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[General Article] World of Warcraft: Ironic Lessons that WoW can Learn from FFXIV
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
I’ll be the first to admit my skepticism about Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. First impressions can be everything in the subscription MMORPG space—almost fatally so for some. Embed the idea that a title has no future and it’s game-over. The original FFXIV was such a disaster with a plethora of well-documented and extensive faults that many predicted that even a free-to-play conversion wouldn’t save it.
Read more of Edwin Lee's World of Warcraft: Ironic Lessons WoW Can Learn from FFXIV.
Comments
They are both the same tbh
Completely agree with this article.
@Screllow I think they can both be classified as themepark. But it stops there. FFXIV makes an effort to make you actually CARE about what's going on. I just hit level 40 this morning and I can't wait to continue my progress in the main scenario. WoW has grown too much into a gear hunt.
Yes, of course this hunt exists in FFXIV - but there is just so much more that's worth doing you really don't care at the end of the day and as a result you just end up having a great time playing the game. As you should with games!
ARR is a wonderful game in its own right, and no doubt Yoshi-P and his crew deserve unending praise for raising it from the dead.
However, I think ARR could learn something from WoW: forcing people to do content solo, and forcing them to do content in groups, does NOT help "teach" anyone anything, as should be evidenced by the fact that ARR contains (probably) as high a percentage of unskilled button-mashers as WoW does.
"Why would I want to loose a religion upon my people? Religions wreck from within - Empires and individuals alike! It's all the same." - God Emperor of Dune
The primary lesson I see from FFXIV is just how much new content you can have if a developer actually reinvests subscription fees back into the game.
However, Activision would rather pocket the subscription fees than squander them on more content for WoW, so I don't imagine that's a lesson they're going to take to heart.
Also what is the source for 2.5 million subscribers? Last I heard it was like 750k.
i loved doing the hildibrand quests , laughed the whole way .
Even the moogle postman quest line are awesome , even when they ask u to travel around doing the work of that poor moogle .
Tribal quests are daily quests and grind reputation , however every tribe has a story and it keeps pushing the player to know whats going to happen next! , it takes days to finish but its worth it (u can buy a pet + mount at the end )
FFXIV brings new content every other patch , dungeons , raids , trials (for wow players think onyxia , sartharion encounters ) , new Main sceneario quests , new tribes , new crafting , hell SE even added a new job (ninja) , and Gold saucer as patchs.....
for me FFXIV is the only mmorpg that is worth the sub.... wow used to be like that....not anymore
MMORPGs are going backwards so hard on the massive world aspects.
Four million was total accounts created, SE never tried to represent that as active subscribers
Yeah I know, there sub numbers still under a million with this expansion will push them up for the hype rush.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
They definitely offer gear but difficult wise, it's nothing compared to raids.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
And most importantly, listen to your players when a significant number of them say they want something, and an equal number don't care if they have it or not, its better to HAVE it than to take it out.
Taking flight out was a reason to leave. Putting it back in isn't a reason to rejoin. You lose long-standing customers that way. See you next expansion, Blizzard. Maybe. If you don't piss me off again.
Ending 2013 FFXIV had 650 to 700 something k active players out of 2.5 million registered accounts, which was announced early 2014.
(space, weird that line breaks aren't working anymore on this site for me)
Ending 2014 FFXIV had 1.6 million active out of over 4 million registered accounts, which was announced early this year, and that 1.6 million was actually less than how many the game really has because the sites that pull that data only pull it from active players that belong to a Free Company (aka guilds in most MMOs).
(space)
Now in 2015 the game has seen the largest surge in population since launch due to the Gold Saucer, WoW's WoD failure, and the upcoming Heavensward expansion, and when you take into account the game's previous trends, the registered accounts are now over 5 million with an estimated 2.5 million of them active. So what we know is a fact is that the game has over 2 million active players, but what is unknown is the exact active sub number. I have estimated it at 2.5 million active, so I was surprised the publisher of this article estimated the same. That or they got this from SE themselves.
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It should also be noted that those registered accounts do not count free trials or free months. They only count subs, and to top it off it does not count China as China does not use subs. They buy game time cards.
I could almost swear I heard in the mid 700k range in the last few months. Actually now that I think about it that was suppose to be active characters datamined from the Lodestone. 2.5 million is very different from 750k, I wonder why there are such widely different numbers.
That was from an article published early this year that stated numbers from all 3 of SE's MMOs ending 2014, but was later revealed to be a mistake as the report was from early 2014 revealing end of year results from 2013. By this point it had spread like wildfire and people still like to use it to tout FFXIV's subs. See the correction here at the bottom of this article. http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/2/7480177/square-enix-final-fantasy-14-final-fantasy-11-dragon-quest-10-subscribers
Actually once you level up some classes you'll have many abilities that you'll use that aren't on the GCD. So while the GCD is around 2.5 seconds, you will still be 'weaving' non-GCD skills in between the GCD skills.
The two games take very different lead cues to get where they are though.
FFXIV does not have a large world to invest you in, or 2 decades of (often retconned) lore to draw on, so it puts the story front and centre to invest you in the world. WoW On the other hand has told all the interesting stories, so all it can do is revisit them with a different spin, so it focuses on the mechanics and gameplay, wow is like an arcade where as FFXIV is like a theme park, in wow each game is cheap, easy to play and for a short while fun, but its totally disconnected from the rest.
In FFXIV everything takes a bit longer, but the pay off lasts longer too.
Of the two I prefer FFXIV, by a long Margin, but I wont deny wows storytelling skills can be amazing.
However the BIGGEST difference between them, wow I feel is only a value for money proposition at the launch of an expansion, and at the end of one, FFXIV, adds more than enough every 3 months to keep me subbed and happy.
Pretty silly article. The dungeons in FFXIV are so beyond boring and somehow even more repetitive then WoW's.
And solo'ing that matters? We are talking about MMO's here right? Neither game should emphasize solo so they both fail in this category. And if you don't give a crap about FFXIV's personal story forced on you then solo doesn't matter anymore then in WoW anyways.