I played WoW for 15 years. I started the game in 2005, shortly after release, and stayed with it. I had occasional breaks, but I would always feel the urge and come back to it.
Until Shadowlands. I was logging in, doing my dailies and the game just annoyed me. I didn't feel invested in the story anymore, the stupid reputation farming was just upsetting and that the game just refused to give us flying and I spent more time walking to the world quests instead of doing the stupid things really broke my motivation.
At the same time, the Blizzard scandal happened. This time it wasn't a break. This time it was over. I cancelled my subscription for good. I didn't plan to come back, and I never came back. And that is fine.
I was angry back then, but now I look back at the game and I had 15 wonderful years with it. It gave me OCs, a lot of fun, I even think fondly of my once raid group waaay back from 2007.
But my time with it was over. I don't look down on people who enjoy the game nowadays, I simply am glad they have fun with it where I cannot anymore. I hope you WoW peeps continue to have fun. You deserve it.
Now how ties this to FF14... Well, I was swearing MMOs off for good after I quit WoW, concentrating on single player or two player games (played with my husband). I was also big into Soulsborne during this time, so getting summoned to help with boss fights was a nice pasttime as well if I had the itch to play with others.
But in 2023 I wanted to try out FF14. Several reasons led to it. First, my husband was hospitalized and he had started the game before he became ill. I wanted something to talk about with him. Second, I heard the music of the game and fell in love. And third, I felt the MMO itch.
And well, FF14 has a free trial... I have to admit, I upgraded to full version before even ARR was over, but this free trial was a huge reason why I even started the game and fell so in love.
And I notice in these essays, in the people who say the game is dead... I notice myself in them.
The player who is just burned out from the game. Who doesn't enjoy logging in anymore. Who finally needs to pull the plug and do something else.
It's burnout. They simply have burnout from the game, and it would be better for them if they just... stop playing. Look fondly at the times when the game was fun for you. Don't get roped into hating the game and telling everyone how much it sucks, especially the people who have fun in it.
I see so many complaints about the patch cycles, and I am like "You guys, we have content every four months, we waited over a year in WoW back during WotL for the next raid tier!"
And there is so much to do in the game? Like I am still leveling my jobs. And one issue I see is that people want to be QUICK QUICK QUICK with everything.
Like why do you level up your job in three days and then complain about being bored in the game?! I levelled up five jobs, each for one role which I see as my mains and the rest are alts that I level up evenly, shortly, by doing levelling dungeons once a day and Khloe's stickers.
My husband asked me why everyone was so hype about Occult Crescent, he went there and found it was nothing special. And I told him "It is because they already finished everything in the game and are bored."
I plan to go slow at Occult Crescent. First, it is a grind anyway and second I am more interested in levelling gatherers, crafters and alt jobs at the moment.
Long story short, these players, especially these content creators, have burnout and need to STOP.
Oh, and if you want to follow a good FF14 Youtuber, Caetsu Chaiji is just there with many videos about tips and doing the maths and breaking myths. Favourite FF14 Youtube so far. I learned a lot watching his videos.
janainaart
annaxmalina
baratheonpilled
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
snowghoul
