Before I played Final Fantasy XIV, I played World of Warcraft for a long time -- from when it was in beta (!!) until the first patch of Warlords of Draenor, when I jumped ship because that expansion was bad. I then washed up on the shores of Eorzea, and, aside from a brief return trip to check out Legion, that's where I've been ever since, happily slaying gods, gambling at the Gold Saucer, and fishing. A lot.
But in -- well, not the same way, obviously, but in what I'd like to think is a similar way to how a refugee might pine for home even though they know they can't go back there anymore, I do sometimes miss WoW. It was my first MMO and, even though I'm far too used to XIV's cozy community and the level of care that Naoki Yoshida and his team have put into their work to ever truly make a return to Azeroth, I have a lot of fond memories of my time with the game. The WoW-nostalgia has been hitting me particularly hard lately, so I thought I'd put some of those memories here, if only to get them out of my skull.
I miss the music. Of course, XIV has an excellent soundtrack, and its principal composer, Masayoshi Soken, continually cranks out blood-pumping boss battle themes and superb arrangements of past FF songs -- but there's something truly special about the best of WoW's music that no other MMO has been able to capture. The quiet grace of the Valley of the Four Winds; the mournful majesty of the Storm Peaks; the mystery and awe of the Isle of Thunder; the fierce pride of Orgrimmar -- I wouldn't associate these emotions with those zones as strongly as I do if it weren't for the background music setting the tone. WoW's soundtrack is one of many things that made each new area you discovered feel mysterious and important, as if you really were exploring Azeroth mile by mile and mapping it out for the benefit of posterity, and it's always my go-to when I'm writing and I need something to get me in the right mood.
I miss healing being a meaningful role. I've been a healer main since I first started playing MMOs, and have enjoyed that role in both WoW and other games -- as a rune-keeper in Lord of the Rings Online; as a nature affinity defender in City of Heroes; as a mystic in TERA -- but, even though I do still play and enjoy all four of FFXIV's healing jobs, the game's damaged-focus meta, coupled with the healers' bare-bones DPS rotations, means that I don't enjoy playing them as much. I prefer healing to be the main focus when I'm playing a healer, and I don't think any other MMO I've played has done that quite as well as WoW did. I loved the rush of seeing my entire raid's health bars dropping like so many stones and thinking, "How the hell am I going to deal with this?" I loved having to focus so much on healing that there were times I didn't even have damaging spells on my action bars. I loved having to read tooltips to see when, or even whether, I should dispel certain debuffs, and what would happen if I did. Hell, I loved having to regularly dispel debuffs! I know healing has always been an unpopular role, and, since playing XIV, I've come to enjoy tanking and dealing damage as well -- but damn do I miss the days when the incoming damage during a tough boss battle would make me sweat.
I miss expressing myself through my class. There are a lot of really cool classes (or "jobs", in that game's nomenclature) in FFXIV -- I've leveled all the combat-oriented ones to max and have enjoyed playing many of them. A lot of care is clearly put into designing their abilities and rotations, and when you're raining fire down on your enemies as a black mage, slicing and dicing them as a samurai, or cleaving through them with your greatsword as a dark knight, you really do feel powerful and in-tune with the class fantasy. In a way, though, the degree to which XIV's classes are so tightly designed is what frustrates me about them the most -- because, what with there being no talent trees or optional abilities, and with materia (XIV's equivalent of gems) being almost completely about increasing your damage rather than changing how your class feels or plays, the only thing that distinguishes, say, one red mage from another is whether they're a good or bad red mage -- not what spells they've selected or whether they're going for this or that kind of build. I know that, as the meta for a given WoW expansion settles, cookie-cutter talent selections and stat priorities proliferate -- but I loved being able to swap out one ability for another simply because I liked it better, or because I thought it looked cooler, or because it gelled better with how I liked to play. It's frustrating to consider the FFXIV classes I don't play as frequently, that I would play if I could just change them a little bit.
I miss the encounter design. I think XIV's team does a good job of designing really thrilling boss battles -- but I've long since come to accept that the game's "hardcore" content (extreme trials, savage raids, etc.) just isn't for me. These harder fights are designed principally around dealing with combinations of attacks that force your party to stand in, or move to, very specific areas of the arena over and over while still dealing as much damage as possible -- something I've heard colloquially called "the dance". While I think the coordination of XIV's hardcore raiders is really impressive, and I also think that there's something to be said for the complexity of the way the game's harder fights are designed, I just prefer the difficulty of an MMO encounter to be more focused on me playing my class well than on me remembering which marker to run to when 1,000 times over the course of 10 minutes.
I miss official add-on support. I understand why there's a blanket ban on add-ons/extensions/mods in FFXIV -- it wouldn't be fair to console players, for one thing -- and I think that the ban on DPS meters, in particular, has been tremendous for the health of the game's community. I did love customizing my UI with add-ons in WoW, though. It was wonderful not having to wait for the developers to solve a problem, because I could just download, say, an add-on that allowed me to combine all my bags into one large bag, or one that hid the ugly gryphons on either side of my action bars, or one that turned my whispers to other players into an instant-messenger-style series of windows. The creativity, ingenuity, and dedication of those who volunteer their time and expertise to develop add-ons for WoW have not only made the lives of those who make use of their work easier -- they've also developed user interface innovations that have been incorporated into WoW itself, or even other MMOs. In fact, I'd say there are a few ways that XIV's own UI owes a debt of gratitude toward not just WoW, but to its add-ons.
And finally, I miss gnomes.
They're just fun! I like lalafell too, but they aren't the same.
I'm sure if I sat here at my computer for another two hours, I could probably think of a dozen more things about which I could wax nostalgic, but that'll do for now. It would be nice if, one day, I felt like I could go back to playing WoW without getting burned by its developers once or twice an expansion or without getting called a slur by (some of!) its players once or twice a dungeon, but for now, I'll stay in Eorzea, where I'm sure I'll continue to enjoy myself -- even though there will always be things I miss.
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