how they ll ban people for their "funny slurs", sorry no insults or toxicity allowed and unlike western companies Square enix takes their ToS seriously.

-Music: I am not one to care about music usually but not only does the game have a few beautiful tracks and songs like dragonsong the combat and trial musics can fit extremely well within an encounter and makes the action feel so much better, more mmos should consider using music in that way.

-Armor appearances: Not sure if it is the graphics not being cartoony and instead more realistic but there's so many mogs that look beautiful unlike WoW where I would usually pick one and be done with it, the clothing options are so much more interesting and unique that I ll really have to spend time getting multiple sets for different

-Hrothgar: As a furry I really dislike boring human races as well as the tiny silly cutsey races many eastern rpgs have but with the new Hrothgar race in shadowbringers being a typical bara anthropomorphic feline race with realistic body structure this can absolutely replace my love for pandaren/tauren/worgen. Outside of that MOOGLES!!! Moogles are the cutest and namazu are also so cute uwu!

-Most important advantage over WoW: It is a game designed to be a fun video game, it isnt created to force people into tryhard content, it isnt designed to keep people busy with stupid chores and mindless maw reps, it isnt refusing to give gear to casual players, it isnt designed to be manipulative with time limited rewards , it is a game where a casual player can get it, feel immersed and just have fun doing their thing and getting rewarded for their time. Especially because unlike WoW you get a ton of great rewards from all kinds of content so it isnt locked behind tryhard content or the shop.



The game definitely has some issues but they are so minor they pale in comparison to WoW's problems, like tab targeting definitely needs improvement, early levels are extremely slow, appearance list could be better but all those are minor QoL improvements, nothing game breaking like WoW's systems and eltist dev/player mentality.

And before the WoW addicts start acting like WoW has no competitors the mmo-population site shows FF14 constantly increasing and at around 2.5mill active users currently while WoW has dropped down to 3m and keeps bleeding subs which many go to ff14, the site uses the same algorithm for both games so their comparison/average is accurate even if the exact numbers are not. You can argue that WoW is far more profitable and you would be right, blizzard pushing p2w hard with whales buying tokens to fund carries and doubling down even more in the latest patch with locking gear behind achievements which is gonna push even more whales into tokens, that is very profitable, but that is not a good game.


I am happy to say I have finally found the permanent replacement to WoW, good riddance to this terrible game and its even worse elitist tryhard metaslave community
Unlike other mmos I wont be looking back at WoW fondly

So for people who are genuinely looking for a good alternative to WoW that can fill your mmo craving I absolutely suggest FF14, this game is absolutely better than WoW for casual players who want to enjoy a good video game. (Not so for the people who are tryhard metaslaves and their self worth depends on video game achievements)

[lagiacrux]

thanks for the blogpost.

[Splenda]

This post doesn't start a discussion, and this forum section is for discussion about the current iteration of WoW, not game vs game opinions.