A candid view of my poor relationship with gaming, and what a year of FFXIV has taught me. I Feel good about gaming again. I hope Warcraft can one day take example from this.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Discord: https://discord.gg/6WxwX67xKt
Socials:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WarchiefPeebs
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WarchiefPeeb
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/warchiefpeebs/
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/warchiefpeebs
Amazon Wishlist: https://www.amazon.ca/hz/wishlist/ls/2WKJWKM22LJCA?ref_=wl_share
Business Email: [email protected]
source
I Think I could play Warcraft today in a more healthy way.
I'm not ready to, but I think the lessons learned in the last year really sank in.
I played WoW from December 2004 until… 2020-ish. And I have a lot of good memories from WoW, but after being away from it for the time that I have, the more I've come to realise how much I just… hated the game and everyone in it.
I've come to realise how much the game conditioned me to be toxic to other players, hate video game mechanics, hate fun and, most importantly, hate myself.
And the longer the game went on, I gained more things to love about it, but I gained even more things to hate. And then the in-game store came and WoW become wholly focused on retention tactics, keeping people in the game for long enough that they'd buy things from the store.
And then came the time-gating, and then the multiple levels of RPGs and at the end of it, WoW just felt like a casino in video game form.
I had played XIV on and off in monthly bursts some years prior, which is how I knew what to try next, and I still love the idea of WoW dearly (and I obviously love fennecs, so their vulpera race is a big draw & one of my toughest sacrifices in quitting the game), but it's not worth the abuse. WoW abuses me, no different to how a boyfriend could, and it gaslights me into thinking that I'm in the wrong, while it isolates and hurts me trying to take my money.
It sounds stupid, but leaving WoW was the best thing I ever did. It took a long time to break out of the mindset and behaviours that it had taught me for so long, and it took longer still to trust people in other games.
And, I'm ashamed to admit, it took even longer to learn to love myself again.
Given my current situation, returning to WoW is just no longer possible, much as I'd like to. For… personal reasons more than anything, not even anything to do with Acti-Blizz's shenanigans that came to light — though they certainly didn't help.
People like me as just not welcome in the game anymore and that's just that. Maybe if they sorted their community out, but until then, I have better things to do than to subject myself to abuse from the game and its players.
The Main thing for me is the game makes me want to come back but not out of some type of obligation. I feel that somewhat obligated Having to pay a sub in the first place, I don't need systems that are a net negative forcing me to come back to maintain some game mechanic. One of the reasons I quit Wow years ago, was I had visited family for holidays and realized i spent hours worring about dailys and raids and what I was missing out on.
Warcraft was my first MMO as well. And while I enjoyed leveling, anything that required other people was horrible. People were awful, did not care if you were new, expected you to know everything immediately. And even when I got to max level, it just got worse. Especially i was never in a good guild that wanted to help. I only raided a few times, and hated it because people expected you to know things and weren't explaining things.
So I left.
So when I eventually picked up 14…so many of my WoW fears and scars clamped onto my shoulder and haunted me well into run. It probably wasn't until I got into my 2nd FC and got my confidence boosted as WHM, that I was a good healer, that I finally got brush away that Shade of WoW and enjoy 14 for what it was. I started doing Extremes and getting mounts. I picked up a new class and loved it. When Endwalker hit, And I finally got to try raiding and Savage content as active content, it was a challenge I enjoyed.
But I did hit an overwhelming burnout. But, I took Yoshi-P's words to heart and stepped aside. But now as 6.25 is launching, I am feeling ready to jump back in and look forward to what awaits and keep working on all the things I want to.
Daily Roulette though takes more then three minutes just the Main Scenario Roulette is almost an hour of cutscenes.
Since swapping to ffxiv ive had to take a different approach to daily content. Deep breath, ignore the fomo..do it casually. (ideally) its not going anywhere
holiday events are a different story lol im not perfect
FF14 wasn't really my first MMO, but it is the first one I've really stuck with. And I think it's because it's the first one I've actually had positive experiences with the actual multiplayer aspect. Maybe it's because I'm on Crystal (which has a reputation for being an RP data center) but I've never entered a duty without seeing multiple friendly 'Hello's at the start and 'GG's at the end, and that helps take ssssooo much pressure off, and also helps me deal with frustrations easier. I also think that the simple fact that EVERYONE gets an extra reward when even one person is doing something for the first time helps create that positive attitude by taking away that pressure to perform well. We all know the experience of running something blind, so someone messing up isn't a big deal. It's just like, what an extra 10 minutes at the worst? And we're getting a decent number of tomestones for that extra 10 minutes.
So, honestly, I never really got sucked into the grind life in wow. Like, there was this one time, when I had a pseudo online relationship with a raider/high ranked pvper, and I ended up raiding pretty hardcore just to spend time with them (though that ended up being the only thing we did together, which drove me nuts, anyway whole other story), but even then, I did the bare minimum, and I played a class that could get away with no consumables (holy paladin in classic wow during nax, can spam flash of light for days, never need mana pots :P).
The thing that DID get me sucked into the game though, was the lore, and especially during covid, roleplaying. There was a magical time from early 2020 to late 2020/early 2021 that roleplaying was alive and abundant in classic wow, but eventually, due to poor management of servers, the literal only rp-pvp server in classic wow got completely ruined, and that was when a friend of mine introduced me to ff14. Not gonna lie, i've been playing this game for coming up on a year now, and it has been some of the best fun I've had in a game for a LONNGG time, and I mean content-wise (rp is unique, you get to make your own content, so even the trashiest of games can be fun to rp in).
Don't get me wrong, there are a LOT of things I would love to see improved in ff14, but about 90% of them are technical issues that either can't be fixed without majorly overhauling the engine, or simply cannot be done due to console limitations, so i've kinda learned to live with them. Wow's problems on the other hand, are almost all entirely to do with their design philosophy, and they all make the game utterly terrible as a result, not to mention their seeming lack of any form of QA testing, or community management. Just as a company, Blizzard seems like the highest tier of corporate trash in the marketplace, the sort of soulless company akin to EA back in the day (I don't know if EA have much improved, I haven't touched any game of theirs in decades).
When it comes down to it, honestly, blizzard and wow just sicken me at how disgusting they've become, the only thing that has kept me playing their game for the last 2 years has been my attachment to my rp character, but after getting a job, I just can't get on during american primetime anymore (I live in aus), so I can't even rp anymore, since there's no aus rp servers, so the games basically dead to me.
true, if a game really is gud, you'll come back to it (Bethesda & Nintendo games are good examples.., and yep bought Skyrim so many times too xD..)
Another semi-related thing is even if you are raiding the newest savage tier you have 3, 4, or 5 weeklies that are easy to do.
1st: cap your tomes, longest this'll take is like 9 dungeons, but realistically with daily rouls it'll go down to like 5 instances a week.
2nd: clear the 4th turn of the newest normal raid, but unless you wanna do other jobs this is only for 7 weeks max
3rd, 4th, and possibly 5th: clear each of the 24 man raids that week for coins for upgrade mats that can eventually be bought with them. that's it. they're pretty short and fun
Firstly, thank you very much for uploading this video! It was interesting to listen in on you talking about this, and I couldn't agree more!
Final Fantasy XIV Online has given me so much happiness that no other MMORPG was ever able to give me, and I am really glad to be along the ride now
World of Warcraft Raiding, EVE Online (A space game) has taken away an immense amount of my time for PvP, and it all felt like a chore, like work after work. It was unbearable – but I didn't know better at the time!
I thought this was gaming, I thought this was normal, just like you!
But, no, it's not okay, not normal. This is the developers and the game's community not respecting your time. But FFXIV does. And I respect them for that in return. Blessings to Yoshi our boi
It really is like a bad relationship. You don't realize how bad it was til you've found something better. I wish we DID realize – but we don't often, sadly. I have some fond memories from my years in WoW – but I have more of very toxic people, of a disappointing, uninvolving story – and they turned my adorable gnome into – I don't know – the Bride of Chucky. So I don't miss it. Blizzard's stunningly awful treatment of employees means I never, ever will.