FFXIV Player Tries 500 HOURS of World of Warcraft | MY HONEST THOUGHTS

[@Heruagarwaen]

Ha, randomly got suggested this video. I was like "this guy sounds like my raid leader... oh it is my raid leader!" Nice essay, I'll toss you a sub and a 👍.

[@embersarcade]

Wait, who’s this?

[@Heruagarwaen]

@@embersarcade I'll never tell. See you tonight at the raid!

[@embersarcade]

I have a bad case of COVID, so I sadly had to call in sick. Haven’t missed a raid night since we started, but I guess it was bound to happen eventually. 😪

[@Heruagarwaen]

@embersarcade oof, rest up and get well that's no fun at all. I'll have vex bully plague twice as hard for you to make up for your absence.

[@NoBrainah]

Ive never been in a guild and this little interaction is so cool

[@alexacosta835]

I have been playing Final Fantasy 14, World of Warcraft, and Guild Wars 2 causally for a while now, each game offers something worth while. Its been amazing to play each but I realized while watching this video that you were right about the guild portion I need to push into a guild instead of falling into it. Thank you, you make great videos, keep it up.

[@Dras7]

I think this is many mmos enjoyers experience! Just imagine how cool a game with GW2 open world events and structure, wow combat, a mix of wow/FF raiding and FFXIV storytelling… All these games complement each other yet all miss something that makes me continuously go back but never for long :)

[@backyardshorts5505]

Even if you invest more into your guild your guild must also invest into their members and vice versa, otherwise people will move on to another guild promising a better experience.

[@darkstorm2579]

@@Dras7 Sadly that's an unrealistic dream as it impossible have all those concepts in a single package. It would take too much time and resources to achieve.

[@Narconia]

yup needing a guild is 100% something that i say makes wow way better........but on that note you need to find a good guild and that can be hard its actually why im not playing wow right now........major drama happened in the guild i was in and made me stop playing as i didnt want to be dragged into the drama and i didn't want to try and find another guild only to have it not be the right guild ect..... i admit i miss playing wow raiding, ect but im not sure i want to charge back into mythic raiding yes its fun and i miss it but mythic raiding i dont feel like doing currently so if i go back to wow i would want to go into a normal/heroic raiding guild to be slightly more relaxed than how it was when i was a mythic raider ya know?

[@weirdafters4007]

@@Dras7 sorry FF14 story is shit...I finished it when last expac came out and it fizzled so bad at the ending that it made me quit. WoW story is also shit right now, sadly.

[@emsies666]

Thank you for this video, everyone is saying wow is trash but I feel like Dragonflight right now in its current state made me fall back in love with wow again. Im glad you see the beauty of it aswell!

[@midgetydeath]

WoW is severely damaged. That one island with a few zones is good changes very little. Those changes are excellent, though, and bode well for the future. But the fact remains that you can clearly see the problems if you set foot outside of Kul’Tiras/Zandalar or the Dragon Isles.

[@diemidnight2365]

@@midgetydeaththe issue isn’t the content out there it’s how they haven’t made it worth your time besides mogs mounts and pets. If retail leveling was more like classic Ie having an actual leveling path through the old content. Also the level scaling really screwed with that cuz prior to shadowlands if you were new you could at least do an old leveling path. Without having to know it before hand

[@fruiffi]

As a long term WoW player and an occasional FFXIV player, I enjoyed this video! Thanks for the thoughtful take and sharing your opinion.

[@johnryan6422]

My guild just got AOTC the day this was published. Out of everything in this video I think the most important thing is finding and actually interacting with a good guild. You dont have to join some hardcore mythic CE prog guild to find people who log in daily. I loathed shadowlands but i kept logging in to play every day after work because my guild was on and that was enough. There are always better and worse games but the promise of MMOs to bring people together over a shared goal has always been the most impactful aspect of any of these games. Excellent video.

[@the_jelli_bean]

I played WoW pretty much non-stop from 2008 to 2021. I dipped my toes into other mmos, like most of us did, including (the new at the time) FFXIV. ARR had just come out and WoW was slow for me. It was fun, but my friend group just couldn't stop WoW, so WoW it was. 2021 hits and I'm sick of WoW. Shadowlands is not nearly what I had hoped for, all the lore I had loved for years just... didn't matter it seemed, and more and more friends were stopping playing, be it for other games/family/education. An old friend really tapped that meme and dangled FFXIV in front of me, and it became home. Now I'm dipping toes back into WoW after a 2.5 year break that I honestly thought was forever. XIV will always be home, but WoW's like hanging out with an old friend. Sorry for the wall of text, and thanks for the fantatic vid. 💜

[@miriamweller812]

The funny things about WoW and FF14 is: WoW got crybabies who ate everything in it. FF14 got the fanatics, who cheer for everything in it. None of them could ever give you a single reason for both. At best they tell you some absurd nonsense that isn't even true and that's it. To be fair: being a WoW crybaby is even worse than an FF14 fanatic, but at least the FF14 fanasics are like those cult members who enjoy their sect, while it's absolutely not clear how you can be a WoW crybaby and waste your time with hating on a game that you neither like nor know. I mean, I dislike FF14 for endless good reasons. 1. Square is milking the game by cutting down the gameplay and not caring about story telling and lore at all, it's like a badly written anime. 2. They force you to stay subbed or lose your house and everythign inside, even if there is nothing to do. 3. They never care to fix the server issues. 4. Instead of improving the game, they tell lies and the disgusting crowd of fanastics is spreading them like facts, also attacking everyone who is telling the truth, making it one of the most toxic communities out there. That's just a few big points and you could easily go into details there, for example that the reason the story writing is shit got many reasons (laziness when it comes to writing lore, that the antagonists are the interesting characters but are ruined by being forced to lose and act stupid, that the protagonists are psychopathes and annoying in every way, simply winnin by plot armor any nothing else, how the player chars is pushed into the center of everything, while having no free will, no character, no voice, no interests, just a tool in the hand of these pychopathes and so on). Overall, while it forces you through it, there isn't really much happening in FF14. It's mainly Ascians doing shit, Garlemald doing shit and you just win by punching stuff in the face, with borderline no lore around it. Hell, even the whole primals are in the end just made up, so they do not really matter for anything. WoW? The crybabies love to spit on Shadowlands, but I don't know a single crybaby wo can name a single reason for it. They come up wiht "IT WAS ALL THE JAILERS PLAN!" - what isn't true at all. Jailer is ONE of many players and used manipulation to slowly get what he wants. This often failed, but since he remained undiscovered, he could continue until he was able for the final strike he needed to get free. That's exactly how manipulation works. Or when peopel cry about how Sylvanas served an obvious monster. Nothing of this was obvious. The jailer was made the jailer by the other death gods the players just accept - what could have been easily abused. The system of Death isn't good for mortals at all and Sylvanas got many, many reason to want to abolish it and replace it with one tha gives mortals freedom of choice. And while she was betrayed by the death god, she reached a lot of that. You people just parrot what other people tell you. And since WoW got crybabies, you parrot the crybabies and since FF14 got the fanatics, you parrot the fanatics. FF14 in reality is just shit. Even worse, it's disgusting, because it whitewashes genocide and fascism, feeling like you play a propaganda movie from a despotic state (and that a Japanes company did that makes that even worse). Meanwhile the WoW lore is not only massive, it's also full of deep moments. Take Anduin, when he stands in the harbour, looking at the dead and wounded. "When we started, I though we weer fighting for peace - instead we are just... fighting." That's something FF14 is missing in every way. They stole from FF12, but distorted it in the most disgusting way into the opposite. FF12 told you, how terrible war is and how the weak will suffer the most. FF14 tells you, that war is awesome and easy, that you just crush the enemy who is stupid and weak and by that get everything you want. And oh, be a good soldier and never question anything - not that the game will ever allow you to do that in the first place. WoW lore is that mortals are captured between the cosmic forces in their constant war against each other. And while some of these cosmic forces seem to be the good ones and the other the bads ones, the reality is, that none of them is good at all and if any of them would win, it would be horrible for mortals, because they are extremes and radical in their view, so you need the other to balance them out. That's something that ShB would have needed and they again lied in their trailer about. You just stayed the WoL, the blessing just solves all your problems. And please don't start to think about, that the Ascians are right - and that Venat not only slaughtered and ripped apart everyone, no, if that was all her plan, than also the failing shards, since without that, without the Ascians healing the source by reuniting the dying shards with the source, the WoL would never have been powerful enough to survive all this. But, yeah, just ignore this, as the writers do...

[@Zakjuh]

@@miriamweller812 lmao

[@ThoinFrostaxe]

@@miriamweller812 yea but xiv has cat girls and bunny girls which makes it better.

[@heroman1322]

I feel just the same way. After Shadowlands WoW died to me, but now I’m having fun again with the changes and getting closer to the next expansion launch! It’s always been a love-hate relationship

[@schizothread]

@@miriamweller812 not a single soul is reading that unrevised book of a comment

[@MrNoSleep4Days]

I think people always forget or don't get told you can turn off xp gain in org and stormwind anytime between lvl 10-59 and play through literally every expansion

[@TerraxGomory]

you can WHAT NOW? this would've made some of my friends' experience SO MUCH BETTER HOW IS THIS NOT MORE KNOWN???????

[@ksu9307]

@@TerraxGomory I think people rarely do it anymore as there's no reason to thanks to having Classic versions of the game now. But that said, if you know where the warrior and warlock trainers are in Valley of Honor, there is an invisible rogue somewhere at the top of the building that can stop exp gain until you go and talk to him again to continue leveling. Then for alliance the NPC is (or atleast used to be) in the Stormwind Keep next to the pvp npc's, in the corner.

[@SpaceElvisInc]

I remember using that back in the day to pvp in certain brackets forever, shit was mad fun

[@darkstorm2579]

@@TerraxGomory Well, to be fair, the game doesn't really tell you about it, forcing you to have to find out about it on your own.

[@Poppss-Nottpoppss]

you can play through classic, tbc, and wrath?!

[@b.d.1112]

Agree to disagree on the WoW community. I’ve been playing since burning crusade and haven’t been a member of a decent group of people since the beginning of cataclysm. I’m glad that you had a good experience but so so so many have the complete opposite experience than you over and over again.

[@ForOne814]

May be those people are the problem? Cuz I never had any issues finding people to play with both in retail and classic.

[@velikostoyanov2804]

Yeah man sry to sound arrogant but the biggst problem in wow is the community… wow and league of legends are the most toxic games when we talk bout community… everybody argue bout lore, systems game design etc even when they dont understand it

[@mobius4247]

Really depends on what you mean by "decent". If parse-monkey-dps-meter-brain is something that DQ's someone, then, ya, you're gonna never find good people. But if you just want a group of friends who aren't total shitheads, there's actually many out there. You may have to flip through a couple of guilds to find them, but they do exist.

[@wladynoszhighlights5989]

I am most likely sure it's about the realm/server you play on, proper roleplay servers like Argent Dawn can be very good to build actual good communities even outside of rp (for example you can just randomly whisper to people who are leveling, talk a bit small talk and ask them to play together where on tryhard servers you would just get ignored)

[@idowhatiwant3557]

Maybe you have never been the member of a decent group because you are the problem? There is a common factor in all your groups, and that is you. I have played WoW since it's vanilla beta test, and FFXIV since is 1.0 alpha test. Let me tell you there are toxic players in both. Each game has has it's moments where toxicity was at it's peak, I am sure many of you either weren't playing or like to ignore the "Skip Soar or Disband" groups in HW. It's just less common to see those toxic FFIX players now, since in ShB they implemented ToS on how you may speak to other players in game. And FFXIV players will be quick to report any wrong doing. The ToS does not fully stop it, just hides it better.

[@semi6544]

Awesome recap. Thanks for the effort and sincerity you used in creating this content.

[@Jon_Dez]

You deserve more likes and subs honestly. This was an amazing video to sit through.

[@embersarcade]

All in good time, I’m sure.

[@mayden1910]

My favorite in game cinematic is "Rejection of the Gift". Illidan will always be my favorite character in WoW.

[@embersarcade]

That’s a good one.

[@terrificlife1576]

WoW has changed a lot for the better in the last few years. These days, it's in one of the best forms. A huge amount of players are coming back, and a lot of new players are joining. Many players had to quit for Blizzard to change, but they have changed, and I don't think they will try to mess up again.

[@eptic-c]

"and I don't think they will try to mess up again" - I agree with most of the things you said, but, this line won't age well. They fucked up continuously from the release of WOTLK to WoD, they did good in legion, then fucked everything up in BFA and SL. DF currently is just Legion, a good expansion, has it's issues but generally good, but i don't want to raise my expectations as the current staff of blizzard is clearly not competent enough. They are cringe, focus on the wrong stuff and made the game feel like the World of Craft instead of the World of WARcraft. And i don't think Metzen rejoining the team will help at all. I hope atleast that being away from Activision will help a bit. Currently, the only thing blizz got totally right was all of the things they did for the classic community.

[@spaceowl9246]

The fundamentals of retail are fucked though. It's not the same World of Warcraft that I fell in love with.

[@velikostoyanov2804]

@@spaceowl9246cuz u were 12 trs old now u are mature and fk from life searching for the same nostalgia feelings… its not the game its you

[@sengelhard2982]

Pretty sure player numbers are lower than they have ever been before. At least logged raids and dungeon runs are. Dragonflight is a good expansion, but it's hard to regain players that were lost and MMOs aren't exactly a big genre for new generations of gamers.

[@miriamweller812]

That's nonsense so. 1. There was never many players leaving in the first place. Peopel simply compare it to the hights of the early years, where whole gaming was different, with no smartphone games, much less games in general much less othe online games asnd so on, so it's normal that when you simply have way more games out there in general, that a single one will not reach the same max active player levels. 2. When there was that "myth" of leaving you got an ugly combination of two propaganda campagins. The first was those absurd stories about the company being some rape vault with no proof at all (and there was nothing coming out of that in the end, so it was instead just absurd stories), but it was gladly take by all the socal media trolls for clicks. Second: Square abused this to lure in replacement for all us old players who didn't want to take their shit anymore of cutting down the gameplay, driving the story against a wall with their laziness and abusing their greed into not investing into enough servers to force you staying subbed and of course less and less current content with them just forcing you into old stuff. So paying social media trolls to sell FFXIV with lies ("caring developer" - Square NEVER cared, it was a running gag, that you could write to them whatever you want, they won't even read it, "so much to do" - only if you take ALL content from eight years at that point and sell it as current content, "appreciating your time" - never the case, FF14 was absolute standard MMORPG with at best the difference that there was less and less to do in general, what isn't a good thing and with the fact, that you have to pay them the sub for not losing your house and everything inside - and so on) was their solution.

[@Fujikawa-hw6ij]

As a guild officer in WoW and a player of both FFXIV and WoW I thing you hit they nail on the head. If it wasn’t for my guild there would be a whole lot less WoW for me personally. Also I always say this to people who ask my why I juggle between two MMO’s; WoW is my arcade game, getting good, upgrade your gear and snappy combat in both raids and dungeons. FFXIV is the purest of experiences, it’s THE epic experience you need to experience 😉. Amazing vid my man

[@Tricegames]

I took a long break like most and coming back the game feels amazing. I too joined a random guild took initiative to raid lead. Took some time but we now have 3 raid teams, active members that run keys all day everyday. Tmog farm runs and world tours. Pet battles I mean we literally have people who do everything they wish to do. Game feels alive and thriving again and I couldn’t be happier to be back. One could just hope blizzard sticks to their guns and keeps this up. If they do Warcraft will be back to it’s glory. In regards to LFG toxicity, I’ve yet to see it. Yeah you have that one guy QQ’ing maybe or some people requesting AOTC for a +15 like idiots. Overall though the experience has been pleasant and many have been actually helpful. If you have trouble getting into groups I would recommend write a message when you request to join. Or push your own groups this seems to be the most successful.

[@terrypankhurst7601]

The guild stuff is an interesting take, and painfully true, I haven't really been in a guild since the one I wasin from vanilla to wrath fell apart, I'm always trying to find the same experience without putting any of the effort in. Amazing video btw, best I've seen since pandoras box.

[@miriamweller812]

You can't get in 15 years late and demand the same experience, tht's impossible by the fact alone that you are 15 years older.

[@terrypankhurst7601]

@@miriamweller812 19 years older, I know that, my priorities have changed the way I play the game has changed, what I want from my gaming has changed. but maybe its time to put more in to get more out, just like any relationship, and playing WoW is a relationship.

[@Mysticalzelda]

While I do agree with most of what you're saying, I do have a few pointers. I quit wow in shadowlands, played ff14 and later tried dragonflight for a bit. As a dps player mostly, doing m+ is absolute insanity by yourself (or other dps). You can never get into groups and if you host your own key, you have to wait insanely long for mainly tanks. Also toxicity is less for mainly tanks, because people are scared shitless they will just leave them. Then aside from that, I feel there isn't much to do in the game. Yes there is gathering and crafting, but being spoiler by ff14s systems I really don't enjoy it. In ff14 I can just casually do some roulettes, or get some money and buy a house and decorate it, or do trains. Yes there is some in WoW too, but it just doesn't feel as rewarding. Transmogs feel dull (a little less then in shadowlands, but still) compared to ff14. The thing I REALLY miss about wow is the combat and the progessive nature. Also the way guilds organise around the task of getting curve or ce. It's a lot more involved. In my FC, they sometimes organise a trial extreme or w/e, but statics are often seperate and people have their individual statics in the FC. Therefore it's also a lot less easy to get into statics, it feels more elite. While in wow people are just desperately trying to hook you in, Ive never had a static approach me in ff14. Also when you do have a group it's often just assumed you've watched the video's. Nothing is said, scedules and images are shared and just do it. I always feel afraid to ask if something is unclear to me. In wow its a lot more involved, raidleaders really try to teach the fight and guide you through and hey if something doesnt work, we can always do different things. As for the new worldsoul saga with wow, it makes me scared shitless actually. Since legion wow has just dissapointed me in a lot of story plots. Huge buildup for nzoth, ow he just dies. Huge buildup for shadowlands, ow arthas is just a ball of energy now I guess. I love the comparison of the jailor and endwalkers final boss (even this, spoilers dont even mather for wow but do for ff14). They essentially have the same type of plot, both baddies got announced in their own expansions but were behind the scenes for a lot of main things. But in ff14 it felt good, in wow the jailor just died and faded. No exciting things for the future, no satisfying ending. Even still in dragonflight I felt that Fyrak just dying and the world tree coming into azeroth. It's ok. Can you imagine if your character had a vision of azeroth thanking you? That wouldve been INSANE, but we only got that through the dragons getting her powers. Thats the type of difference between the story of wow and ff14. Part of me hopes the wow story will be good, but rationally I just can't care about it. And if it does you can get everything you need to know through the wow youtube channel.

[@kuronanestimare]

It would help to explain what Warbands are for those of us who are watching casually and may not have shown interest in the Worldsoul Trilogy up to this point. One of my biggest gripes as an MMO player is that making alts is downright punishing, as you were saying. I've spent a thousand dollars and thousands of hours of my time into SWTOR, and looking back, there are some changes I want to make to my character story. Due to the way the game is programmed though, the only way to do that would be to make a new character... but if I do that, I lose all of my transmogs/glamours aside from whatever I have in my 'collections' (cash shop items you have to buy to bind to your account) I'll lose all of my PVP progress, I'll lose any companion affinity I have (which can cost tens of millions in in-game resources) and overall just lose way too much... So I don't make that new character, and I look forlornly at the game because I can't keep that progress I've made. Keep in mind this is a game that was supposed to have solved this issue before it's first expansion even dropped: The Legacy System was designed specifically to encourage you to play more characters because playing more characters will give you more rewards, but I already unlocked everything within that system that applies to my account and the rest is bound to my character, which, again, means I'm throwing away resources if I make a new character. Potentially Warbands would fit one of my biggest gripes with WoW: Playing more than one character should never be a punishment. Account-wide Reputation is the biggest hurdle in this regard. It's a shame it took them this long to actually refine the idea into something palatable, when FFXIV has, as you said, allowed you to complete all content in the game on a singular character from the very beginning. Between that and being able to play FFXIV on a controller (which feels significantly smoother as someone who never learned Homerow and has been developing Carpel Tunnel as a result) I'm not sure I'll ever be able to enjoy WoW again... but maybe I'll give it a shot when the new expansion drops, if only to see whether they keep their promises.

[@arforafro5523]

I really like how you mentioned the competitive culture on WoW being healthier than what most will tell you. Class Discord servers, logs and parsing all can sound like they are nothing but rampant elitism yet when you experience and dive into it you find a community that pushes each other higher and works together through indirect interaction. It feels incredible to be in a group and know everyone is giving it their best and pushing through a very tough challenge, or working hard to get an orange parse.

[@DsiakMondala]

Yeah logs are cringe. pushing logs should be something you aim at after you can beat the raid on mythic. But people who doesn't even have gear to hope to compete try to drag out fights to get a arbitrary high score in raid IO wasting everybody's time. I just wanted to do my weekly heroic, why do we need to setup the mage to farm DPS on the adds when our heroic gear can never do in AoE what the mythic gear can do single target? The scores aren't even fair on mythic. You can go weeks without seeing your mythic weapons and trinkets making it impossible to compete with people who dropped by pure luck early on, and even better got it all titanforged to the extreme. Epitome of cringe. Not the logs itself but how people use it and how it affects the gameplay

[@dh8657]

only trash players whine about logs, or IO, or dps meters, or anything that shows they are indeed trash. stop whining git gud@@DsiakMondala

[@idowhatiwant3557]

I feel like that used to exist in the FFXIV community in ARR through SB. But the player base become very toxic around ShB about any sort of add ons for fear that they may be kicked from a group like what may have happened to them in WoW. To be honest the FFXIV player base become a very toxic cesspool since ShB, not sure if that expansion attracted a different player base or what, but the community has definitely shifted since that expansion This group lead to the whole weird ToS rules on how to interact with players in FFXIV it's so cringe and weird that is in the ToS, but I digress. The reality is, most people do not need to review logs to tell which players need to be removed from a group, their deaths and what they do during the fight tell you what you need to know.

[@JayMasquerade]

I’m subscribing solely because of the format , editing , and dedication you presented in this video . Most video game communities are missing something like this. Thank you for being one of those amazing though provoking pillars in the mmo space

[@KonglomeratYT]

The inability to play through WoW's story chronologically in full easily is the singular thing that stops them from getting my sub money. Very few MMOs have this problem. I don't understand why the most popular MMO of all time has it. Edit: "I would have laughed in your face, and probably beat the sh*t out of you." This got me cackling.

[@embersarcade]

It is frustrating, but it seems that Blizzard’s chosen solution will be to consider Dragonflight the entry for new players, relegating the rest of the game to history. While I wish they would develop a comprehensive narrative experience, I imagine those resources would be better spent on other features.

[@gama2064]

You talking about how Ff14 won‘t really have any type of significant change in the foreseeable future really put things into perspective for me. I love that game, but so many parts of it also feel old and rigid. It has the least alive world of any mmo I‘ve played (not worldbuilding, but actually playing in the world) and it‘s combat just feels so stagnant. Whereas other mmos have more of a fluid combat system, Ff14s almost feels like math. Every interaction has a correct play, your entire playstyle is just your rotation with the skill expression coming almost exclusively from knowing the fights instead of reacting to what is happening. It‘s like FFs combat is solved the moment you start playing, as soon as you‘ve learned your rotation you‘ve reached the skill ceiling of your class, the rest is just about learning boss patterns.

[@embersarcade]

I just uploaded my impressions of Dawntrail during its first week. I talk a bit about this feeling of stagnancy.

[@readifdumb]

@@embersarcade How do you feel about Dragoon changes? I personally have felt the Job feel repeatedly worse every time it gets updated. It's so unbelievably easy and boring to play.

[@gama2064]

@@embersarcade interesting, ima watch that next then

[@embersarcade]

@@readifdumb I haven’t leveled Dragoon, none of the jobs I play have changed as far as I can tell. I typically play GNB, DRK, BRD, SAM, RPR, and RDM.

[@embersarcade]

@@gama2064 Hope you enjoy it!

[@Silbertrane-pw8dp]

I always hated how WoW is pushing you into "endgame" and sh*ts on the journey to get there. As a story-interested player I liked to play older content but the world was empty outside the current expansion. Until they fix that issues there is no reason for me to come back to WoW. I'm not a competitive player and have no fun in m+, I'm not a raider either. Plus the community is not very friendly and forgiving to an unexperienced player in dungeons and raids, so I always hated it when I was forced to do that for story progress. So that leaves me with my memorys wandering through elwyn or silverpine forest and my hunter progressing through the cloud serpent story line in MoP, where I finally was able to ride cloud serpents - only to witness that in the next expansion all that was made worthless because suddenly everyone could do that, just by logging in. For me WoW overall is a bunch of worthless becoming efforts and thus a time waste, while beloved characters were destroyed and their storys twisted so many times, that nothing of the source was left.

[@uh-ohspaghettio7826]

The leveling aspect for me is what gets me. I just attempted the trial for WoW and my God, I can take on like 6-7 enemies at a time by spamming two keys, which makes it pointless to even think of grouping up appreciating a zone, so I'm just running around in areas I don't care about or appreciate because there's no point, I'm just clicking two keys and moving on.

[@Kuhazan]

as someone who plays both XIV and GW2 when there is new content I would love to see your take on Guild Wars 2. Despite the lackluster marketing the game is very populated

[@embersarcade]

I’ve been playing it, definitely going to do a huge video like this for Guild Wars 2, but it’ll be in a few months, I expect.

[@adansmith5299]

superjail in hell was a god tier reference

[@GuenterErde1]

Funnily enough, I'm a VDH main that is the RL and GM for my guild. From Wrath to SL I was super casual but towards the end of SL I got into end game content. My first (earned) aotc ws VotI. I have definitely gotten better over the course of the expansion. I was afraid of raiding because of how scary end game content can be. And - Raz almost killed the drive for me. But I'm glad I stuck with it. This season, 2nd week KSM, 3rd week KSH and AotC, and 4th week 8/8 portals. Once you do commit to learning "how" to play, the game is so rewarding. My guild is now 1/9M.

[@TheKutthroatKid]

Genuinely very well put together video essay. Even 7 months later. well done sir.

[@arcticzzshadow8421]

Something I did while leveling for loremaster through old content was locking my level to the minimum level requirement for each zone. No heirloom gear, and no LFG unless a quest required a dungeon completion. And then I typically invited 1 or 2 guildies to help me through it to actually enjoy the content and story. Took me about 9 months to complete the whole thing spread over the course of 2 years. (I wasn’t going fast on purpose)

[@schmooplesthesecond5997]

anduin and sylvannas has a very unique dynamic among the faction leaders. they both somehow seem to be able to understand and tolerate each other unlike the rest of the horde and alliance leaders who adore anduin and hate sylvannas

[@wladynoszhighlights5989]

The Character of Sylvanas was destroyed in SL, it's logical that most Horde leaders would hate her as well

[@Faen7976]

I really enjoyed this video and it's interesting to hear the points you've made. I agree with a majority of them. There are some points, like the fact that you can log into WoW and just play the game, that I disagree with. My opinions are probably different because I've played both games for a very long time. I have thousands of hours in both games and enjoy both of them. I have played FFXIV since the 2.0 beta and WoW on and off since Vanilla. I do Savage and Ultimates in FFXIV and raid AotC, early mythic bosses, and push 20+s in WoW. I, however, also like doing casual content like Deep Dungeons, leveling my squadrons, working on relic weapons, and doing exploration content like Bozja and Eureka with friends. This is all content I've already completed before and none of which are available in WoW. WoW really only has PVP, M+, and Raids. To me, it feels like I can "log in and play the game" more in FFXIV because it feels like there is just more to do. This does have a lot to do with the content in FFXIV become more evergreen, which you mentioned. WoW has become more to me like FFXIV has become to you. You still have to navigate menus in order to play WoW. I login, browse a menu to find a key to do, click on my portal to teleport to the dungeon (from completing 20s) then complete the dungeon. There may be 1 or 2 more menus I have to navigate in FFXIV, but to me, the content i get to do after those menus feels more fulfilling gameplay wise. I also somewhat disagree on your opinion on gear. I agree that the gear in FFXIV can be boring but I think WoW takes gearing too far in some sense. There needs to be more horizontal progression for gear in FFXIV. Gear should come out of Criterion dungeons the same way it comes out of M+ for WoW. The good thing about FFXIV gear is that it can at least be targeted and I'm guaranteed to get it. For WoW, I didn't get my Legendary for my Evoker until the 2nd to last week of the patch even though i cleared the raid each week so there was barely time for me to enjoy it before I replaced it the next patch. I also never saw beacon of the beyond and a few other items that I wanted the entire patch. A way to target gear, even if it's a slight grind, would be amazing so it doesn't feel like all the effort i put in is futile. Even if the way to target it doesn't come out until the .5 or .7 patch, it would at least be better than nothing. I understand you should just do the content because it's fun but doing a M+ dungeon 50 times stops being fun for me if I know the item I still need comes from it but I've still never seen it drop once. WoW has come out with a lot of wins this expansion though and hope they add more open world and causal content to the game next expansion (Delves are a good start but not enough, in my opinion) and beyond and go back to make the old content more evergreen. I would also love a roulette system in WoW. Being able to queue into a selection of every dungeon available instead of just making me choose a set based on each timeline and get bonus exp for it would be great. I would much rather queue up for a dungeon on an Alt and get into Mara or Gundrak than run Ruby Lifepools for the 200th time from levels 60-70. They do have the tech to sync characters down in WoW so I'm sure it's possible for them to do but I'm also sure it's a lot of work for them to do it as well. I think it would be worth the effort though. Those are just my opinions though and what I want might not always be best for the game. I hope you stick with WoW and can do another comparison maybe late next expansion. I would love to hear how your thoughts have evolved. I would also be interested in hearing you check out GW2 as I think GW2 has the best open world content in any MMO because of Meta Events (which I wish WoW and FFXIV would steal and put them in those games).

[@ZodaSoda]

GW2's open world content is generally more interesting and cooler, but it really becomes a repetition game too easily just farming the same events over and over really killed it for me.

[@anaalvensleben789]

The main problem with putting gear into Criterion is that you kill it from being evergreen content. At the moment, it's set up like Ultimates. Super hard content you do for cosmetics, but without needing 7 other people. As soon as gear is attached to it instead, there becomes 0 reason to do last expansion's Criterion Savage because it gives outdated gear and is way too hard to put into a duty roulette like dungeons.

[@Faen7976]

@@anaalvensleben789 I didn't say gear should come out of Criterion Savage. I said it should come out of Criterion. Criterion Savage is set up to be as difficult as ultimates. Criterion is maybe as hard as savage. But in order to participate in criterion savage to the level you need, you need to get the item level from either grinding tomes for months or doing 8 man Raid content. It makes little sense why 4 man content should be locked behind a several month grind or 8 man raid content to get gear if they want people to experience it on launch. Even then, you STILL need the upgrade items out of raid to upgrade the tome gear or time gate yourself further by getting them from alliance raid coins. Or you wait super long and purchase them with nuts. OR even longer and only experience the content when the crafted ilvl increases on the new savage tier drop. It would be healthier for it to be balanced around gear that comes from 4 man content. One way they could do that is by putting gear into Criterion so people can grind that out THEN go into Criterion Savage. Also, I would argue right now neither Criterion nor Criterion Savage is really ever green because the rewards are so poor that most people wont even bother trying to experience it. The only one that's even a little worth it is the last one that gives the upgraded tome weapon. If they put gear in Criterion, that would give people at least SOME reason to try to challenge themselves in 4 man content. If they make that gear look cool, that would give people a reason to do it even when it's old. Then they can try to do Criterion Savage to get the cool tome weapon. A good example of this IS Ultimates. People experience ultimates for the challenge but also to get the cool shiny weapons that come from it as well. Those weapons still have stats and usually were BiS when those ultimates released. Now people just get it because it looks cool. The same thing would happen with gear from Criterion.

[@kinetsu8115]

You described how I feel as a gamer to the T. I play very casually as I am a dad now and I basically subscribe play a bit through the story, log off and wait for the new expansion.

[@Ictar]

I was a major WoW player back in the day and left with all the other refugees in Shadowlands. I said when I unsubbed "I might be back if the game gets better." Recently I have been struggling with my old addiction of WoW pulling me back in. I don't want to leave FFXIV, because I have made friends there and the story is so good (at times). Maybe I can come back to WoW and get the best of both worlds... Thanks for the video! You perfectly encapsulated some of my thoughts on what I like and don't like.

[@embersarcade]

Dragonflight was a blast and I’m sad that it’s over. We’ll see what The War Within looks like, but I think that World of Warcraft is in the midst of an ongoing metamorphosis that is extremely exciting to be a part of.

[@paro2210]

I would say that movement and how open the world is. Is what world of warcraft has over FFXIV. I have played both, but the lag in movement is so frustrating coming from WOW.

[@frobischer]

Absolutely. The segmented nature of FFXIV zones negatively affected the immersion. WoW's fewer zone boundaries and larger zones really helps. Oh, and transmogs are way better in WoW.

[@ValkeersYT]

​@@frobischer i'd argue while the transmog system is far better in wow. The gear itself looks sooooo much better in ff14.

[@Bloodyshadow53]

@@ValkeersYT I'm not personnally a fan of the more asian influenced estetic of FF (not saying that it is a bad design, just not my type), I do prefer wow art direction, but purely personal

[@Kooties]

Healer gameplay also feels better and more varied in wow imo. Gearing is also hit or miss. Wow is more frustrating and less balanced but it feels much better when you actually get gear imo

[@SpaceElvisInc]

@@ValkeersYT eh I guess but maybe, but I feel 14 only gets like 2-3 good armor sets an expansion imo

[@VermilionWake]

I'm glad that I found this channel, what a great video :). as someone who has played mmorpgs very actively since the late 90s, and still does, the points you have made couldn't have rung more true on all levels, including the large amount of misconceptions / the bad rep the endgame gets... and this is not me saying that the game has had no issues or is flawless but I am sayting that it has alot to do with players mindset

[@Chireiya]

Great video! I'm a WoW player myself and while I've snuck glances at other MMOs over time I still returned to WoW after a 12 year break instead of trying something different. There's just something about it... It's easy to let yourself be influenced by cynical voices, the community of WoW is old and tends to be very doom and gloom about everything new and old, which doesn't make it easier for new players to break into the game. You've hit onto the most important point for me: community! I've played WoW with lovely guilds in the past, and I've played in a semi-hardcore progress guild which was more impersonal. I took a year break for school at one point and came back, but I only played for four months before I got bored without the pull of having fun with my guild mates hooking me to the game. These days, WoW is more solo-player friendly than ever but I still wouldn't want to play and raid without a guild. And you're also right, the individual player has to actively engage with the community rather than expecting the community to pick them up and take them by the hand. I've seen other videos of people trying out WoW and bemoaning the lack of community, when they never actively tried to engage with it. When I think back on old WoW days, the guild that I experienced most of the content with in TBC and WOTLK is what comes to mind first, not the bosses or gameplay.

[@jessemorgan2009]

Agree with most everything. One thing not mentioned is how awesome LFG (looking for group) raids are. The time commitment of the traditional raid just is not possible for many. Being able to jump in LFG and do a wing of the raid before work on any given day is huge.

[@Thandwar]

i assume you mean LFR right? because looking for a normal or HC raid in LFG is an absolute pain if you aren't either Hard Meta Class/overegeared or have Curved Achievment after week 2 of the raid releasing.

[@jessemorgan2009]

@@Thandwaryes. You are right.

[@Thandwar]

@@jessemorgan2009 then totally agree. For all the bad rep it got i love that it gives everyone the ability to see and enjoy the content/see the end of the story basically

[@Blubbii88]

Oh yea, I remember when I came back to the game and did LFR and had the greatest time of my life reading toxic chat message that piss on people how much they suck, while simultaniously not bother at all explaining the fight and rather wipe an hour to the first boss. Well, it was shadowlands, maybe it was just bad in general.

[@zedorian6547]

I havent played much WoW but I have like 8 years in FFXIV and 6 in Dragon Quest X and I can say that each game has their own charm and good things as well as bad. Like in ffxiv I hate how immersion breaking it is to see characters wearing clothes that look like they just walked out of Target

[@SpaceElvisInc]

yea , I remember I waited like a week to finish endwalker so that all 7 slots were my friends so I wouldn't get the moment ruined by some goof ball in an animal suit or some guy thats just naked

[@Ked_gaming]

Great video man keep going, and welcome back to wow GL on fyrakk !

[@Zombiemouse2204]

me as a player of both, i played since Mists of Pandaria to the moment in Shadowlands where they gave everyone the Shadow doggo mount for free after we worked so hard for it in Torghast. I have played since months before Endwalker of FFXIV and still continue to. I love to see this video shows the duality of both games and what they are designed for and what they give. I loved WoW's pvp and the gameplay quiet a lot, i saw respect for each other in the open world when you became rivals in pvp. I wont lie that i also missed the way i leveled there so much more than FFXIV. Where i love FFXIV too is for its systematic and rhythm to the gameplay plus community. It can get lonely and people over in FF seem to love causing drama and making it their whole personality. the content accessibility and understanding is widespread.

[@gaminggarou]

FF14 has some of the best Story telling out of any MMO to date imo. Wow does have the best overall reward to time invested for raiding content for sure! Also SoD is 100% a breath of fresh air in that it allows a bigger variation of classes that are playable and i am excited to see what the lvl 40 raid will entail

[@poisonated7467]

It's comments like this that show that people really haven't played any other MMORPG than the WoW clones of today.

[@gaminggarou]

i actually have 20+ years of MMO games under my belt. I started with EQ and have tried most MMO's that came out between everquest and the mid 2015's. Now a fair amount of them did try and copy Wow's template because it was the 1st main stream MMO to "make it big". Considering most MMO's basically flop for not having anything new or fun in them. Titles like FF14 keep on trucking for the innovations they do have like 1 character can do it all and the story. The MMO i am hoping that will capture the attention of a huge amount of players is Ashes of creation@@poisonated7467but that is still probably a year or two before we see a closed beta let alone a launch

[@rizzzzzza4643]

@@poisonated7467What MMO has a better story than FFXIV? I’m personally a WoW player, and I legitimately only touch FF for the story since the combat and endgame content is kind of weak, but I’d love to hear your take.

[@poisonated7467]

@@rizzzzzza4643 Any story that is created by the player along with their friends is a better story and memory than whatever a game company could come up with. I wont say that story has no place. Wrath of the Lich King is a pretty good story, but where WotLK does it better than FFXIV is that it doesn't force it down your throat. You, the player, decide whats important to your character. Not the devs deciding what story is important to your character. It's _your_ character. _Your_ story should be more important You should chose how your tale goes. The game should be designed around that. A good example of that is og EverQuest and to a lesser extent vanilla WoW. Community plays an important part in that design, so we get MMORPGS like we have now where it's designed mostly solo, no one cares about each other, no one talks to each other, etc. It's hard to write a story where none of the characters talk to each other or care about each other or the world they're in.

[@poisonated7467]

@@rizzzzzza4643 A good example of a good story _period_ is Dungeons and Dragons. More games should take inspiration from it.

[@Daddo-Penguin]

Got suggested this randomly I'm a XIV player that at times plays WoW mainly classic I like the aesthetic and the leveling journey more than retail. I love the humble beginnings were given in that version since it reminds me of ARR a bit and looking at a low poly tauren everytime makes me happy. Great to see this vid and hear your thoughts.

[@LeonOwO]

great video, cant believe you only have 2k subs. keep it up you'll definitly make it big at this pace.

[@embersarcade]

I really appreciate that.

[@TheBaldr]

Rep is coming account wide starting next expansion. As for professions, Archeology is complete abandoned that just leaves Fishing and Cooking. Which don't take very long to get to max at all, so could be account wide. As for the real professions, I agree with Wow mentality that one shouldn't be able to master them all. It helps the economy and can focus on your primary profession.

[@AyazU2589]

I completely agree with this video. I left endwalker after savage raiding on my black mage since covid began. I love ff14's story and its strategic dance fights (especially as a BLM), but outside of raiding there is nothing to do if you dont RP, and i don't. I started WoW hesitantly and leveled up a Balance Druid and im having a blast. Im running +17's in M+ and am 3/9 H on the new raid. I love ff14 but WoW was my first love and I really hope I stick around this time.

[@lunahri4173]

saying there is nothing to do in FFXIV is ... strange to say the least. Saying that while implying wow somehow offers more to do is straight up insane tho

[@AyazU2589]

@@lunahri4173 the fact that you fail to understand that this is my opinion, and that it is okay to have an opinion that differs from yours is one of the main reasons I'm taking a break from ff14. lol.

[@lunahri4173]

@@AyazU2589 there are opinions and then there are facts. you saying there is more to do in wow is an opinion, sure, doesn’t change the FACT its wrong but whatever

[@mintyfreshhx2671]

@@lunahri4173 I think the point was, meaningfull content for ayazU is story and raids, but they've done the raid and story so there isn't anything else for them to do that they are interested, in wow you have raids and dungeons so there is another content avenue to play and enjoy along with different style of raids.

[@lunahri4173]

@@mintyfreshhx2671 sure, if they had said 'i only care about hardcore content' or smth similar i would have agreed even, instead they doubled down in the next comment stating its just an opinion.

[@nooratiistola5935]

New wow expansion brings in many features that have been long needed, like the renowns being account wide (FINALLY) and guilds being able to invite players from any realm or faction. The main storylines will also tell you if you already completed something on the account and storyline unlocks should open for every character. For now the only viable re-visit to old dungeons and raids seems to be the timewalking events that roll one expansion at a time as calendar events but I agree that they are not quite enough to bring the whole old world and story in the play.

[@bryand8829]

I have a different opinion on Wow's endgame but can appreciate the conclusion you reached. I'm happy for you.

[@GrayVos]

I think the biggest problem in FFXIV is its quest system, how the world is build and its end content. In WOW there are reasons to do quests to complete a area get good rewards. In FFXIV (side) quests are bad XP they don't give you anything like at all aside from + quests. In WOW most of the world is connected with each other. In FFXIV its a loading screen with a little area where you follow the main quest do some plus quests for flying and then never return again (again there is no reason to do side quests), its dungeon entrance forever lost in a menu. I haven't touched WOW since Mist of Pandaria and I play FFXIV for the most part these days but yeah you are stuck in Limsa and there is no reason to go out in the world to do anything aside from going to your FC home. I wish FFXIV gave me a reason like WOW to just explore the world and do quests. FFXIV's end content is only and then I mean only boss fights. Be it a big raid or a trial... these are all boss fights one way or another. Island Sanctuary I hoped would be something different but it was just another grind area and not a island to enjoy housing or do anything fun with friends. There is no cool gear collecting like WOW or ESO has which is really fun. Your gear space is to limited to collect all these. PVP is really bad as well in FFXIV, though I like that everyone is the same and there is no gear putting everyone at equal ground, there are no cool battlegrounds like in WOW or castles to conquer in the even better PVP game ESO. Its just a little area to kill each other, hold points or even worse, mash crystals all day... fun. Just a big rambling comment but FFXIV could learn a lot from WOW and im surprised they haven't over the years. FFXIV has a good story for the most part, fantastic music and boss fights, charming visuals, races and endless mounts and emotes, but it lacks a reason to keep playing unless you enjoy endless boss fights of course.

[@Kytrion]

I feel like wow quests are rewarding. I guess I am even more afraid to try FF14 now.

[@slateblu0]

I loved WoW back in Wrath, left mid/late wrath, dipped my toes in every now and then for years, but never went back fully. I sank thousands of hours in. Now that I've found my home in FFXIV, I don't think I ever will. Not completely. Overall, I agree with pretty much everything you've said here; my main issue with FFXIV has been the combat. My rotations feel slow and mechanical. I don't feel like I'm needed for the game. I've often joked with friends I could write a script to do my WAR rotation and leave me to just move my character. There's no thought to the rotation. There's no variations or changes, it's a static loop. I time all of my mitigations while I'm taking Savage content to my rotation, because it's that static. WoW's combat and gameplay feels better. It feels more complete. I do really miss that. It's likely why I like BRD the most in FFXIV; in a way, it feels like the closest to that dynamic feel from WoW. But, at the end of the day, the combat isn't why I'm playing these games. I'm not here to enjoy pushing buttons, so the fact that WoW's buttons are more fun to push isn't really a factor for me. I'm a writer. I love the art of storytelling. I love a good story, both telling one, and reading one. FFXIV tells it's story well. It might not be the best story, and it certainly is plagued by the issues of the format, being an MMO hinders how it can tell the story. But it commits to it's own story. Fully and honestly. And I love that. WoW, simply, doesn't. It doesn't know what kind of story it wants to tell, and it keeps jumping around. It won't, or maybe can't, commit to it's own narrative. (And the fact that some of it's story, important pieces of the story, are either ripped out of the game or were never in there to begin with makes it even harder.) For example, they can never decide if the faction split is going to keep mattering; expansions like wrath, cata, and legion could ignore it, letting us fight the bigger threat, but BfA did a 180 on that and made the faction war the only conflict again. It keeps going back and forth, unable to settle. And that hurts the story telling, because I never know what's coming. I never know where it's going. (For a while now, I'm pretty sure the devs didn't either.) FFXIV tells it's story, and it commits. WoW doesn't know if it even wants to tell a story. And, for me, that's the line.

[@xyeineksi2942]

I recently starting playing retail again because I as well am extremely bored w ffxiv, I've realised a major issue for me is that leveling one new job from 16-100 would take 22 days if you do daily roulettes only. Even though the jobs in ff are all on one character, which I like, the time it takes to actually be able to play every job at endgame is insane (about 1000 hours). To compare this, if you really wanted to have one of each class in wow it would take roughly 72 hours. Aside from that I also find the methods of leveling in ff to be boring as hell. Side quest, fates in old zones and dungeon spamming gives you shit xp so the only option is to do deep dungeons or bozja at 71 which both are extremely repetitive. It's a shame cause I love both games but in this regard wow is much more enjoyable.

[@embersarcade]

Yeah, I agree, taking a new character in World of Warcraft through an expansion I haven’t seen or one that I know that I’ll enjoy is much more fun than XIV’s leveling experience.

[@tristantanner2870]

I recently randomly download wow. It is so different than it used to be and it’s so fun

[@ywkbme]

Man, I've been playing Fury Warrior for years, and I'm probably the one in my friend group who's the most invested in middle eastern geopolitics, I don't know how to feel about being called out for that

[@Nozomivamp]

I've tried wow multiple times but always dropped it after 10-20 hours, I keep hearing "oh it gets fun once you hit the endgame" but the leveling experience isn't fun, granted 14 has its issues as well, but if you are more interested in story like me, it's easier to get past. I remember last time I tried wow i played the werewolf race, forget the name, but their opening story was interesting and then it just drops you off in the world rather abruptly, no more story for your race they'd been building up for the last 30 min. I mean its not that important in the grand scheme of the main game but it was a bit of a turn off from me from 14 that would have built off that a bit more before tossing you into the world. I'm glad wow is doing better now cause man it was rough there for awhile but I just can't get into it over ff14. Don't get me wrong 14 has its issues too, especially the post dlc content for endwalker. I've probably only played about 100-200 hours of content after finishing the story of endwalker. But in all honesty the biggest thing for me is that fact that my one character on 14 can be every single job/class, I switch back and forth between jobs and while I do like replaying content from time to time I hate grinding for the same thing on multiple characters. Every time i start a new character on 14 after 1-2 hours I start thinking "man I wish i had this on this character . . . I'll just go play my main."

[@CrimzonGhostz]

Love this video, I wouldnt change anything about it. Although Id love to see a Side B showing your actual journey through your time playing to accompany this overall review

[@Malavander]

The biggest difference for me between the games is the responsiveness. WoW just plays so smoothly, while 14 feels like there's a constant lag of about 200ms. I just can't get past that, it's a deal breaker.

[@embersarcade]

XIV’s netcode is abysmal.

[@ZodaSoda]

@@embersarcade I would like them to update XIV netcode for sure, but I dont want wow's button spammy bullshit either, its always been way too fucking spammy.

[@midgetydeath]

@ZodaSoda The higher global cooldown of FFXIV would handle that.

[@ed-xf5qn]

@@midgetydeath reason why i moved from gw2 to ff14, simple combat style. I love gw2 but damn the amount of button presses, rotations you need to do is insane. like 20 + skills need to be pressed, keep track of passive buffs, need to swap weapons, dodge roll to dodge boss mechanics and trigger passives. Elementalists game play is like peak level keyboard spamming, i even broke my keys with the amount of spamming i did. even wow felt like walk in the park infront of gw2's combat system. But i will stick to ff14, it made me happy and powerful again.

[@sacer666]

@2:07 The chair drama was so lit holy moly, that is a high bar for you to set :D

[@sarahs.9292]

Long time playing of Warcraft beta to today. I did try FFXIV during Shadowlands when I was so bored with wow content. There were aspects of FFXIV that I loved like the professions. However, not having a guild as I was used to in Warcraft was very lonely. Final Fantasy is a beautiful game and has a great narrative. I guess I just missed my guidies.

[@embersarcade]

Nothing motivates quite as effectively as community.

[@SpaceElvisInc]

I swapped 14 to my main mmo when my guild in WoW disbanded around mid BFA no drama just life, it's funny now the main thing making me stick to FF despite all my issues and concerns is the causal static I got into durring Endwalker, I'm torn idk if I should stick with them into Dawntrail or retire after finishing the raid tier

[@SenpaiXcore]

I remember being dead certain that Shadowlands would save wow back then. I ended up playing the first raid tier before stopping after being there since 2005. I was in the midst of the exodus to FF14 and I dont regret it. The story hooked me up so hard, being a die hard fan of the franchise ever since the PS1 era. About a month ago I checked out Dragonflight and while the initial gameplay was fun I quickly ran into the same old issues again - no chance of M+ Groups with randoms due to not playing top tier meta classes, the raid is ridiculously easy and the community is as shit as ever, with people leaving keys as soon as the group wipes and so on. In the end I felt like WoW had just lost its magic and it might never get it back again. Maybe it will, but for me I feel more home in FF14, with all the little things I love about it. Edit: I think what draws people back to WoW is the company the game itself was. Most of the people in retail have been around for a long time. I found myself feeling like that. I played nearly 20 years and I grew up just as the game went on, it will always be a huge part of my gaming live and I probably will always compare other games to it, or vise versa - because I know WoW. I lived it and I was addicted at times and I left it at other times.

[@embersarcade]

I have a big “memory lane” video for Shadowlands coming next, I think you’ll enjoy it.

[@davidjj33]

I recently left WoW to return to FFXIV. On WoW, I was all about PVP on my DH. I loved it but it got old quick. I'm hesitant to join a guild because I've been there in WoW before and I don't have time in my personal life to dedicate time and have a game become a second job. Admittingly, I'd probably do it if I was single and living alone. However, I'm loving FFXIV nowadays. I played YEARS ago and picked it up again after some friends got it on XBOX. I really like having one character with the ability to do every class, job and content.

[@embersarcade]

XIV is just consistent in its quality. Welcome back!

[@MegaPunch]

So you're comparing only one aspect of WoW, and a small one at that (pvp) to everything else another game offers? Yeah, that seems like an honest comparison 🙄🙄

[@eziomorte3380]

Played and loved both of the games. So, in order to enjoy wow i need to read guides and watch videos and above all join a guild in order to avoid the unbelievably toxic community. Im 15 years older than you ans was there when the beta was running and never left until mop, I truly LOVED wow. I came back for every expansion ever after but there is one constant, wow is not what it used to be, maybe with the exception of legion. Im playing dragon atm, just came back a couple of days ago, just for the story and now you are saying that story parts are locked behind rep grinds, I had no idea. Thanks bliz, thats the last time im spending money on wow. Back to FF14 then.

[@BattousaiHBr]

it's worse than you think, not only is the game very different, but the playerbase is also irrevocably different. it's not a matter o relaunching the classic "experience" because not even that can be ever achieved again because the players and the metagaming are completely different.

[@twall4381]

Very dishonest content. You can get the gist of the entire story by just doing the main campaign and the raids in dragon isles. Also, I’m getting tired of the final fantasy has the best community bullshit comment because it doesn’t. It’s just as toxic as any other MMO community except it’s arguably worse because nobody says anything to your face. They are just passive aggressive and spread toxic positivity, because of the very strict terms of service. The only reason you think your community is good is because you ban anybody that so much as says otherwise.

[@gamesguitarsandcars]

Your video definitely hits on some of the things I've felt. I too played a lot of WoW from late vanilla to mid WotLK then took a break, occasionally logging in every other expansion until late Shadowlands then pretty heavy during early Dragonflight. My FFXIV experience is much less as I've just recently jumped in but I feel I have a decent idea of how things are going especially with what you've said in this video. The guild thing is 100% true. The reason I loved WoW so much in the early days was more because of the people I met and formed a guild with rather than how good the game itself was. That sense of community just hit different and I still talk to people I used to raid with nearly 20 years ago. I too fell into that casual guild hole each time I came back which is most likely why I quit playing again and again. Maybe putting forth a little more effort socially would have helped keep me engaged longer. I fully agree with the stuff about the storylines, how hard it is to catch up with WoW lore, and how FF is much more story driven. I'm not much on storylines as I my main focus is gameplay which is why WoW has been my go to. The combat just feels so much better to me with more rewarding gameplay. I love how you mentioned the differences in mindset between the games when it comes to raiding because its 100% true, with FF its more about coming together to kill a boss to extend the story while with WoW your focus tends to gravitate to "I can't let this other *insert your class* do better than me on this pull" which on the surface may seem ego driven but it does push you to be a better player. I really enjoyed the video, it resonates with a lot of the things I've noticed in my time playing a variety of MMOs... and why I always gravitate back to WoW.

[@kat8506]

Welcome to the community ❤🎉 your video quality is awesome btw!

[@novavert5036]

wow player for over 17 years now and I have to say man you've got this video a like and sub from me the narration and knowledge shown is amazing and your vocabulary is fantastic!!

[@Nathanyel]

7:31 it was actually available in the game. People often make the unconscious (or deliberate) mistake of watching WoW cutscenes outside of the game, without context) This happened to A LOT of the Shadowlands cutscenes, people just watched the datamined cutscene as soon as it appeared on KZbin via a third-party uploader, and then complained that it didn't make sense without the context they didn't see.

[@Nathanyel]

In fact, while I absolutely do not think that WoW should have mandatory story progression to unlock endgame content like FFXIV, I sometimes wish certain people would have to play through all relevant content themselves before seeing particular story developments - but that is not a fault of the game, but of how players and especially ex-players consume datamined content.

[@Atljeepboy]

I left FFXIV after Endwalker and went to ArcheAge Classic and now back to WoW myself. I picked up right where I left off and am really liking it.

[@SouthPaul20]

Great video! As someone who loves the lore of warcraft (I read the war of the ancients trilogy and many other books in preparation of dragonflight), I love making new characters and running them through old expansions. The best way I have found to do this with WoW is to get to level 59 and you can talk to an NPC to stop yourself from gaining exp. This lets me complete the expansion in its entirety (kind of). When you get to end game for an expansion I have to pull a guild mate to run me through the raids as there is no way to do that content at level 59 with other people.

[@embersarcade]

If you like lore, then keep an eye out for some Shorts I’m working on. The War Within has some interested lore tidbits scattered around the world.

[@SouthPaul20]

@@embersarcade I'll definitely be on the lookout! I'm still in the first area of war within but I'm really enjoying it so far!

[@embersarcade]

Same here, I’m probably 10-15 hours into the game, but I only reached The Ringing Deeps a few minutes ago. Doing tons of exploration, side questing, and collection.

[@SouthPaul20]

@@embersarcade You are further than me! I have made 0 progress lol we have been moving but I'm hoping tonight is the night I get to jump back in for a little bit.

[@Nightstalker314]

I guess long term there is the option to level different classes and play through the different expansions via chromie time. This falls into the trap of disecting the long term narratives but maybe there is this future solution to have global/accwide tracking of all the major campaigns. Another things to do: Finish the (Legion) Class Hall campaigns on all classes and do the Mage Tower in all scenarios. Not too hard anymore but still more variety of content. Thanks for the compact and well paced overview!

[@chefboyarsteve820]

Haven’t started watching much yet, but just wanted to let you know that the first section “introductoin” is misspelled. Excited to watch the video though! Loved both games

[@embersarcade]

I’m allowed one mistake per year.

[@Zakrulan]

Ever since I started playing WoW I mostly played alone, same with every single MMO I played and will be playing. One single exception to this is Black Desert Online since the guild I was randomly invited to was a community that shared a single dead braincell, it was fun while it lasted. I prefer playing mmo-s alone for the simple reason of that I can progress at my own pace in a chill not overly dedicated manner. If I get into a guild I look for the one that has many members where I can blend in and be invisible.

[@ken76722]

As an avid MMORPG player, I love watching your videos. It's refreshing to hear a new, dedicated, and informed opinion. If at all possible, I would adore a video covering Black Desert Online, my personal main MMO.

[@embersarcade]

That’s coming!

[@ken76722]

@@embersarcade YES! Thank you for all of your hard work! Can't wait :)

[@MarcoGreen73]

I really liked this video man, please continue to create interesting vids like this one, you've got a new sub :)

[@willnewell9242]

ik this is old now but i totally agree i started mmos abt 4 months ago at this point and thats what i thought of first is there a point to playing this mmo will it die after a couple bad patches? is it worth my time? also how do u like dawntrail?

[@darkmatterpancake]

Hey, it's the Hunters that sit in trade chat talking about Middle Eastern geopolitics. Our favorite flavor of crayon is the main debate between us Fury Warriors.

[@embersarcade]

Throwing Hunters under the bus, just what I would expect from a _Fury Warrior._

[@Xylense01]

This was a good video. As both a wow and 14 player who loves and respects both games, I agree with pretty much everything here 👍

[@shorurg9111]

Maybe i am late with a comment on a 6 month old video but i try it anyways, i think the reason why wow is not dead is the gameplay and content available: the early game/leveling: leveling your first/multiple characters questing thats not restrictive like in other mmos like ff14 easy accessible dungeons for leveling, you hardly wait more then 5-10 minutes as a dps, after 5 minutes you can open up that que to all expansions while leveling you can do pvp but its not recommended the endgame: in the "retail" endgame you got pve,pvp and collectibles like toys, pets, mounts, titles, transmog(fashon gear), archievements and challenges like the mage tower the pvp is doable for 2-3-5- and guild sized battlegrounds pve is mythic + dungeons, raids and legendary farming sometimes and there is classic wow aswell the amount of content and the relative ease to access it is my reason i like it more compared to ff14, because in ff14 is only a raid of 4 bosses that get cleared quickly, then about halv a year content drout as a pve player perspective ff14 is a sozialising game with other strenghts, but wow is something you can play for weeks, and feel every last bit of strenght you have collected, gear matters, skillk matters, talents matters, if you spent alot of time getting good you feel results... so, if you like pve content with a touch of pvp wow is great, if you like socialising with roleplay and stuff ff14 is yours thats all, wish all who read it a nice day

[@Skyztamer]

Overall great video. On your point about character and account progression, GW2 might be worth checking out. I think it's features on account progression strike a good balance between the two games. In GW2 things like story, quests, and map progression are character specific, but the game has a lot of account bound systems such as masteries. They play a big part in the game's horizontal progression as all of your characters gain access to all your account bound unlocks. A lot of currencies are also in your shared wallet (gold, map currencies, raid currencies, etc) that all your characters have access to. Also if you go out of your way to unlock legendary equipment on your account, you can be legitimately done gearing forever on every current and future character because of its qol benefits.

[@Benikace]

Awesome video! Maybe it's time I came back and also found my special sauce !

[@aarongiven4961]

Very nice video , I play FFXIV and have played many others starting with AC back in 2000. I wish I could get into WoW but have never cared for the story or aesthetic. A number of my friends seem to be ready for both FFXIV's and WoW'S expansions lol. Main thing is play what you have the most fun in.

[@alistairknightsly440]

im glad you found a guild to keep you in wow, i have joined so many guilds and discord and tried to get things going but no matter how small or big the guilds seem to have 0 social interaction, classic is a bit better but the severe lack of social interaction has been pushing me to want to go give 14 another try

[@jiruribakachan365]

I've been playing WoW since vanilla and I used to be raidlead, from Wrath through Mists, when I first took a break right at the start of Warlords. I tryed myself on mythics and I got the mount from the first season but it's not interesting to me anymore. These day's what I really love is leveling, the one part everyone says is just to get to max level is the most joy I have. I am constantly deleting characters that I don't enjoy anymore and make new ones to level up. You don't need to be into mythics, raiding or pvp to enjoy a game, hell the only reason my main is eqipped is because I enjoy healing and you only get to do that in dungeons and raids really. But there are so many aspects of wow that you sadly didnt touch like playing the auctionhouse, there are a lot of people who play the economy to get the most gold. Transmog farming, one of the reasons why I have so many characters is to farm old raids to collect all the appearance of gear and mounts! RP is a HUGE part in WoW. And yes there is a toxic part of wow, and that comes mostly from the high end players and streamers, you know the ones who look down on you when you don't have the best gear and wont invite you because of it, despie the fact that you have more skill in your pinky than these people who cant function without all their addons telling them how to play their character, or tell you how to skill even though you feel more comfortable with the skills you chose and they don't even pay for your sub.

[@secretbossfight]

While the video is well done, not a word on the obvious drawbacks? You're playing WoW with probably half a dozen add-ons including ability timers, callout warnings, damage meters, etc? Because honestly I think some of this stuff like the story side is just the difference between FF14 and WoW; the latter having been built by the same marketing minds as games like Destiny. Both Destiny and WoW put story cinematics up on KZbin essentially as billboards to let old players know what's going on now, essentially making the story a themed seasoning atop the ever-changing systems, whereas FF14 makes the story the primary reason to play with the occasional class rework being something on the side. WoW puts more effort into it's story than it did in Cataclysm, but it doesn't FORCE you to look at it if you don't care about it because a good number of classical WoW players would kill things without bothering to read why, and Blizzard doesn't want to lose them trying to keep pace with 14. I do enjoy WoW, but I enjoy it the way I do Superman: a long running thing with onboarding soft resets every few years that get players back in the door, whereas 14 is like trying to get into Superman by starting with Action Comics #1. I'll also say that you can do most expansion stories from Cataclysm onward with little loss or interruption, because the devs seem to have learned from how Wrathgate ended with nothing once the Battle For Undercity was removed by Cataclysm. Fortunately WoW Classic exists for people who want to experience the scripted sequences of older eras, but Cata's redo of the original continents was a bite-the-bullet moment some players still haven't gotten over, but the golden age of WoW was clearly made with the expectation to only last a few years like most MMOs of that era did, and from Pandaria onward they seem to have finally established a longer view. While I experience the boredom in FF14 at current, it's mostly due to the design of the relic weapon, I think. If the game offered people other activities, I'd be in more. I particularly wish the relic forced people to do FATEs, because after an expansion launch is in the rear view mirror people stop doing FATEs and newer players who finish MSQ in the year-plus ahead have no way to unlock those vendors at a pace that isn't maddeningly tedious. WoW's world quests and evolving story arcs are better than 14's beast tribes and weekly tasks like Unreal Trials. The last part of your video is kind of the splintering point with me. I'm not a competitive person, and I hate competing with other players more than I do with the boss. A friend of mine from early in life one stunned me with a tone I'd never had from him before over WoW damage meters. It's why, while I do enjoy WoW, I'll forever be a renown grinding LFR tourist with occasional trips into a Normal pug. WoW desperately needs something like FF14's maps dungeons, often a completely carefree social experience that a crowd can do together where the gameplay floor is low enough that half the party can be inebriated and still have a good time. While I never expect WoW to go as far as player housing, it needs to find a way for groups to stop sweating and enjoy something without aspiring for the skill ceiling. Unfortunately I think Ion has a viewpoint that if you're going to log in and not try your best, then you shouldn't even log in, and understands that it'll cause veterans to burn out for periods. But that's also going to cost the game the newbies. WoW practically introduced the term "filthy casual" to gaming, and FF14's approach to sprouts even from the community is a total rejection of that mindset.

[@gunshin8244]

Great video, well articulated and yes Guilds are IMPORTANT if ur new, if ur an old player u can probably get away but let's be honest being able to log in to friends ready to greet u back and play with in an MMO is amazing. Imo if they can somehow fix their ability to narrate the story to the players and FINALLY provide player housing i'd love it - i'd love housing like that of Genshin's Edit: alsooo, the fact that WoW moved in a direction that has doesn't demand as much of you is great, you can play a couple of hours a week and still accomplish something - that seems to be the general direction they're moving towards still.

[@miriamweller812]

WoW never demanded much of you, what are you talking about? Maybe early days from two decades ago, when you had to get specific gear to survive a raid and alike, but today? Not since many, many years and you don't have to play that to know that. Hell, they even put in a hell lot of extra work to give really all players the chance to see the raids, even the awful ones. It seems you people never actually look at a game an instead watch such idiots takes like this one, which is at best dumb if not full of lies on purpose, since he clearly want to advertise for FF14 (with even more lies), because after the last PR campaign which was able to trick quite an amount of players, those already fled the game again, since when you reach endgame all the lies they were told quickly fall apart. Biggest problem is, that you people are like that with every other stuff, too. When only falling for lies regarding a game, it wouldn't be so bad, but when you fall for such lies, you fall for all the others, too. Really: learn how to think and not believe any shit they tell you. If not for others, than at least for yourself.

[@gunshin8244]

@@miriamweller812 i mean.. i played since WoD days, i am still playing rn... thank you for taking the time to check your facts. And yes WoW did demand a lot of time of u before DF - in legion especially when u had to grind daily for AP so ud fall behind till they release the next catch up. I do not appreciate the way talk but i do understand ur pt ig? But this video did only mention 3 faults with WoW that most ppl agree with Narrative delivery, account wide progression (at least in modern times) and i forgot the 3rd mentioned one tbh. Anws "you ppl" should calm down, do not attack ppl left and right without checking anything and sticking to stupid things, WoW has and probably will stay my fav game but that does not change its flaws.

[@miriamweller812]

@@gunshin8244 Yes - did. But that's not the case for a long while. And you shouldn't mix up content with grind. FF14 for example got very, very little current content, what is bad. But the fanatic sell this is "oh, it values your time". Yeah, sure. So an MMORPG should just have as little to do as possible, eh? And Legion Artifact Weapon 'grind' is a joke in comparison to what the classic grind was or what a lot of FF14 grind had been. Meanwhile Square just cut down everything. But that's the thing: they just cut it down, they don't improve it and give somethin better, they just give less. How the classes/jobs developed is a good example for that. At start you got the jobs who were made up by two classes coming together, who had class skills you could also use with the job. Then they cut that down to to just give role skills and then to just nothing. As lazy as it can be.

[@gunshin8244]

@@miriamweller812 Even if the legion to SL grinds were a joke compared to back in classic does not mean that for today's standard that is gd, no ofc the game shouldn't just have ntg to do but if there is smtg u "need" to do it should come in a gd form of content or in a gd way is all. Idk abt ff14 mate id enjoy it either - the story isn't to my liking nor is the combat, but if there is smtg gd there i will conpliment it as it is - the narrative delivery is gd and i would like to have smtg similar in WoW but better cz i still don't like it, id like the lvling experience in both of them and would love for some resources to be invested in story delivery while lvling in a nice manner without constricting players too much

[@ithilweenshadowsong8151]

Not with the intention to roast you but I have to lol Player: we want housing, like the teapot from Genshin. Teapot at home: Garrison. Personal opinion: teapot is garbage, rather have the FFXIV housing.

[@eliverhulst459]

Just got recommended this video, damn what an amazing one!

[@pixelfps2403]

Amazing video! I just have to say though, you mentioned that FFXIV was less social than WoW. I have been playing FFXIV on and off for about a year and tried out WoW for about 300 hours and i had the exact opposite experience. In FFXIV I was talking and interacting with people all the time while in WoW I never saw anyone talk, everyone kept to themselves. This might be becouse of the servers I was on but I have in general heard from people that they feel the same way.

[@TheKutthroatKid]

"Tab targeting combat" I'm use that description. that's great

[@nhoj2114]

What video editing software do you use

[@embersarcade]

Premiere and After Effects.

[@benjt3845]

Nice video friend, you have earned my sub and I look forward to future content

[@catterin7815]

First, I want to thank you for a well rounded unbiased review and comparison. I use to Play FF a lot when it was just a console game, FF1 -7 to be exact but lot interest when I started to play more PC RPGs like Lands of Lore, Bard's Tale, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights. I didn't start playing WOW until just after BC and have loved the game ever since. I'm a casual player and I love the story and the world in general. I don't mind having multiple characters as depending on your class, race and faction the story can be different. I love the way it plays and the fact that I can choose to play either with others or by myself. I love the way the game remembers things you did and how it changes the dialog/story (minimally) based on what you've done or items you carry. Things you wouldn't notice initially unless you played through on more than one toon. An example would be if you killed Lady Vashj in BC, she remembers that you killed her in Shadowlands and comments on it. In legion, if you are a hunter who happens to get and carry the bow Thas'dorah, Legacy of the Windrunners (Alaria Winrunner's bow) Sylvanas will talk to you about it if you see her in Undercity. These are just two examples I can remember off the top of my head. I love the humor worked into the quests, descriptions or just written into the random dialog found into the world. Another example, if you are near the trading post in Stormwind, you can overhear a conversation between Flynn Fairwind and the trader as he tries to stealthily buy a pet for his partner, spy master Mathias Shaw, it's funny. I was told multiple times by different individuals that I would love FF14 and how it is more story driven so I decided to try it on the free trial. I know this game is suppose to be more story driven and I haven't played too long but I just don't get it. I've played a few of weeks and I'm just as lost now as I was at the beginning. Lots and lots and lots of names and places are mentioned but I still don't know who/what they are or what the on going story is about. I keep getting lost. WOW spoiled me by putting on their maps exactly where I need to go rather than just dialog references. I find that I'm bored with the quests and I don't look forward to playing. I was told by FF fans that the game is that way until level 60 and only then does the game become truly fun. But I keep thinking, Do I really want to push through in the hopes of something better? I haven't really decided yet. At least the free trial is through level 60 if I decide to continue.

[@darkstorm2579]

Regarding WoW remembering things, it's still going strong in Dragonflight as there's a short questline involving the Netherwing and if your character is exalted with them, they will remember you. Not to mention a special questline for those who possess Dragonwrath. It's always neat seeing details like this as it makes your actions feel like they mean something.

[@Iisho]

Late reply, but I'd like to say something in regards to XIV. I felt the same when I started. A Realm Reborn is a mess of names, places, and lore that feels unconnected. It took me over a year to fully complete the story of ARR. However, that time was rewarded tenfold. Each expansion builds upon the elements introduced in ARR. I just finished main Shadowbringers, and everything fell into place in such a beautiful and elegant way. The expansion following ARR, Heavensward, is likewise a beautiful story and will almost certainly pull you into the beauty of this game. At least it did for me. I wish I could've told the old me, struggling through ARR and wondering why I'm wasting my time, that it wasn't a waste and that it does get amazing. Here's my advice. I was told that I need to read every piece of dialogue thrown at me in the ARR MSQ, or at least it seemed that way. However, it bogged me down so bad that, like I said before, it took me over a year to get through its story. So, instead I'd say only read what seems important - come back later for the missing details. (KZbin summaries are a godsend) I found that the most important dialogues were things from the Scions, Beast Tribes, Ascians, and world leaders (i.e. the Sultana, Raubahn, Merlwyb, Kan-E-Senna, etc) ARR is the only one that seems this messy. Each expansion gets better and better, and trust me it is so worth it.

[@tonytouch072]

One of the greatest things I like about FFIXV that I would bring to WoW is having a character able to play multiple classes. That would fix the story and rep grind since it’s all on the same character.

[@motorizedshitting]

I highly disagree, since gearing process on XIV endgame is a pain in the ass, while in WoW I can clearly have infinite content in all of my characters and gear them at the time I want to, pushing keys, reclearing raid again, whatever. Meanwhile on XIV, I'm slaved to wait a week to clear raid again, cap tomes again, like, content dies in one day if I want to....

[@SpaceElvisInc]

no thanks, it's nice in 14 because there is a president for it in the series with games like 3 and 4, and a few others I think. but in WoW only maybe like once or twice has a character changed their class, it's just not common enough, lore reasons aside, I just don't like it wow has all these races and character customization options I'd rather just make a new character to be a different class, and the warband system coming in War Within is just going make story and rep shared across characters you wish it to and maybe even more down the line

[@secretbossfight]

The warbands talk at Blizzcon was basically admitting that WoW was deliberately designed to discourage alts with it's rep gating systems, forcing people to feel invested into one character if they happened to have many. Warbands is basically additional storage and backend work to sync characters together atop an aging structure that was not built with ease of swapping characters in mind. I do hope it works, though. The effects for crafting, for guilds, for altaholics in general is exciting enough that it justified my TWW preorder.

[@darkstorm2579]

That would kinda kill the point of making alts is WoW. Plus there are some classes that just cannot work like that from a lore perspective, most notably, death knight and demon hunter. Death knights are people raised into undeath and given dark powers while demon hunters consume demon flesh to gain powers and ritually blind themselves (this is a major oversimplification of both classes but it’s late and I want to keep this short). These are classes that permanently alter your character and cannot be reversed. Not to mention their powers directly contradict some of the other classes (the Light for priests and paladins regarding death knights, and nature, arcane and the elements for demon hunters). Not to mention you would have to completely change the loot and gear system to compromise this change as all of the classes are separated into different armor types: cloth, leather, mail, and plate.

[@secretbossfight]

@@darkstorm2579 TBH it is probably for the best that WoW just make having a party of alts easier, since people enjoy having different races. I wish I could have, say, a Miqo scholar and a Lala paladin but the MSQ and huge number of unlocks in FF encourage people to keep spending money on race-changing their one and only instead.

[@pascual8506]

13:08 I've been pugging M+ and raids since I started in BFA, and I don't have a problem with it. Yeah, there are good groups and bad groups, and doing mythic raids is not an option with pugs, but you can absolutely do heroic raids and high-level M+ dungeons with random people.

[@jstefens]

your UI modifications are pretty nice. I haven't played wow in a LONG time, since the start of Legion. Not sure if I'll return, but your video makes a case.

[@Gandoan]

11:00 You have the option to lock your xp so you don't level further as well as the option to team up with a lower level player and be leveled back down.

[@JasonLudeli]

"making a new character feels like a chore" that's fascinating to hear. For me there is no greater pleasure than starting over and feeling new again. Much of my favorite experiences (especially in classic) is in the early game. I'm a FF14 player now but that's I've of my least favorite things about the game. I don't like all my stuff being on one character. I like having multiple and FF14 gives me no reason to have alts and everything being locked behind the MSQ and having no shared wardrobe really kills making alts even more. I'm an alcoholic in WoW but alts are just torture for me in FF14

[@mobius4247]

This vid deserves a follow-up/sequel.

[@embersarcade]

I will be doing an essay/review about The War Within. I didn’t pay for early access, so I’m a bit behind, but please look forward to that.

[@mobius4247]

@@embersarcade if you've delved into mythic raiding and higher key pushing, perhaps your perspective on the rat race of gear and constant character power gains has changed. This video seemed a bit "honeymoon-period"-y regarding how parts of that system feel to interact with particularly around M+. I wonder if you've run into issues with any of your raid teams regarding mandatory weekly M+ gearing chores in order to remain competitive in raids and seeing some players lag behind ilvl wise or crafted gear min/maxing wise - all, of course, assuming you've ventured past AoTC/+20's. And if you've played any of the current Savage raid tier, how you're enjoying that. Shame about the DT MSQ let down - wish Square nailed it like the last 2 expacs.

[@Tangies]

never thought about professions not being account bound kinda blew my mind

[@Kaltsuwhite]

Love the thumbnail with the bare midriffs

[@embersarcade]

Heroes of the Storm, man.

[@virallock]

You can have a story that’s fulfilling but you have to go out of the way to listen to the NPCs and watch every cut scene even in raid (which normally raid leaders make you skip it lol)

[@networknomad5600]

I'm with you. Endwalker pretty much prompted my departure from XIV, someone who'd played since 1.0. And now that Dawntrail is looking a bit meh and WoW is popping off, guess now is the time to jump ship.

[@Kiwicrack]

As we like to say...hey dude, Welcome back!

[@Fliptriq]

Great video! Is there anywhere to watch that Lost Ark video you mentioned you made? I don't see it anywhere on your channel.

[@m0o0ntecrist08]

yo man you are the real deal and about ff14 danwtrail the reality is that we dont know anything except what they showed us wich is litte snippets the japan fanfest is gona show us more but the anti spoiler thing that ff14 have made the game more mysterious even the devs do it they dont want to reveal anything so big because they want us to experience it in game and in the other hand WOW is not like that thats why they showed 3 expansion and even talked about the lore about titans and whats comming and that will never happen in ff14 thats why the hype is alwas hiding that side quests and raids in ff are one of the best things next to msq but they dont even force you to do them like coils are big impotant lore the game let you explore and chose what to do yeah i said it exploring in ff14 lol .it s even criminal that coils /eden/nier/treasure maps/bozja.....IMAGINE that there is people who completed EW MSQ and then said i completed the game

[@DarkBladeUnto]

Awesome video man! I've been playing Project Ascension WoW for a couple years now if memory serves to get my WoW fix, but this video is really making me wanna resub!

[@embersarcade]

I should look into Ascension and do a video about it.