Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy 14 are in my opinion, both fantastic MMOs. And really, if you can, you should just play both! But what if you only have time to play one? It’s time for Guild Wars 2 vs. Final Fantasy XIV!
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
01:53 Narrative
05:10 Open World
06:38 Instanced Content
08:44 Combat
10:57 Buildcraft
12:59 Alts
13:53 Production Value
14:21 Playable Races
15:38 Music
16:19 Animations
16:56 Mounts
18:29 Subscription Fee
20:02 Social
21:14 Server Uptime
22:11 Player Housing
22:41 Fashion
23:42 Conclusion
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I want to say a lot, but for now I say this: Square need to revamp the job animations for each race because the only reason why I can't play roe is that most animations looks awful on them really. And there is only one mount in 14. It's chocobo. Everything else is just skins for it.
I really Love GW2. I could not get into FF14 because of the boring Combat, and I really tried several times. AsI heared that the Beginning was revised again after Enwalker? so I will give it another try on a more solid Character like a Warrior, nothing to complicated in the beginning.
If youre from Australia or New Zealand play ff14. This is coming from a player who played gw2 for almost decade now. GW2 is awesome but ping just kills the game for me. I moved to ff14 ever since they finally released their oceana servers.
Couple of things from the FFXIV perspective
One reason I like the social elements in FFXIV better is that
1. your character turns their head to face their target, meaning I can actually look the people im talking to in the eyes
and 2. emotes, FFXIV has way, way more useful emotes for all kinds of social interactions
FFXIV is the most immersive game for me when it comes to social interaction, between the above and the housing system.
Also regarding subscription vs F2P/B2P, while I understand the criticisms of subscription based gameplay and how it makes you hesitant to subscribe cause you're not sure how much time you put into it, I personally VASTLY prefer having a game experience that doesn't try to upsell me once I'm inside or take away features and lock them behind a convenience fee. For that reason I do prefer the financial model in FFXIV. I can set and forget the subscription and focus my attention on the game itself and rest assured that almost anything in the game is something I can acquire by playing the game. There are some cash shop items, mostly seasonal event items for seasons they're not running anymore, but even those are not sold in-game itself and you have to go out of the way to log onto their website to browse their offerings. I love just having an MMO that I can log on and play and it doesn't ever ask me ONCE to dig bag into my wallet while I'm playing the game.
That said, I do love GW2 and as this video touches on there's plenty of reasons to play either game, and I play them both for different things. If for some reason I'm burnt out on one I can play the other and the lack of subscription on GW2 does mean I can just hop back in at any time without risk.
Another thing to mention is that both MMORPGs do a great job respecting your time. GW2 by not having a subscription and having horizontal progression, and FFXIV by having extremely forgiving catch up mechanics and not really forcing you to stay up on the treadmill. FFXIV doesn't even have log-in bonuses, which I personally appreciate since that's a mechanic meant to encourage you to log in every day and I prefer that FFXIV doesn't set up that kind of chore for me.
They're both fantastic games, I'm playing GW2 more right now because I'm a bit burned on FFXIV but I'll probably go back to 14 probably sometime around the next expansion announcement which should be happening soon. I love being able to play both of these games back and forth when I'm in different moods. I just made this comment as someone on the opposite side of Laranity, where I'm more of an FF vet and GW2 noob.
multiple mmos at a time? heresy
I found FF14 to be a hot mess and every aspect of it is over complicated except for combat which is simplistic and boring af. Community is clicky and no one talks in general chats unlike other mmo’s. Looking forward to trying guild wars.
Is there any option in both games to turn off all the player-floating names? LOTRO has, and it makes for an uncluttered screen.
This video is honestly so good, so succinct and actively manages to mention some minutiae and important nuances that many general overview MMO comparison videos just straight up miss. It definitely helps that you've played both games substantially. 🙂
Have you played through Shadowbringers yet? I'm curious if Heavensward is still your favorite expansion of all time. It was for me UNTIL I played Shadowbringers. You think you cried before… you'll need three boxes of Kleenex for this one.
GW2 is better MMOrpg
FFXIV is better mmoRPG
Think about it. FFXIV has around 200 hours story while GW2 has around 85 hours but not only that but I think FFXIV is better written but that is opinion based. Mean while GW2 does a lot of things to make the natural group play much more fluent with shared kill rewards and everything giving xp driving people to play together instead of leaving people to kill that boss alone because they attacked it first.
The only mmo I wouldn't played is wow gw2 and ffxiv are great
Laras catch phrase is '..there is a LOT..' But the 'lot' is pronounced with a strong accent.
If gear is maxed out and mounts skins are bought, what keeps player doing pve content?
I played 14 for about 3k hours and am now having a lot of fun (and frustrations) with GW2. I didn't enjoy the raid treadmill as much as I thought I would and the other aspects of the game, meaning roleplay, housing and most importantly the story I found utterly uninsteresting
YEP GW2 just need glamour plates! THAT IS IT!
Im a new GW2 player, I have a question.
Im currently doing what everyone is recommending me – Play my first character all by myself.
Which means that if I search something about the game, it shouldnt be anything else than the basics, in order to enjoy the game at its fullest.
Im doing whatever feels the best in every way, but what if I make a bad build? Is it possible to change it afterwards?
I agree, Final Fantasy soundtrack is too fucking fire… I know we got good tracks in Guild Wars 2, I really enjoyed the soundtrack for EoD dragon's end meta but holyfuck Final Fantasy soundtrack is outta this world! I mean damn man, that new Dawntrail trailer so good, wish we could get something that rocking too in GW2 someday.
FFXIV is a no go if you like pvp. FFXIV new dungeons are pointless for raiders, and recently they made alliance raids a source of loot sometimes with being able to trade tokens for raid stuff. I find the time to drop content in ffxiv is way too long, we get 3 raid tiers in 2 years. This wouldnt be bad if the combat wasnt boring, the thing with ffxiv your bar ends up being filled with a bunch of utility skills. With them on the recent train of making every class easy to play, it will be hard to find a complex class if that is your style. As the years have gone on, their raids have become lazy, we used to have these nice areas to travel to like WoW, but now its just 4 trail fights every tier. Why am I so harsh on ffxiv? Because just like WoW it makes you pay for the expansion and a service fee yet releases about half the content. Im the opposite, ive been playing ffxiv for awhile and picked up Guild wars 2. One thing I love already about GW2, is build crafting. Everything is voice acted, pvp isnt dogwater, no fomo, and it seems all content is relevant. If GW2 got like a graphical update, i think I would be confident to call it the best mmo ever, and this is with me only playing for about 2 weeks now. Even with just 2 weeks of play time, its clear to me that GW2 is better than FFXIV from a value standpoint alone.
I dislike sub based games that completely bans you from playing the game if you have no funds to pay the subscription and ff14 does not have a free base game like Runescape. I mean I paid for the expansions that is price of a full game and you won't give me access just because i didn't fulfill the monthly payment? that's absurd to me tbh. at least in games like runescape, you'll still have access to free to play content if you didn't pay the sub.
also, GW2 has discounts on their expansions which happens very often so there is no rush on buying the expansion once it comes out. I can just wait out the promos
Is ff14 voice acted? Or is it just text dialog?
Gear progression is far easier in ff14 as well. Amd in a few weeks I've played up to shadow bringer done alliance raids, extreme content got tiobgear for my level and in gw2 I have good gear for my classes but still collecting hero points and other bits to improve.
And ff14 is very much a meta based mmo where she says all the classes and gear are pretty much exactly the same and rotations get a bit boring after a while gw2 has much more variation with its classes