FST Podcast Ep. 15 | FFXIV 6.2, WoW Dragonflight, MMO Community & Guilds, Diablo 4 Monetization



Welcome to the Frozen Sodium Throne Podcast, this podcast hosted by Rurikhan and Accolonn focus on gaming with a heavy bias towards MMOs like WoW, FFXIV and More. Today we got a packed discussion for you guys, hopefully you’ll enjoy it!

Check out Accolonn:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAccolonn/
https://www.twitch.tv/Accolonn

More Rurikhan:
Main Channel: http://youtube.com/Rurikhan
Twitch: http://twitch.tv/rurikhan
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rurikhan
Discord: https://discord.gg/rwXHkNQ

#gaming #Blizzard #worldofwarcraft

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:02 Final Fantasy XIV 6.2
19:44 MMOs, Roleplay, Casuals and Content
34:36 MMOs Need a Better New Player Experience
46:36 Dragonflight Renown & Factions
50:26 Guild Wars 2 & Warhammer Banter
56:05 World of Warcraft Gearing, PvP, Mythic+, Raids
1:20:03 The Importance of Guilds, Communities in MMOs
1:38:31 World of Warcraft Factions Banter
1:43:54 WoW Normal / Heroic / Mythic Raids Simultaneous Release & Gearing Degeneracy
2:01:12 Diablo 4 Monetization
2:40:51 Blizzard is Giving Shadowlands away for Free

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36 thoughts on “FST Podcast Ep. 15 | FFXIV 6.2, WoW Dragonflight, MMO Community & Guilds, Diablo 4 Monetization”

  1. PVP normalized – it was like that. But ppl did not like it. I think the problem was that the sense of power/gear progression was not replaced with anything vivid enough.
    I think that ppl want to obviate their opponent due to imbalance of the classes. You would understand that, if you were a rouge, in Shadowlands, and met a pala on BG. Adios muchachos.

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  2. Actually for Omega and ShB they were right, there is a tie to an after 5.0 dungeon that heavily implied on both HW and SB raids as a catalyst for something 🙂

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  3. i be honest, i havnt done any "hardcore" raiding in FFXIV because players dont raid with their guilds(FCs). I ended up just making a solo FC since FC dosnt provide me with raiding. In WoW ive done all sorts of heroic raiding back when I played (Heroic Rag and Such) and i loved raiding with my guild, making friends. In Classic I joined another guild and we had fun raiding, i ultimate quit playing Classic because my guild decided to become laid back and basically stop trying to push themselves to play better. TLDR: I like raiding with Guild cant figure out how to raid in FF other than PF and that sucks.

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  4. Scheduled raiding is the main thing that stops me raiding with a static in ffxiv. Or guild in other mmo. I'll join my friends if I happen to be on when they are raiding and there's space. But the few times a schedule has been set up it kills all the joy for me. Scheduling times to have fun just seems wrong. I'll play games when I feel like playing them.

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  5. Yeah yeah listen, the reason why no shit happens in Alliance is because we’ve got all our shit together, opposed to the Horde which is a freaking mess, lol. Also like what Rui said, the Dwarves would come in and shut any shit down, so yeah, they be the peacekeepers of the faction. And another thing, at the least we don’t lose our main leader countless times due to infighting. The king of the Alliance, Varian, he died a dang hero. Bolvar went down defending the world from the Lich King. And Anduin is still around, I guess, of course he’s still a young lad so he’s yet to truly prove himself. As for the Horde, almost all of the Warchiefs either turned villain, betrayed everyone, or straight up died like wimps. Don’t mean anything by this, but just saying, the Alliance got their shit together at least, and am proud of being a Dark Iron who is working to redeem my fellow Dwarves under the fiery mountain.

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  6. Gwent has the battle pass that enhances the game in my opineon, it just gives you more cards (non are exclusive to it) and cosmetics in a card game with already generous card reward systems. You can also pay to have the upgraded version where you get double rewards and extra cosmetics. This same system doesn't work for all games Diablo 4 included.

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  7. One thing Accolonn has to learn about people playing Fashion Fantasy XIV is the following: Savage Raid Gear is dyable and Glamhams will go insane if they can't get the one piece that completes heir outfit in the colour they want. Those people also probably jumped ass first into PvP when the devs released the overhaul and introduced series there. Because of the Archfiend armour or Hellhound weapons or all the other stuff you get for crystal trophies. Is it a very small percentile? Yes. Are they scary? Just as scary as someone with all Blue Mage spells. And those people have jumped stupid hoops already.

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  8. I think the issue with WoW gear is that, outside of Tier set bonuses, Trinkets, and exceedingly rare/unique weapons – gear has virtually no impact on how it feels to play your character. You may be able to hit an ability or get a certain proc more frequently as your stats increase, but for the most part you're just hitting the same buttons and your numbers are getting bigger. So once you get your meaningful pieces of gear out of the way (Tier set, Trinkets, etc) you've effectively started the count down for when you'll inevitably get bored of playing that character. Fortunately, there's several ways to address this issue.
    1.) Drastically increase the quantity and quality of other content to do. Outside of dungeons, raids, and PvP, content is a joke in WoW. World quests only exist for Reputation / Currency grinds, which are only in the game to gate cosmetic rewards. The vast majority are mind numbingly boring, easy, and very rarely engages the player. If world quests were designed to be fun and rewarding on their own (no Reputation / Currency / Gear / etc. to serve as an incentive for doing the content) players would have a whole new pillar of content to experience to break up the monotony that's plagued WoW's end game for years now.
    2.) Return to the content cadence we saw prior to WoD (new major patch every 2-6 months, rather than every 8+ months) – especially if this means less content in the patch, but players genuinely want to do most of, if not all of the new content (see previous point).
    3.) Use horizontal progression design over vertical progression. In any gear-based MMO, there will be BIS lists for every class/spec. However, with the exception of trinkets (which often have varied usability between different types of content) I find myself immediately selling / DEing any gear that I know I will never wear as soon as I get a universally better piece. This feels awful. Especially since I know I'll just have to re-farm the same pieces of gear the following patch. I'd rather each patch have little/no ilvl increase for gear, and instead introduce a new set of gear for any new instance with its own 2/4/6/8 set bonuses that I can mix/match across multiple sets to create considerably different play styles for the same class/spec. Perhaps the "BIS" list of gear for that particular instance would require I collect the 8 set bonus, but outside that instance I would effectively have the flexibility of creating my own "custom" set bonus.

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  9. WoW should just have a second gear tab for PvP only, where you can freely choose from every piece of gear that exists to create your pvp set. You can both have normalised power level and creative builds. Also, this isn't the first time, they gave away WoD for free as well.

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  10. Someone should tell Accalon that Blizzard Ent. was contracted by Gamesworkshop back in the late 80's to create a Warhammer RTS. When the contract fell out, what became Warcraft was all the unused assets…reskinned from that Warhammer RTS. Pretty much Blizzard owes its existence to Warhammer. No wonder both companies are hemorrhaging players at lightning speed. Gamesworkshop and Blizzard are two peas in a pod…hate the player and fleece the devoted for everything.

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  11. That my my worry about Dragon Flying in Dragonflight. If they do not iterate on it, say give different effects due to weather or wind, so you have to continually change routes and methods of flight… people are going to optimize the hell out of it. Everyone, not even with a guide, will naturally sway to optimization. No matter how fun or cool the world, it is still a travel mechanic. What is worse, until an unspecified time, you HAVE to do it. And you HAVE to do Renown and Dragon Riding on EVERY ALT (I really hope they have already added in catch up mechanics in that aspect at least).

    Which is why I wonder why they just do not have regular flight along with Dragon Riding from the onset. Dragon Riding is more interactive, more dynamic, and most importantly, fast as fuck. 80% of the player base will be neutral to loving the shit out of it. Meanwhile Netflix Nancy and Mount Morton will hate the absolute shit out of it. Nancy will hate the fact that she can not afk or get the hang of Dragon Riding and has to wait till patch 10.x to get their normal flying back, and Morton will be pissed he is reduced to 1 mount. You are losing these people just to force them into a system they might not care for.

    Just stop. With something as mundane like a movement system to traverse the open world, it will not hurt the player to give them options.

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  12. My dude, pople do the ultimates for the weapon glam alone, i have 3 people in my FC that do Savage because the gear is cool… they don't care about stats or "the challenge" they care about the shiny glam

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  13. I think WoW sufferes from an identity crisis that came from trying to appeal to too many people, and ultimately pissed a lot of them off.

    I think the current story is a mess, and the current characters in WoW don't feel very interesting anymore (aside from Genn imo) because they're not being written by the people who created them. I think they should honestly stop trying to tell a half assed story and start making a new one. They should keep the current game running, but just make it into a dungeon/raid/pvp oriented game with seasonal loops, rather than parading it as a full MMO while ignoring a lot of other types of content. At this point Hearthstone does a better job of storytelling than WoW does, so it's not like they would be letting the players who really care about the story down anyway.

    They should make a Warcraft 4 and set it somewhere different that has nothing to do with Azeroth. And then spent half a decade+ to make a new MMO with a new story, better base systems (like housing and evergreen content) and a more narrative focus. Actually let the current team (or a new one) write characters that they actually care about, and see what they can do.

    I just don't see how the current mess of a game can be fixed, even with the budget and team size they have. It'd be cool if it could, but I just don't see it. Maybe 11.0 will change my mind.

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  14. I think they should just make the ilvl between raids, pvp, and M+ the same, and just add a stat specific to each one. This way they can make one tier set, but with a different version for each game mode. M+ gear has dungeoneering, Raid hear has siege, and PvP has conquest (or whatever they want to call it). And this stat just gives a bonus in that game setting, and the more you stack it the better it is. This way someone who plays one game mode can go try new content, and still have a solid foundation to work from with their old gear.

    It would also get rid of that feeling that one type of player is less than another because the gear they have access to is just worse. Now you can sees one one has a 400ilvl or whatever, know that they're a good player (or boosted or whatever, but that's a whole different problem) and then see what kind of content they do based on the bonus they have in x content.

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  15. As someone who considers dwarves one of my fantasy races, the Alliance is just lame… I just find it fundamentally boring. I would love to be able to have a dwarf or draenai character because I think they're cool, but every time I hear a stupid human quest npc say "for the Alliance" I just want to puke. Getting rid of factions would be for the better of the game. They either just need to have the Horde win (because of the player counts in each faction) or just have both sides mutually dissolve because they want to be boring and PC. I would much rather hear "for Ironforge" or "for the Exodar" or whatever.

    But seriously, the Horde won and people just need to deal with it.

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  16. I think the week delay works great in FF14 because there's a bunch of interesting shit on patch release to do. There's story, dungeon, trial, and base raid to get gear and glam stuff from, plus other content like island sanctuary and tribal stuff, or whatever else they release. Plus you get the EX trial, which is like a baby raid to hold people over anyway.

    In WoW, the delay sucks because basically you get to do a scuffed version on the content, and have to wait a week to do the real stuff and start gearing. There's generally nothing else to do, so you're just getting a watered down version of the patch. WoW should 100% just release everything on patch day and let people do what they want, rather than holding them back for no reason.

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  17. I love how when Accolonn was talking about a hypothetical battle pass for Elden Ring, Rurikhan looked somewhere between wanting to puke and mourning someone at a funeral. That's all you need to know about battle passes in general haha.

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  18. I PvP, and I prefer normalization. I want to dunk by just being better then them. FFXIV used to have PvP gear with PvP specific materia, this is much better now without it.

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  19. i think elder scrolls online did a very good job to slowly engange new players into the game and systems. i am just not a mmorpg player. but i still spent thousands of hours in that game.

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  20. I highly recommend to you guys play gw2. I believe in the state the game is you are gonna love it. I am a casual player myself, and i have found some many things to do there. From collections, to play my favorite gameplay in the game.
    I am going to tell you right now, To you Accalon, you are gonna love the game's summoner class options. If you really like summoner as a base game style, try necro, and you will be just amazed by how awesome he will turn out to be!
    One big note though. If you guys buy the expansions to play, they will come up with free boosters, if i am not mistaken. DO NOT USE THEM! Trust, me, the level up is too fast, and to fun to miss, plus as always it is the ultimate way to truly learn to play the game, as each level up has a guide for you for all the things you unlock little by little

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