World of Warcraft

[Well Intentioned]

There do seem to be a lot of new alts coming through. I'm a guide when I'm on so i do see alot of little murloc icons and very basic questions in guide chat.

Wait, what. Have they taken the approach from FFXIV with the Sprout system? How recent is that?

 

[Power Glove]

I will also mention WOW had its best music in Siege of Orgrimmar and Warlords of Draenor

Hear, hear. Though I will admit that Legion had a pretty fantastic score too. The one great thing is that Blizzard has been putting up the music for their patches on Spotify, since Battle for Azeroth. Sadly, they don't seem to have many plans to go back and apply that to the whole musical history for the game. I'd love to put on Fall of the Lich King patch music, or the Rage of the Firelands music from Cataclysm.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

Wait, what. Have they taken the approach from FFXIV with the Sprout system? How recent is that?

Since SL came out. You can only see those icons if you're a guide though.

I'm not, but I level all of my characters through LFD and I've seen plenty of new players. I don't know who the hell is installing wow these days thinking it'd be a fun game to play, but they're out there.

 

[Shidoen]

Dang my blood elf paladin in classic is slaying some mad puss. That and along with trolling chat for being a bunch of dem shills openly. It’s a video game and I’ll troll you for trying to derail that.

 

[GenociderSyo]

Wait, what. Have they taken the approach from FFXIV with the Sprout system? How recent is that?

Very end of BFA into SLands was paired with Exiles Reach. It used to have very high requirements to be a guide I am unsure what they are now.

"There are specific requirements to become a Guide. Currently, these involve completing several achievements in Battle for Azeroth as well as reaching level 50, but expect these to be updated at some point in Shadowlands.

• Be Level 50
• Complete the achievement 3000 Quests Completed
• Complete at least two of the following achievements:
  • Terrific Trio - Reach maximum level with three different classes
  • Rival: Battle for Azeroth Season 4 - Earn the rank of Rival during Battle for Azeroth Season 4.
  • Battle for Azeroth Keystone Conqueror: Season Four - Complete all Battle for Azeroth Season Four dungeons at Mythic Level 10 or higher, within the time limit.
  • The Waking Dream - Defeat the Carapace of N'Zoth and N'Zoth the Corruptor encounters in Ny'alotha, the Waking City.
  • We Have the Technology - Purchase all research items in the Titanic Research Archive."

Your account also has to never have been actioned.

I see new players with murloc icons and they see me with a flag icon (Images from Wowhead):

This happens in chat as well.

For the newcomers:
"You will be removed from Newcomer Chat once you've reached level 50 and have 30 hours played."

Issues the system has though is its easy to troll it and people do. As well as the fact that its cross realms. People may ask questions in languages that are not english and then have no one to help them.

 

[Tanner Glass]

They're learning all the wrong lessons from FFXIV, lmao.

This isn't a lesson from FFXIV, FFXIV doesn't have an explicit code of conduct like this.

The "lesson to learn" from FFXIV is that FFXIV is, at it's core, a 100% co-operative game. It's remarkably easy for players to help each other in all kinds of ways. Just off the top of my head.

- 100% level scaling in all content. You can do any dungeon at-level with any player (ex - your friend is level 20 and you're level 90, you can do the dungeon with them, the way it was intended to be done).
- FFXIV's Mentor system is designed in a specific manner (a FFXIV mentor has to have a tank, healer, and DPS all leveled to Max) and FFXIV is designed to be understood (and practiced) inside of the game. Tutorials exist inside of the game for all levels.
- FFXIV Roles have enough similarities where there is a lot of "universal" advice (where to stand, combo quirks, weapon stats, etc)
- FFXIV has a huge library of craftable items. Basically, every 5 levels you can get an entire crafted set for any character at any time. Materials are extremely plentiful, and there's always a pre-raid crafted item for every single slot.
- FFXIV constantly puts players in the world and constantly puts leveling players into ad-hoc parties via fates. FFXIV also features very minimal "world seperation" except for extreme load scenarios (so, no sharding/layering and no massive cross world deceptions)
- FFXIV players rarely have a reason to create an "Alt" - meaning that players are less likely to make gigantic asses of themselves as they have a much more permanent reputation per character.
- FFXIV features tons of group content that is required for progression (a dungeon every ~2 levels starting from level 15, ~4-9 group trials per expansion, and so on) - although they are letting some content be done with a NPC squad instead.
- A story and world focused on co-operation on every level. Even the PVP is, lore wise, a bunch of friends doing training exercises with no actual hostility.

Compared to World of Warcraft...
- Nearly no level scaling in content - remarkably difficult to play with players of different levels (doubly so pre and current expansion).
- A carbon copy of the mentor system, but with no role requirements. Meaning that WoW mentors probably can't answer newbie questions reliably. On top of this, WoW has trained players for ~15 years to use external resources instead of having anything resembling a tutorial in the game.
- WoW Classes are drastically varied where one class (say a MM Hunter) probably can't give great advice to a Fire Mage.
- WoW has remarkably bad crafting/drops and it's very rare for a player to interact with another player for their tradeskills directly. A WoW character (outside of BoE drops, which are exceedingly rare, expensive and only cover 2 of a characters ~14 slots) cannot gear up for raiding with outside help easily.
- WoW does not put players into the world and the world is massive and barren. There are virtually no scenarios in WoW where you'd be happy to see another player. "Group Quests" are typically actually soloable and players will fight over resource nodes and rare spawns.
- WoW has huge layers of separating players - with ~10 (?) starting leveling zones and ~7 (?) different leveling expansions, with several expansions having several "duplicate" areas for leveling, and ~12-14 "major cities".
- WoW players can level entirely from a city, through the dungeon finder - further negating the need to interact with the world.
- WoW has 0 required group content (with the exception of a forced "dungeon" in Exile's Reach at level 10) and several classes and specs are "bad" to level in (most healing specs, most tanking specs, most PVP specs). No required group content means players are hitting end game completely unprepared for how it works.
- WoW has "skillcap" issues, where Healing and Tanking don't have much room for improvement outside of "people didn't die" and "I didn't die".
- WoW has "seasoned" players constantly making Alts, meaning a much looser connection to the world/other players as there's much less negative repercussions for being an asshole.
- WoW's story is focused entirely on War, savagery, and in multiple places genocide. This is not going to engender people playing the game into being nice to one another in any capacity.

They've learned so far exactly 0 lessons from XIV - some of them would be remarkably easy to impliment.

 

[Well Intentioned]

This isn't a lesson from FFXIV, FFXIV doesn't have an explicit code of conduct like this.

The ToS is something that I see quoted bible and verse by some of the more sped types on my server and on Reddit. It's not something you 'sign up for' or whatever, but it's pretty prevalent in a lot of folks heads, moreso than I've seen in other games beyond maybe Everquest with the Play Nice Policy as it related to spawns/camps/etc. I never really saw people actively talking about the ToS in WoW, aside from when changes were made (the big one was updating the language on third party programs and how it was limiting disabled people from playing the game with legitimate tools that they use, but also shit related to RMT.)

Heck, there was a big furor over ToS changes late last year that were plastered all over the place. That, combined with the self-fellating 'Great Community, BTW!' that the aforementioned speds love to spout off about all the time is what formed that opinion.

Blizzard looked what people were saying about the community and drew the wrong conclusions from it. Yeah, there isn't a code of conduct in XIV like what is apparently coming with WoW, but the general approach and sentiment--we're going to be clamping down on nono behavior--is what I think that they took from XIV.

Which ignores a LOT of what you had outlined subsequently in your post. XIV's success comes from a lot of different things. It's a pretty 'on rails' experience where content is relevant pretty much all the time, aside from the few spots here and there (eg, Battle Levequests), has a lot of lateral content for players to experience, isn't slaved to horrible 'retention metrics' systems, etc.

Those are the things that have made XIV stand out and be appealing to folks. But instead, 'inclusive space' is somehow going to magically turn things around.

All it's going to do is let the sex pests burrow in further and alienate folks who are already annoyed with things like excising all haram content like Yo Mama jokes and replacing it with bowls of fruit.

E: Oh and unrelated, that troon who was in the expansion systems video did some big performative thread basically fishing for asspats yesterday. Of course accompanied by a big ole selfie so people can tell him how heckin valid he is cosplaying as a woman.

 

[Shidoen]

Fucking Tauren Rogues are revealing themselves.

 

[Tanner Glass]

The ToS is something that I see quoted bible and verse by some of the more sped types on my server and on Reddit. It's not something you 'sign up for' or whatever, but it's pretty prevalent in a lot of folks heads, moreso than I've seen in other games beyond maybe Everquest with the Play Nice Policy as it related to spawns/camps/etc. I never really saw people actively talking about the ToS in WoW, aside from when changes were made (the big one was updating the language on third party programs and how it was limiting disabled people from playing the game with legitimate tools that they use, but also shit related to RMT.)

Heck, there was a big furor over ToS changes late last year that were plastered all over the place. That, combined with the self-fellating 'Great Community, BTW!' that the aforementioned speds love to spout off about all the time is what formed that opinion.

Blizzard looked what people were saying about the community and drew the wrong conclusions from it. Yeah, there isn't a code of conduct in XIV like what is apparently coming with WoW, but the general approach and sentiment--we're going to be clamping down on nono behavior--is what I think that they took from XIV.

Which ignores a LOT of what you had outlined subsequently in your post. XIV's success comes from a lot of different things. It's a pretty 'on rails' experience where content is relevant pretty much all the time, aside from the few spots here and there (eg, Battle Levequests), has a lot of lateral content for players to experience, isn't slaved to horrible 'retention metrics' systems, etc.

Those are the things that have made XIV stand out and be appealing to folks. But instead, 'inclusive space' is somehow going to magically turn things around.

All it's going to do is let the sex pests burrow in further and alienate folks who are already annoyed with things like excising all haram content like Yo Mama jokes and replacing it with bowls of fruit.

E: Oh and unrelated, that troon who was in the expansion systems video did some big performative thread basically fishing for asspats yesterday. Of course accompanied by a big ole selfie so people can tell him how heckin valid he is cosplaying as a woman.

XIV's major TOS guiding principle is the game's director clearly stating "We're all adults here". He clearly understands there's nuance to rules and fun and (mostly) comes down in a way that makes sense to everyone.

Another major design thing in FFXIV is that the game has pretty clear design boundaries - it's very hard to do things in game that you aren't supposed to do. WoW has a full mod API because they were lazy and decided to open-source/outsource improvements to the game, but now they can't control how those tools are used. In FFXIV, for example, you aren't allowed to shit talk other players about their DPS - but in WoW - you can use a mod (Recount) and whisper a bad player's DPS to them after every single pull, you can look up their achievements and pull stuff there, and you can even try and figure out their alts and harass them there; almost automatically. You can spam their mailboxes with mods and until previously, you were allowed to (somewhat easily) get players on the other faction to murder that person for a goof.

 

[Well Intentioned]

XIV's major TOS guiding principle is the game's director clearly stating "We're all adults here". He clearly understands there's nuance to rules and fun and (mostly) comes down in a way that makes sense to everyone.

Another major design thing in FFXIV is that the game has pretty clear design boundaries - it's very hard to do things in game that you aren't supposed to do. WoW has a full mod API because they were lazy and decided to open-source/outsource improvements to the game, but now they can't control how those tools are used. In FFXIV, for example, you aren't allowed to shit talk other players about their DPS - but in WoW - you can use a mod (Recount) and whisper a bad player's DPS to them after every single pull, you can look up their achievements and pull stuff there, and you can even try and figure out their alts and harass them there; almost automatically. You can spam their mailboxes with mods and until previously, you were allowed to (somewhat easily) get players on the other faction to murder that person for a goof.

Yeah, like I said, they aren't learning the right lessons from FFXIV. Some of it is trying to put the genie back into the bottle (like as you mentioned with the API and modding) and can't really be walked back.

They also just named Holly Longdale as an executive producer for WoW. So it's all a bunch of window dressing nonsense to try and 'build a community like FFXIV' while ignoring all of the things that resulted in people flocking to the game and creating said community. She had previously worked on Everquest 2 and Everquest before joining Blizzard. Apparently played a big part in monetizing the fuck out of progression servers for EQ1 and the general sentiment on her leaving at the time was 'meh' to 'good riddance.'

"See? We have women in positions of authority and a code of conduct! And the same grindy ass systems and unfun gameplay."

 

[Retink]

They've learned so far exactly 0 lessons from XIV - some of them would be remarkably easy to impliment.

I think you missed a really big one, being that WoW makes it feel like other players are wasting your time when you're in group content.

So much of WoW's design forces you to grind and do things in a timed setting that if at any point you have bad team members it's just a massive pain, to the point that early in an expansion Normal dungeons are actually harder than Heroics, not because the difficulty of the dungeon itself is higher but rather because players in them are so bad that you get completely unreasonable wipes and DPS is pitiful. I haven't seen that in FFXIV so far and it seems like the average FFXIV player is better than the average WoW player, but FFXIV aoe mechanics are easier to read and the rotations feel more intuitive. Even as someone who was a Mythic raider in WoW there were certain class specs I couldn't play because they just didn't click for me no matter how much I practiced the rotations and that created big problems when I was a main Rogue in WoD as I hated the Subtlety play style to the point I couldn't do it but both Combat and Assassin were awful until later in the expansion. There were fights where they were fine, but so much of the time I felt like I was a drain on the raid team, which isn't a good place to be as I'd go from being one of the best DPS to one of the worst unless I spent a lot of time learning a spec I hated and wouldn't be good in the future probably.

Though that's not the main point, the bigger point is that you need to do chores in WoW, because you have your dailies which don't take a lot of time but give a main quest progression resource and because they're daily you can't just pool them up and do them all at once. Then you have your regular normal/heroic dungeons where half the group will leave when the legendary thing (pattern in SL) drops and it's not always from the last boss so you need to wait for new players. Then you have Torghast, where it's either a cake walk or a painful slog, and some classes just can't solo it depending on the RNG mechanics in it, but sometimes bringing additional players is a liability. Then you have Mythic+ where if you get the idiot on your team your key gets knocked down, meaning you have to do +2 runs within the time to get to where you would have been if not for the bad player(s). The list goes on as well.

Hell even if you're gearing via LFR sometimes you want to just fail faster to get pity stacks so you can just burn the boss down because fuck it.

Maybe I haven't played enough FFXIV yet, but I don't feel like that's the case, I don't feel like if someone screws up it feels like the whole run is wasted. You're still punished in FFXIV for failing, but it just doesn't feel as shit.

Edit: And one interesting thing I remember is that a lot of streamers who were switching from WoW to FFXIV were saying they didn't want to because FFXIV looked like a bunch of dance fights when it came to raiding and dance fights were some of the worst parts of WoW. After playing the FFXIV raids they've all pretty much said it doesn't feel like a dance.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Edit: And one interesting thing I remember is that a lot of streamers who were switching from WoW to FFXIV were saying they didn't want to because FFXIV looked like a bunch of dance fights when it came to raiding and dance fights were some of the worst parts of WoW. After playing the FFXIV raids they've all pretty much said it doesn't feel like a dance.

I've got a couple friend who used to be hardcore WoW players and then migrated to FFXIV. One of them in particular joined up early enough that he raided the OG Molten Core back in the day. A lot of FFXIV fights remind him of those old WoW raids in the sense that while there are voidzones to sidestep and some gear checks can be a bit tight, on the whole unless you're trying to raid at the highest level Final Fantasy is more forgiving of occasional individual mistakes.

I've only played FFXIV enough to get to a few of the initial dungeons before I realized I really didn't have the patience for MMORPGs anymore, but these dungeons at least brought me back to old-school Deadmines and Wailing Caverns.

 

[Retink]

I've got a couple friend who used to be hardcore WoW players and then migrated to FFXIV. One of them in particular joined up early enough that he raided the OG Molten Core back in the day. A lot of FFXIV fights remind him of those old WoW raids in the sense that while there are voidzones to sidestep and some gear checks can be a bit tight, on the whole unless you're trying to raid at the highest level Final Fantasy is more forgiving of occasional individual mistakes.

I've only played FFXIV enough to get to a few of the initial dungeons before I realized I really didn't have the patience for MMORPGs anymore, but these dungeons at least brought me back to old-school Deadmines and Wailing Caverns.

I haven't done any real raiding in FFXIV but I have watched some raids and I did actually raid back in WoW back in the day, starting as a retarded druid spamming Moonfire in Molten Core and eventually clearing everything except C'thun and Naxx. I can see that being the case as FFXIV looks way more forgiving than WoW and mechanics in FFXIV are also much more legible, making them easier to explain than WoW where they take a more cinematic approach but one that's a pretty big cluster fuck if you haven't watched the video boss guide. The other thing is the mechanics don't look like they screw up everyone like they do in WoW if one person fails to push the button, soak the pool, or whatever, which goes back to that idea that you don't feel like your time is being wasted by others as generally the number of people killed by one mess up is somewhat low.

Thinking about it I really liked the Twin Ogryn fight in High Maul on mythic whereas a lot of people hated it, but as a Rogue I could negate a good chunk of the mechanics thanks to Cloak, Shadow Step, and Feint whereas if someone else got hit by the flames they'd probably just die to the dot it left.

I'm also not playing FFXIV very seriously, but I don't mind stepping away from it and coming back, as the content seems much more available, and doesn't just expire the second the next patch comes out. Which also seems to be how FFXIV is designed intentionally, so that you can set it down and come back whenever, as opposed to the "missed the raid while the patch was live? Fuck you better queue LFR you faggot!" style of WoW.

 

[GenociderSyo]

I've done the raids in FFXIV and my only complaint on them is there are no health bars. There is no way to track your pgoress unless you beat it or wipe.

Tired brain mixed up FFXIV and Lost Ark.

 

[Radola Gajda]

Fucking Tauren Rogues are revealing themselves.

This comment reminded me of one shitty Taliesins video. I watched years ago. Is he still around?
Sucking bli$$ards cocks and girldicks.
Or did he realized this ship is sinking.

"Bli$$ can't do anything wrong it is just players problem for not liking this shitty decision"

 

[Shidoen]

This comment reminded me of one shitty Taliesins video. I watched years ago. Is he still around?
Sucking bli$$ards cocks and girldicks.
Or did he realized this ship is sinking.

"Bli$$ can't do anything wrong it is just players problem for not liking this shitty decision"

Nah man Taliesin is taking it balls deep.

 

[Übertroon]

I would say FF14 does it right by not making content seem like a waste of time. There is always a certain degree of progress, and token rewards at lvl 40 can be used to purchase lvl 60, 70, or 80 gear. When I hit lvl 50 in FF14 I decided to not progress the main quest until I cleared the Coils of Bahamut raids, and while spending a month at lvl 50 there was no point where it felt like I was wasting my time not blitzing through the story or stuck doing lvl 50 content. It wasn't like WoW where everything revolves around being max lvl.

 

[Kane Lives]

I've done the raids in FFXIV and my only complaint on them is there are no health bars. There is no way to track your pgoress unless you beat it or wipe.

I'm trying to parse this. What did you mean there's no health bar? Isn't it part of the default UI?

 

[Well Intentioned]

Maybe I haven't played enough FFXIV yet, but I don't feel like that's the case, I don't feel like if someone screws up it feels like the whole run is wasted. You're still punished in FFXIV for failing, but it just doesn't feel as shit.

Edit: And one interesting thing I remember is that a lot of streamers who were switching from WoW to FFXIV were saying they didn't want to because FFXIV looked like a bunch of dance fights when it came to raiding and dance fights were some of the worst parts of WoW. After playing the FFXIV raids they've all pretty much said it doesn't feel like a dance.

The difference, imo, is that XIV is built around being tard-friendly for the bulk of its content, with a low skill floor. WoW, conversely, has a higher skill floor (not much, mind, but I would argue that it's reflected with things like a faster GCD and different mechanics to keep in mind and learn without really being taught it, etc.) that ratchets up more and more. You have to really be going out of your way to be a net drain on your group and even then, you should be able to clear most content. A freestyling SAM or a Blizzard Mage can still clear content if the rest of the group aren't mouthbreathers.

Once you start dipping your toe into later expansion content (and higher levels of difficulty) you start seeing problems crop up where one person who doesn't know a fight can basically waste your time.

Anyone who has prior MMO experience shouldn't have any problems. But I find XIV's community is comprised of MMO fans and JRPG fans/MMO first timers. The latter category is a not inconsequential amount of players and it's amusing seeing it reflected with folks being utter dogshite at PVP or with like the Ivalice raids (which aren't particularly difficult but have a few curveballs mixed in.) Very similar to early WoW with EQ vets and folks who were picking up WoW cos it was either a Blizzard product or was the hot new thing at the time.

 

[Stab You in the Back]

Nah man Taliesin is taking it balls deep.

Let's see what he's up to.