My first experience of online gaming was back in the early 2000’s when I was a DM on a Neverwinter Nights server called the Mists of Kysostar. It was fun, but the server slowly died as most players jumped ship to a new game: World of Warcraft. And despite swearing I’d never play a subscription based game I eventually caved. In May 2005 I bought the game, and 17 years later I still have an active subscription.
My first Character was an Undead Priest called Caisha on Shadowsong EU, and I went on to be a healer right through until Legion. I was never a truly hardcore, but up until Legion I was a raider, taking on the most current raids and heroic dungeons. Then the cognitive side of my health problems took it’s toll, and I wasn’t up to keeping up with raid healing. I carried on doing random dungeons and Looking For Raid as DPS. OK, I will never top DPS meters, but I always made sure I knew tactics and not to stand in the bad. But this doesn’t seem to be enough any more.
Look, I don’t expect to do mythics, even +0s, but I’ve not dared step out of random normal dungeons for a while now as even plain old heroics seem to be full of players that want to do everything as fast as possible, and woe betide anyone who slows them down. For someone like me, it just doesn’t seem worth it anymore.
So I decided to give something else a try. I decided to try Final Fantasy XIV.
I didn’t dare try healing, but I fell in love with the Ninja Class (and later the Reaper. Hello, goth here, what did you expect…). And so I decided to try random dungeons.
I have never been called a scrub
I have never been told to “Roll my face”
I’ve never been sent a whisper questioning my parentage.
I even decided to try playing a Sage and doing some healing, and when I messed up in the final boss fight I wasn’t called names or insulted. Instead I was given tips on playing the class, and we gave it another try. And it was NICE. I felt more welcome in an online game as a disabled woman than I have done for a long time. Again, I’m not expecting to be carried at all, and don’t expect to be carried through high end content, but making the odd mistake in older content shouldn’t be treated as a mortal sin. Games are meant to be fun after all.
Enough about the dungeon/raid side of the games. For those of us who can’t/don’t want to do them, lets take a look at the other parts of the games.
Warcraft has had a story that has been ongoing since 1994. However a lot of longtime players feel that Warcraft lore has been thrown out of the window over the past few expansions, and not for the better. Final Fantasy XIV was released in 2010, though it was monumentally unpopular when it was originally released, and ended up being totally reworked and re-released in 2013 as “A Realm Reborn”. It’s now on it’s fourth expansion, Endwalker. If story lines and questing are what you enjoy, I have to say FFXIV wins hands down. And if you are an altoholic like I am then the fact you can swap between classes in FFXIV is a real bonus, whereas I feel that Warcraft is less forgiving alt wise. Just don’t give up during the post A Realm Reborn / pre Heavensward content because I am not gonna lie, it drags. And there is so much more to do in FFXIV. Whereas Warcraft has it much maligned RP, FFXIV has much more. Yes, there is RP (and yes, ERP if that’s your thing), but there is player housing for those of us who enjoy designing our dream abodes, festivals through the year, gambling at the Golden Saucer and even player run nightclubs.
Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy Warcraft, and will no doubt start playing more again when Dragonflight hits, but for those of us who prefer, or can only enjoy more relaxed and slower pace, FFXIV wins hands down.