Been asked alot so decided to finally make a video to address my thoughts.
I only care for battle/endgame content so im mainly only discussing about raiding.
Didn’t want it to be THIS long but I suck at editing and keeping discussion short so I’m sorry!!! XD
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Good video, thx for talking about it. I also raided in both games because my Guild crashed at the end of legion and getting into mythic guilds is like a job application nowadays and i cant be fucked with that anymore, lmao.
Also if you ever find an MMO like FFXI or Asheron's Call, make a video about it because im searching till today, lol.
I took notes, not sure if it is 100% accurate and it's not entirely in order but here~
Don't compare the raid contents side by side as the raids are fundamentally built differently.
Loot, BiS, General execution
FFXIV
– straightforward beelining to your gear, lack of variety.
– easy to get BiS(just do the boss 8 times if you keep failing rolls)
– rotation is very consistent; people think it's slow coz they don't understand oGCD and GCD
– missing one button may mess up your entire optimal rotation.
WoW
– rotations inconsistent because rotations cycle so quick that your ping cannot keep up
– oGCDs can be "stacked" in one macro
What does each game raid have that the other does not have?
FFXIV
– No trash mobs after Heavensward; they serve no purpose anyway.
– No BoE farming on trash mobs.
WoW
– A lot of filler bosses, for example: Shriekwing is NOT boss quality at all; not comparable that to any extreme trial in FFXIV.
– Skillbases fluctuate, HP% phasing allowed skipping phases, better players skip mechanics. (compared to Shadowbringers)
– A lot of mixed responsibility during bosses, but all pale in comparison to a FFXIV Savage tier responsibility.
– DPS Walling: Sludgefist for example is stupidly easy, you do the same thing 4 times,
but DPS walling caused guilds to sieve dps quality, gear etc. Even though everyone understands the mechanics.
Difficulty in-game, and in logistics:
Savage vs Mythic bosses in general feel similar in difficulty.
WoW – Harder to flex coz of multiple alts, hard to fill up rosters if people cannot make it.
FFXIV – Easy to flex due to job change system, easy to fill up rosters coz of 8 people cap too.
Scaling
FFXIV Normal Raid gears suck. Crafted, Extreme Trial/Tome is better pre Savage.
Savage's difficulty curve scales steeper than WoW.
– Easy to find groups / pugs / raid finder due to small grp size.
– Progging Savage in public groups is very doable.
– Accessibility(gear wise) is easy for endgame content.
– No nerfs in difficulty whatsoever, until the content gets phased out, there will be Echo bonuses to make it easier.
WoW – Normal raid gear is ok, more replayable, then nicely scalable into Heroic.
– Hard to get into premades in general.
– Premade for raids is hard, especially on early patch period.
– Hard to find Mythic pug.
– Mythic Denathrius is AMAZING as a boss
– Potential nerfs in mythic after top 100 clears
– Potential pug poor quality is significantly multiplied due to the sheer large number.
– Nerfs to bosses are too big? With regards to Mythics.
Ultimate VS Mythic
Feels FFXIV Ultimate is harder than WoW Mythic raid post nerf.
But Ultimate is easier to recruit. Formation of groups is not as hard as Mythic, logistically.
PERFORMANCE METRICS & GROUP ELIGIBILITY
WoW :
Raider.io (an official variant is going to be made by Blizzard soon)
– Your logs determine your guild spot eligibility.
– Feels more like a job interview with CV etc.
– You might need to link achievements, like KSM/AOTC or do high keys before getting any form of eligilibity to prog raids etc. (which involves YOU doing more pugs)
– Or just get lucky and get a group spot.
FFXIV :
– FFLogs is not as big a deal as Raider.io.
– As long as you can do mechanics, you can likely give things a go.
DEALING WITH WIPES
WoW pugs- some like to leave after 1 wipe, making the whole group of 20ish people wait for another person on lfg.
– long formation time, long reform time if any leavers
FFXIV – 3 wipe disband reform easy, this results in higher effective prog time/practice time as there is less downtime.
you always say it like it is man, much respect
Really good points. I picked up Legion while also playing FFXIV, I think it was heavensward back then. I wanted to get into endgame raiding during Legion but honestly couldn't because of how difficult it is to find a group. Being a player who JUST picked up the game, not having played the previous expansions or raid tiers I found it difficult to find groups to raid because of "lack of experience". Your analogy is spot on applying for a raid group is like applying for a job. I really ended up just doing the occasional pug normal and doing world quests all day and in the end, I ended up focusing all my time on 14. I do hope that wow makes endgame accessibility easier. I still like the game even with all it's flaws but knowing I probably wont be able to do end game content keeps me away from it. At least I know in FFXIV, I will at least be able to clear the raid tier, with or without a static.
It didn’t bother me at first but after all these years of playing FFXIV, grinding every new patch for gear has burnt me out. What I loved about FFXI was gear was still relevant from the beginning of the expansion til the end, it might not be bis but it was still useable at least. But what I miss the most about FFXI is how they handled their relic weapon system. Yes;, it was a really long and grindy but after all that work you can’t deny the weapon wasn’t worth it. Also the weapon was always relevant! All you had to do is grind some material and upgrade it to use it in the new expansion, unlike 14 where your relic turns into glam every new expansion.
I kinda agree with him about FF11. I've actually played that back in 2001 to 2008. Good 7 years during it's popularity. Back then, average gamers were 25 years old back in the day. Most of us were in school and having less responsibilities. A lot of us were still living with our parents back then. So obviously, we had more time to play and the grind required for FF11 pretty much synced with the age group. In otherwords, it was kinda perfect. But for FF14, they acknowledge the fact that average gamers are going into 40s. Having less and less time to play. The style of the content had to be changed to accommodate those. This is why FF14 is popular. It respects your time where WoW never changed their content style. This is where Arthar comes in with rose tinted glasses. FF11 was a good game for its time. But its one of those game that you wouldn't wish for anyone anymore. Matter of fact, if FF11 came out like it did back in 2001, it would be heavily criticized. Not because of graphics or control but the gameplay and content design choices.
You seriously think there is variety in the high end Mythic scene in WoW? Everyone is wearing the same items and goes by the same BiS list. FF14 just gets rid of the illusion and makes achieving BIS easier. Blizzard literal content strategy is to make RNG gear to get BIS as much of a pain in the ass as possible to drag out their content.
Ion has even said he does not want to do gear vendors because you could then mark a calendar when you would achieve BIS so he prefers this current hot mess of RNG drops.
Accessibility really is a huge factor in drawing in players too. For endgame raiders to remain “relevant” (for lack of a better word), I need to cap my tomes and do reclears which takes 6-7 hours. Maybe even less if my static gets in a good groove or i get lucky with PF. The rest of the week? I’m free to do whatever. Prog an Ultimate, learn and practice new classes, level crafters, do side content. If I don’t wanna play FF? I’ll play some other game, I’ve been putting lots of hours into Satisfactory and Factorio and I’ve been eager to try out PSO2 New Genesis.
Not having it feel like a job is a huge draw in for me and that’s something I can’t do in other MMOs
wait a minute, i havent checked arthars in a while. why is he a lalafell?
You should review some of the harder boss fights in wow's history. My favorite is Heroic Ragnaros or Mythic Fallen Avatar.
As someone who comes from the Fighting Game Community, I get the feeling what you're saying. Many people compare different FGs to one another, but you simply can't because one game offers A while another offers B. But ultimately it comes down to what you find appealing. Some people prefer slower fighting games, while I prefer ones that offer a lot of freedom of expression and great movement. I also understand the feeling that you've played so many MMOs up to this point you may or may have not "seen it all" and probably going to resonate with the one you connected with on a nostalgic level.
Many newer Fighting games nowadays offer great QoL and accessibility, but there's definitely something about that one game "from back then" that hit with you. I think the one thing I've noticed with FFXIV is that, you can literally choose to enjoy it how you want (i.e. Raids, crafting, RPers, etc.) so its great for many different type of people. Anyways, I appreciated this video. Wish this sort of discussion was talked amongst both casuals and experienced people, and not "with" experienced players and not "at" casuals, but just being on the same page (if this makes any sense).
You could also finish that stack of single player games thats been steadily increasing the past year you haven't started while you wait… thats right, i know you all have one 😛
Personally, I just have a lot more fun with FFXIV Rotations. And because of that, it edges out WoW for me. Executing mechanics perfectly while getting your best rotation in just feels SO good in FF.
The reason why is because they don't want another Mythic KJ where Mythic Tomb of Sargaras in Legion was the guild killer for both Alliance and Horde so many guilds broke up because Mythic Avatar and KJ were so overtuned guilds just gave up on it.
As a ex wow mythic raider I came to ff14 to casually clear all the content on my schedule. Mythic raiding is fun but everything around it burns people out.
FFXI was amazing. Felt so much more tactical. The fear of death was so prominent and unique. To lose 10% of your exp was so punishing, so getting from point A to B was a legendary journey in itself.
I feel like it's so hard to bring back that oldschool MMO feeling these days. Information is widespread and players are more coordinated than ever. There really needs to be a revolution in the genre, something that somehow synthesizes the best aspects of old-fashioned MMOs and the current ones. No idea what that would look like but it's nice to dream about a future for the genre that isn't just more WoW clones or grindfests with cash shops.
I also think the MMO boom of the late 2000s was really the worst thing that happened to the genre because it spurred the creation of so many moneysinks (the archetypal 'WoW killers') that companies don't even want to bother making MMOs anymore, let alone truly innovative ones.
Holy shit i watched the whole thing and actually listened the whole time. You should be my teacher.
wow raiding is fun, but ultimate in ff is something else. For me, ultimate blows any other raid out of the water
If Blizzard dont nerf Mythic bosses,there wont be more than 300-500 guilds that clear the end boss,they like the number to be more like 1000-1500 even at end tier of the expansion up to 2000-3000k,otherwise casual players that raid casually,as you do are gonna whine alot in wow forums
Very nice video!
I do want to shred some perspective from a WoW raider that has been raiding both casually on lower difficulties and now in the top ~800 on mythic on 2days/week, with 15 years of experience, out of which maybe 6 years in guild management. I have just recently started out with FFXIV, finishing up ARR right now. These are some comments to reply to some good questions you brought up in the video.
*Nerfs*:
– Blizzard wants more than a few % to see their content, so the nerfs are as you said a carrot for some guilds that felt that some bosses were out of reach suddenly get some incentive to play
– Sometimes Blizzard wants to get rid of unhealthy metas, such as e.g stacking 4+ balance druids for starfall or 10 players with 100% immunities to cheese a mechanic (there are just 2 classes with true immunities, 1 with magic- only immunity and 1 'sometimes immune? hunter aspect of the turtle bugged again'), because this limits the diversity of brought players and creates long-running stigmas that might not be true, but still prevents half the playerbase from being brought to progress on their mains.
– At the time of writing this, 1800 guilds, which are 4% of active guilds (active is 1+ boss kill normal in guild group) has killed Mythic Denathrius according to wowprogress tracking.
– Generally there are some checkboxes for how many guilds that have killed the final boss of a raid before they begin rolling out nerfs
– If a boss is not working as intended/some mechanic is blatantly bugged it is generally fixed within the day on release week to preserve the race to world first
– When the top ~20-50 (depending on how long this prog has been in weeks) guilds have killed the last boss there might be some tuning nerfs
– Maybe 2 months in, when maybe 100 guilds have killed final boss, some bosses with heavy RNG elements might get a nerf which preserves the core mechanic of a fight but improves consistency. This might be that X mechanic no longer targets more than Y melee players and generally spreads across more ranged allowing more melee heavy comps to get a fair chance.
– 4 months in, 500 guilds have killed the boss, time to start rolling out the big nerfs.
*20 man logistics and guild recruitment*:
– WoW seems to have more chores that goes into your character to maintain them at a peak level, which for players with regular jobs will take 2-3 or more evenings per week to perform, which limits the number of raiding days.
– Especially in the start of every raid, loot is very scarce – per boss kill you get perhaps 3 pieces split across 20 people, with the weekly vault adding one piece and pvp one piece (assuming you are a) lucky with vault and b) into pvp enough to get a competetive gear piece), meaning if every raider gets 1 piece per week (which might not happen during first week where most rank ~500-1000 guilds kill just about 3 bosses)
– The core mentalities of a 2-3 day and 4-5 day guild are vastly different
– 4-5 day guilds have to clear with less gear as they get to bosses earlier, but can generally use more reckless and min-maxing strats since they get more practice time that stays fresh instead of having 3-4 days betwen each raid.
– 2-3 day guilds must make the most out of each pull but gets several weeks of weekly vaults more, allowing them to opt for safer strats.
– A single player on important roles (tank, healer, key mechanic handler) leaving in the middle of progress can make you backprogress in the magnitude of a week(s) as you shift around the comp to adapt
Differnt types of mythic raiding guilds
– You can split the guilds into an even finer granularity than just World first, Famed slayer and CE for mythic raiding
A list of stereotypes based on world rank (source: Me):
– The top 1-5: generally 8 hours of sleep, 16 hours of playing during progress week 'until boss dies', no break days. The race. FatSharkYes is the only exception to this, playing only evenings. The top players in the world. Every advantage they can find, they will take, spending ~200-300 million gold per raid tier in boes and other gear sources, such as buying boosts for pvp (source: recent Race for World first roundtable with Preach Gaming) Progress time for a new raid: 1-2 weeks
– The top 5-20: Majority of these guilds play 7 days per week, but usually not during the day outside of the first day. These players are fully capable of utilizing their characters to the fullest and many players here get poached by the top 5 between raid releases. Progress time: 3 weeks
– Top 100: Most good 4-5 day guilds with also ~10 exceptional 2-3 day guilds. They have time to see the strats/comps of the top cut and adapt their play according to the meta.
The players can generally minmax their throughput and mechanical play, but the differences in ranks are down to guild management, raid leading and research – giving the gear to the correct players and finding the tactic that suits their comp. Progress time: 1-1.5 months
In the above categories, many players are also solid multi-classers, gearing several characters for progression, running 'split raids' (doing the heroic difficulty several times while splitting up the mains to funnel gear to the main characters).
– Top 200: The 2-4 day guilds that still kill everything before most nerfs (generally nerfs hit bosses they have already killed) and just around the time they get fully geared. The players here are your 'purple logs' and 'orange logs' across the board, having solid play but keeping to a more relaxed schedule. While select players have alts that become relevant for progress, these guilds generally have at most one split raid, focusing on the single main to stay competetive. 1.5-2.5 months
– Top 1000: Players that kill bosses maybe pre-nerf, but that go to the last 3 bosses having virtually every piece of gear from the earlier bosses on every raider. These players do not necessarily have the same quality of damage dealers, but the amount of gear allows them to pull the same damage as the top guilds did during progress. Strategies that are formed here usually emphasize focusing on mechanics and playing it safe, whereas the guilds above need to squeeze out dps while able to. These guilds have time to have select players reroll for special jobs if a class (read: Mage/warlock/balance druid/hunter, depending on tier) becomes OP for the final bosses. Progress time: 3-5 months
– Post nerf CEs: Players here have a high variability from being very decent at dealing damage to being a pug recruit. These guilds are generally very tolerant towards off-meta classes and often the players stick to a single character or even spec that they love.
– Previous raid experience during recruitment can be to see if you not only have CE, but at which point this was acquired. For categories in top 200 and above, this is important as you follow a different progression cycle until the first kill than you do in the lower categories, and if you are inexperienced you risk burning out, or there might be drama because a fresh player has never experienced sitting on the bench, sometimes for weeks before. For us in the top 400-800, this is not quite as serious, but you are generally expected to maybe have at least 1-2 previous CEs, and preferably not from one of the easier raids (the last raid of every expansion is worth less because the content drought tends to be close to a year or more), unless it was achieved at a similar rank to the guild you are applying to.
– Example: The post-nerf Denatrius kill is worth more than a post-corrution vendor N'zoth, and of similar quality to upgraded artifacts Nighthold Gul'dan, but less worth than any version of ToS Kil'jaedan.
– You are, contrary to your video, the first player I've heard that have praised Castle Nathria as a whole. Sire Denathrius sure was an amazing fight, but the raid in general was plagued with a bunch of spell-queuing issues (bosses that have spells set with their own CD, rather than casting spells on a timer, leading to some strange pattern changes. This would cause you to feel that you face a completely different boss fight because different overlaps occur). Artificer xy'mox, The Council of Blood and Stone Legion Generals were all infamous of being very sensitive pre-nerf to exactly when you transitioned them to a new phase as some really jank overlaps in mechanics could occur otherwise. These windows could be as tight as "alright, we need to push the boss from 51 to 50% between 2 min 4 sec and 2 min 7 sec – STOP DOTS…. okay, lets jump off the platform…." (numbers here arbitrary, I did not have exact timers on the top of my head).
Game Difficulty and boss design
– The general 'individual responsibility boss' is usually a roadblock for most wow raiders, but is very much as you said, very easy compared to a savage/ultimate FFXIV boss
– The main difficulty of wow raiding is managing 20+ people, designing a comp that will work for the raid (in terms of recruitment) and handling inter-guild-relationships. I have often compared being a guild officer to being a primary school teacher. There's something strange with loot and raid spots that turns grown adults into whiny toddlers.
Sorry for the very long message, but I felt that this wall of text does add to the discussion from a still-active WoW player looking into playing FFXIV.
Top 100 in WoW has nothing on ultimate because the WF guilds can preview fights on PTR so they are never going into fights completely blind. In 14 every fight in a new tier or ultimate release is completely blind.
No variety in ffxiv sure but from my experience with other mmos, theres only two ways to play. You use BiS or youre wrong. So not really much of variety there either. Lack of variety makes for better balancing. Even tho I would want more variety just for the sake of trying stupid shit out
thy mythic guild barrier is a big one in wow, im familiar with the guild barrier from various other MMOs… in SWTOR for the life of me i could not get into a TOP tier raiding guild, there was always a couple of scrubs on the team who dragged us down, such a shame
in Wildstar on the other hand i was part of one of only two guilds that actually completed the final raid tier, felt pretty exclusive, but quite frankly the best raiding time i ever had in any MMO with that guild
so it comes down to this: if it is hard to find a competent raiding group, when/if u do, u will have a good time but very high chance of it not working out/happening in the first place, takes a lot of effort and connections/luck … easily can become a large time sink and time waster, not ideal when u have limited time to play
for this reason in terms of reliability the ff14 style looks much much more appealing
Curious about what you think of Wildstar endgame content when it was up ?
Ive played, loved the dungeons, the raids were chalenging as fck. Too bad the devs could not follow ans players start quitting the content may have been a bit too difficult for some too
Great video Arthars, but why do you actually go through the effort of doing the hard content and providing a reasoned perspective when you could just make a 20 minute video titled "WHY FFXIV IS DETHRONING WOW" every day for 5 weeks and talk about the amazing level 37 story
Hey
How "easy" is it in FF to find a Progressing Raidgroup as a healer?
Played WoW since Beta but this Mythic+ running every day the Same is really boring,the Community is selfish, Teamplay is rare.
Will someone which loves Progressing the hardest Raidcontent be Happy in FF or is the Focus of the Game and Playerbase besides raiding at highest Difficulty?
Really interesting video. Coming from the other side, it's sort of hard finding a good comparison that narrows it down to mechanics, details and highest level endgame. This one did.
Great stuff.
So, if I understand you correctly, all pve rotations in XIV are static extended sequences? There's no priority system rotations like in WoW, where there are less skills, but rotation is more reactive, right?
People died playing ff11. now THAT'S an MMO. I haven't tried it but I plan on hopping onto a vanilla server sometime and taking a crack at it.
Even the world first top 100 groups in wow have ample experience in PTR (with day1 DBM and weakauras) save for the very last phase in mythic difficulty. So you can't really compare apples to apples. It all devolves to a Simon says minigame, and it's unfortunate.
« Casual wow raider » haha and cleared mythic nathria, how is this casual?
Sludgefist was a guildnkiller? shits easy af wdym
WoW Raiders are shit good lord
Ultima Online was my shit
its true when u say about wow is not friendly to new player because people want to get exp player