The Asmongold Effect

[bigbleach]

We cant deny, while XIV is an amazing game, what has undeniably boosted its popularity, is the streamers.

And while one might say XIV wasnt really affected by Asmongold, it was just people bored of WoW or other MMO's, theres no denying his opinion being positive towards the game helped sway people that were indecisive to give the game a try.

I legitimatley believe weirdly enough this only prooves influencers actually do have the power to turn the tide of an MMO.

The opinion of one guy literally caused the servers to run out of space overnight, and yes, that was his influence, 200K people watched him at the same time during peak on his first run and over 1 million people viewed over the day alone.

1 million people, watched a guy play XIV.

And now, alot of people are playing XIV.

This isnt just some random chance, its truth, influence, popularity, its very much what defines an MMO, look back at WoW's machinema days, Illegal Danish, the Grind, the Machinema that came from WoW really did help rise its popularity just from showing the games visual potential.

Literally you could just start seeing people make Machinema of XIV next and it'd skyrocket its popularity even more, passive entertainment leads to curiousity, leads to trying the game, and in some cases, not all, but some.

People will buy, sub, and play the game long term.

Im pretty hyped for Endwalker for this fact alone, this should likely be a wakeup call to Squeenix to put more money into XIV's development over certain "other" projects that didnt do as well *eyes a certain marvel MMO* and likely means they'll see the XIV budget increase, which means more content because more development and development equipment/resources.

So... yeah, XIV's doing great, Asmongold wasnt the thing that made it great, it had many reasons to be great.

But Asmongold undeniably made it greater.

As for its weaknesses? Sure, XIV has a few, I can rip into alot, the 1-50 experience is slow, but definatley better since 5.3, the content combat is slower than wow and wont feel as epic at first but the reward of the challenge defo makes up for it. Raids dont have 14 bosses but instead are divided over 14 single fights, which is a balanced point rather than a bad or good one.

Content in this game just, has a feel that I can only describe as the WOTLK effect, the era in which wow peaked at its most potent. Casual players have something to do from all spectrums, the ones that want random crap to do (Glamors/bard/dancing/mailbox casuals in limsa/ul'dah) the crafters (that actually have an endgame, wtf?), the raids, which are well rounded for differnet levels of challenge as opposed to one.

Is it a weeb game too? Idk, I actually argue that FFXIV may be the most Western-friendly JRPG/MMO ive seen considering that it actually makes content thats surpisingly easy to follow lore wise and localised well to make it easy to figure out the world and the setting rather than it being too weird/complex.

Sure, it has those anime tropes, and rediculas moments but... Ive been playing 3 years now since Stormblood 4.5? And... honestly, this game may very well be my new home.

So yeah, thanks to Asmon for trying it, and frankly, I hope he continues to enjoy it, and if he finds something wrong with it, let him, and let other people, the game isnt for everyone but its a damn good game all the same.

I tried the game twice. While I liked it. I did not like a lot of aspects about it. I'm unsure how all large cities are, but the 2 I made it to ( a desert type place, and one by the sea ) they were both annoying confusing to navigate and one had overlapping paths which just made it all the worse when looking at the map. The questing experience was lackluster, nothing I hadn't seen in wow, just as easy and just as slow. Loading screens. It took me leveling to 10 to be done and over with those. Too many of them. Harms the feeling of being an MMO, at least for me. I got to a point where I had repeatable quests in a zone and when I found out I had to do those for a few levels, I stopped logging in and let my sub lapse. The game looks stunning. Everything about it. I can say that at least. However, and this is an issue I have with the FF universe all together is... its like a large mix of shit thrown together, some things look like they belong, others do not. And when I see characters like this, the ones that say kupo or whatever, it just... makes me feel a way. Idk, I disliked monster hunter for their cat thing that follows you around. Just wasn't my taste, though a few of my friends do play it.

[Video Games]

It's not the better game. There are parts that are better, but the core gameplay loop is terrible.

No. Shadowlands is fucking awful. I'd have gone back in a heartbeat, but I wanted to play bc

[alkyd]

event RT news outlet has published an article about this. Putin plays WoW (or FFXIV) confirmed.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/529738-worl...final-fantasy/

[Echo of Soul]

Maybe we're looking at two different official forums.

I've been on there for a long time and the official forums along with Reddit are by far the worst places to have a conversation about the game. I feel so bad for all the newer players I've seen berated and harassed. I browse a lot of subreddits and I'm also a moderator in one of the biggest subreddits... the FFXIV one is the most downvote-happy one I've browsed. And it's not even by a little bit.

I've found that to be the case all over reddit. If you write something that they don't like you'll get downvoted. I'd say that the ffxiv one is a bit more "under attack" than most though due to wow players feeling the need to go over there and throw shit around.

[ek0zu]

The only thing that i didn't like in FFXIV is the complete lack of world PVP, i guess i am one of the few people who do like it, i would welcome if there is an uplift in the PVP side of this game, other than that i don't have any other grudge against it and i certainly believe that Asmongold is good and free (?) advertisement for the game.

[Soimu]

There is grind in all mmo. The difference now is that FF14 use the TBC system, thats when wow grind respected your time. Grind are mmo bread and butter, but you need to make people feel its either 1) fun to grind or 2) worth their time. There is two type of reward power (gear, power, etc) or cosmetic (transmog, mounts, titles, etc.). MMO evolved a lot, now all of them come down to one thing for the majority of people, they are virtual doll simulator with gameplay. People are on average willing to put more time in grinding the cosmetic, then the power, because the power never last, but the cosmetics do.

This is why more and more people feel wow waste their time. Most of the mandatory grinds are for power and not only that, those grinds outside of the raids are also grinds for power, which in the end most people do for the cosmetic, the mounts, title, the achievement of having done it and the transmog, nobody actually cares about the power. If they want power grind to be the focus again, they need to go back to tbc model. You cant have grinds to open grinds. You need a linear grind upward, right now wow its like a bunch of horizontal grinds to help you grind other grinds.

All those horizontal grinds also destroy the will for people to put time into alt. FF14 solved that by making you do all thing on one character, in essence, its like if wow just made rep, all special grind cosmetic, etc account wide. Which they should at this point.

I think wow can easily be fixed. Remove any grind tied to burrowed power, never do these things again. Make the gearing path clear one direction, up. Make it simple, token gears and boss drops, token gear can come from various activities. Tie reputation or any long grind to cosmetics and not any power. Power needs to come entirely from the gear you gain by doing your journey may it be pve or pvp. Make every grind account wide. All reputation, all cosmetic you get, etc. This would greatly reduce player fatigue, this would also remove people having the feeling their time is wasted because they have to log every day to do chores to do what they actually want to do in the game. You dont need people to be logged, you need them to be subbed. When ever they log twice a week or 7 times a week, doesent matter if they stay subbed the same amount of months. Instead of wasting large amount of time forver tweaking all those borrowed power grinds that gets deleted and reworked every expansion. Use the new found free time to develop more side content that will last multiple expansion instead. It is fine to have expansion that only expand whats already in the game, more raids, more pvp zones, rework and add to old zones, etc. Trying to remake the wheel every expansion has a huge impact on quality.

I would not mind the grind in wow if it would be shared with other characters, like having all reps, currency and all achievements shared but the thought of having to do same shit on all characters made me quit in the end.

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No. Shadowlands is fucking awful. I'd have gone back in a heartbeat, but I wanted to play bc

Man wow players are so dumb lol, a few months ago they said Shadowlands is one of the best expansions. And is not the first time.

[OCoyne]

Asmongold alone made FFXIV a bigger game.

Anyone who plays on the Light data centre would tell you this is a load of nonsense.

It's the data centre which has all the migrated EU streamers before Asmon even started playing - AnnieFuchsia, Bellular etc, Zepla was already here obviously.

It's the combined effort of all the big EU streamers which has turned into the Data Centre into a hellhole, you legit cannot get on the game between the hours of 6pm and 9pm on the trial version.

Asmon's arrival only clusterfucked the Aether DataCentre but the game popularity overall as already explained has surged before he even touched the game.

[Soimu]

I tried this game, because the people of Moonguard were talking about how Asmongold moved to FF14, so I gave it a try....What a piece of crap this game is!. For real, people moved from WoW to this game?

Boob slider and cat girls > WOW

[RobertMugabe]

Anyone who plays on the Light data centre would tell you this is a load of nonsense.

It's the data centre which has all the migrated EU streamers before Asmon even started playing - AnnieFuchsia, Bellular etc, Zepla was already here obviously.

It's the combined effort of all the big EU streamers which has turned into the Data Centre into a hellhole, you legit cannot get on the game between the hours of 6pm and 9pm on the trial version.

Asmon's arrival only clusterfucked the Aether DataCentre but the game popularity overall as already explained has surged before he even touched the game.

tbh I don't know any of the people you mentioned. I looked up AnnieFuchsia and her viewership has only gone up very recently, but still far behind what asmongold has. That being said I am not really much into streaming

[Zmagoslav]

The shift happened before he started streaming it.

It was less his popularity, than FFXIV being the only other MMO with some sort of potential on the market.
Well, at least that was it for my guild. Nathria, combined with the general bleak state of SL was what pushed us over...
The effect is also rather temporary... not that people will go back to WoW, they will just get bored by FFXIV too.

[Echo of Soul]

The shift happened before he started streaming it.

It was less his popularity, than FFXIV being the only other MMO with some sort of potential on the market.
Well, at least that was it for my guild. Nathria, combined with the general bleak state of SL was what pushed us over...
The effect is also rather temporary... not that people will go back to WoW, they will just get bored by FFXIV too.

It definitely got a lot of new players into the game, however it's impossible to say if those players will stay or not. If you're playing it just because your favorite streamer is I'd guess that you'll be less likely to stick around for the long haul.

The real exodus started about a month after shadowlands launched.

Casual players realizing that they were once again without a meaningful gear progression path just up and left. Blizzard are funny that way, one patch you can have great gear progression and in the next it's shit. FFXIV is solid as a rock in that regard.
You could see this very clearly on web sites that tracked covenant choices. In the beginning in was very diverse but after two months or so only the minmaxers remained, Preach even made a video at that point in an effort to prove that everyone in the game minmaxed covenants.

It wasn't only that of course. WoW has been very up and down after Ion took over, Legion for all its flaws really only being the only up.
It takes a lot to drive players away from their MMORPG of choice but they managed to do it through years of neglect and mismanagement.

The bulk of those who remain now are the hardcore players who'll never quit no matter how bad it gets.

[Necromantic]

Lol.. literally a boomer arguing on the internet about topics he doesn't understand if you haven't even heard of Amongus or Fall Guys. No wonder you don't understand the concept of how effective sponsoring streamers is.

Why answer questions with insults? That's very unnecessary.

[Vorkreist]

Look at games like Amongus or fall guys and tell me streamers don't have effect on game sales with a straight face.

Streamers get paid millions out of kind hearted charity not because they do actually have such massive pull.
When Ninja and Shroud got paid millions to stream apex it was just a weird coincidence that the game blew up higher than ever right after that.

Hopefully more brainwashed wow players wake up and heal trying other games from ff xiv to new world or aoc or anything else, forcing Lizzard to make actual changes towards a better player experience.

[crusadernero]

We cant deny, while XIV is an amazing game, what has undeniably boosted its popularity, is the streamers.

And while one might say XIV wasnt really affected by Asmongold, it was just people bored of WoW or other MMO's, theres no denying his opinion being positive towards the game helped sway people that were indecisive to give the game a try.

I legitimatley believe weirdly enough this only prooves influencers actually do have the power to turn the tide of an MMO.

The opinion of one guy literally caused the servers to run out of space overnight, and yes, that was his influence, 200K people watched him at the same time during peak on his first run and over 1 million people viewed over the day alone.

1 million people, watched a guy play XIV.

And now, alot of people are playing XIV.

This isnt just some random chance, its truth, influence, popularity, its very much what defines an MMO, look back at WoW's machinema days, Illegal Danish, the Grind, the Machinema that came from WoW really did help rise its popularity just from showing the games visual potential.

Literally you could just start seeing people make Machinema of XIV next and it'd skyrocket its popularity even more, passive entertainment leads to curiousity, leads to trying the game, and in some cases, not all, but some.

People will buy, sub, and play the game long term.

Im pretty hyped for Endwalker for this fact alone, this should likely be a wakeup call to Squeenix to put more money into XIV's development over certain "other" projects that didnt do as well *eyes a certain marvel MMO* and likely means they'll see the XIV budget increase, which means more content because more development and development equipment/resources.

So... yeah, XIV's doing great, Asmongold wasnt the thing that made it great, it had many reasons to be great.

But Asmongold undeniably made it greater.

As for its weaknesses? Sure, XIV has a few, I can rip into alot, the 1-50 experience is slow, but definatley better since 5.3, the content combat is slower than wow and wont feel as epic at first but the reward of the challenge defo makes up for it. Raids dont have 14 bosses but instead are divided over 14 single fights, which is a balanced point rather than a bad or good one.

Content in this game just, has a feel that I can only describe as the WOTLK effect, the era in which wow peaked at its most potent. Casual players have something to do from all spectrums, the ones that want random crap to do (Glamors/bard/dancing/mailbox casuals in limsa/ul'dah) the crafters (that actually have an endgame, wtf?), the raids, which are well rounded for differnet levels of challenge as opposed to one.

Is it a weeb game too? Idk, I actually argue that FFXIV may be the most Western-friendly JRPG/MMO ive seen considering that it actually makes content thats surpisingly easy to follow lore wise and localised well to make it easy to figure out the world and the setting rather than it being too weird/complex.

Sure, it has those anime tropes, and rediculas moments but... Ive been playing 3 years now since Stormblood 4.5? And... honestly, this game may very well be my new home.

So yeah, thanks to Asmon for trying it, and frankly, I hope he continues to enjoy it, and if he finds something wrong with it, let him, and let other people, the game isnt for everyone but its a damn good game all the same.

Its going to fade away. I mean, FF has been out for quite a while. What has stopped the masses/Streamers playing the game months back? Nothing. They were busying playing something else.

Whats special this time around is somewhat of a perfect storm. Streamers(like Asmongold) loves to shit on wow all day, every day, for literally anything. At this point, Blizzard cant do anything right. It gains traction, viewers(twitch/youtube) and the general consensus is to shit all over wow. It doesnt matter if they are subbed to the game or not. So when another MMO is out there with a decent following and aint that bad - streamers ofc jump on it, generates alot of views.

Then you have the so so delayed 9.1 patch that really took a toll on people. Its a great patch, but we had to wait a bit to long. Meaning whatever they would bring in 9.1, people would complain about it.

On top of that theres how long people have been playing wow. Asmongold, other wow streamers and those on this very forum has probably played wow for over a decade. Imagine playing FF for over 15 years, doing more or less "the same" in new places/zones. Wouldnt people be shitting on every patch saying "its the same" ?

I remember back when GW2, SWTOR, RIFT and whatnot launched. For months wow was considered "dead", "old" and it was all over. Nothing of that happend. All Blizzard needs to do is making quality content that people enjoy. Thats probably the biggest hurdle, cause right now BLizzard themself is to blame for the pickle they are in, but thats another discussion.

In the end people are, after all these years, getting tierd of playing wow. they want a new MMORPG to take them away like wow once did. Right now people think its Final fantasy, but it wont be. It wont be new world either(by the looks of it) and probably not AoC either. People want the feeling that wow once gave them and are searching.

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Streamers get paid millions out of kind hearted charity not because they do actually have such massive pull.
When Ninja and Shroud got paid millions to stream apex it was just a weird coincidence that the game blew up higher than ever right after that.

Hopefully more brainwashed wow players wake up and heal trying other games from ff xiv to new world or aoc or anything else, forcing Lizzard to make actual changes towards a better player experience.

This is something we should all hope for. Competition is often times good, and it certainly is in this case. For to long Blizzard has been alone in the MMORPG genre without any big competition. Hopefully this makes them deliver better content.

[Xykotic]

The steam sale for the game + expansions at the same time certainly helped aswell. I don't think its all Asmongold, but I do think he helped accelerate that snowball a noticeable amount to be sure. Something even he seemed kinda taken a back by. While I don't watch Asmon a lot, I did watch a stream once to decide if I should, and because of said stream I decided I wanted to give it a try.

And while a bit of a culture shock at first its a great game! Currently between Heavensward and Stormblood, switching between Gunbreaker, Dark Knight & Samurai. I didn't love the ARR story, but I did love the Heavensward story, and it actually brought me to tears more than once (in a good way).

Big fan of the Job system where you can play any role and do any profession all on one character. Its always something I loved in Runescape, and I never got why WoW had so many restrictions on that front.

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I too am grateful for his affect on FFXIV.

Assmanbald spreading his stank to FFXIV, and more importantly getting people who like/follow him to play it, makes it VERY easy for me to pass on giving it a shot. That means more money in my pocket, and that's a win.

I will NEVER, EVER, figure out why people like that manbaby.

Great! I don't watch him, but I'd rather have an influx of random players, than people like you with a holier than thou personality complex.

[Necromantic]

Great! I don't watch him, but I'd rather have an influx of random players, than people like you with a holier than thou personality complex.

While the person you quoted was a little... assertive, I do have to say, an influx of players is good but an influx of empty shells is not. With all due respect, that's what you get with his crowd. You get (for a lack of a better term) "mindless zombies".

[Video Games]

I would not mind the grind in wow if it would be shared with other characters, like having all reps, currency and all achievements shared but the thought of having to do same shit on all characters made me quit in the end.

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Man wow players are so dumb lol, a few months ago they said Shadowlands is one of the best expansions. And is not the first time.

Except I never said that. I knew it was going to be awful from the first trailer and I was right.

[Katchii]

It's not the better game. There are parts that are better, but the core gameplay loop is terrible.

How are the core gameplay loops of WoW and FFXIV so different that one is OK and the other is terrible?

I don't see them as being THAT different.

Can you elaborate?

[Katchii]

World of Warcraft have "Figureprints", while FinalFantasy 14 has "Pillowprints"....
Example:
Jokes aside, the only reason i think people play this game, is because of the female characters. Most of them in the game (Player characters) have bikinis, slut outfits and almost naked outfits. Is just a bunch of horny dudes, pretending liking a game just because the game sells them cheap "sex" to them.

In terms of gameplay is lame. I dont get it where is the fun in FF14.

If the "sexy stuff" is the only thing you can find that people might like in this game which is full of content that millions of people like and enjoy....maybe you're one of those "horny dudes."

[The Offbeat]

World of Warcraft have "Figureprints", while FinalFantasy 14 has "Pillowprints"....
Example:
Jokes aside, the only reason i think people play this game, is because of the female characters. Most of them in the game (Player characters) have bikinis, slut outfits and almost naked outfits. Is just a bunch of horny dudes, pretending liking a game just because the game sells them cheap "sex" to them.

In terms of gameplay is lame. I dont get it where is the fun in FF14.

"I don't get it so everyone else must be horny." Nice take, but faulty