In HW now and yeah a lot of running but getting the aether currents isn’t hard and flying is fun. Since I’ve focused on WHM (always prefer healers) I’ve had no trouble leveling. Had my first trouble in Sohm Al instance and was like “wtf am I doing wrong?” Turns out internet was fucked, realized it when it took the quest givers 5-6 seconds to respond to my right click...
Without spoilers, can you give reasons as to why? I just finished the Bismark stuff and while it is certainly better than ARR, I wouldn't say it's that much beyond ARR if you take out all the filler shit.
Less filler, I guess? There's still a decent amount of filler in HW, especially at the beginning.
I guess with flying and just the overall HW story from 3.0 through 3.3 was considered just a step above. Obviously the very end of ARR was some good stuff maybe on par, but most liked HW more than Stormblood.
Clear progression of Shadowbringers > Heavensward > Last 30 quests of ARR > Stormblood > ARR MSQ imo. Hingan stuff was great, but I really just don't care about Ala'Mhigo, which puts it a step below all the stuff leading up to Shiva/HW
Clear progression of Shadowbringers > Heavensward > Last 30 quests of ARR > Stormblood > ARR MSQ imo. Hingan stuff was great, but I really just don't care about Ala'Mhigo, which puts it a step below all the stuff leading up to Shiva/HW
I can get this, although I liked how Stormblood focused a little more on the "core story" a little more versus the Garleans, etc. Not that Dragonsong War wasn't cool on its own, but end of ARR MSQ set you up to have to go through some epic stuff to find your companions again, and aside from a few good spots all of that stuff was kind of just wrapped up fairly quick in between all the main HW story (which was itself kind of its own thing).
Without spoilers, can you give reasons as to why? I just finished the Bismark stuff and while it is certainly better than ARR, I wouldn't say it's that much beyond ARR if you take out all the filler shit.
Less filler, I guess? There's still a decent amount of filler in HW, especially at the beginning.
It's mostly the story. Obviously that's gonna be subjective but a lot of people just liked the HW story a lot more, it has nice characters and has a good pacing with the new threats and how it resolves things. It isn't really so much about the fillers, although that helps, and just more that the HW story is good.
It's basically the same with ShB, while yes it even has less fillers than HW(about the same as SB, SB is when they trimmed the questing down a fair bit), the main reason people really liked it is just because the story and characters are great, it's not really technical stuff that makes these expansions favorites.
I enjoyed SB but I honestly felt it didn't have a definitive ending.
Even though we essentially killed Zenos having him come back as an Ascian left me feeling the central villian in the story managed to survive.
I'd have been okay with them bringing him back in the current expansion but it was too soon to see him again in SB.
That said, SB introduced the annoying concept of battles you can't win as part of the story arc which they've carried over to ShB. It nettles me to waste time on fights where the adversary just KO's you when you take 5% off him or whatever. Especially if you manage to die before you get to that point anyway because why does it matter if he KOs you at 99% or 95%?
It's mostly the story. Obviously that's gonna be subjective but a lot of people just liked the HW story a lot more, it has nice characters and has a good pacing with the new threats and how it resolves things. It isn't really so much about the fillers, although that helps, and just more that the HW story is good.
See, for all the complaints about ARR and its filler(don't get me wrong, it had a lot), I feel like HW isn't much better. The entire first half (until you reach sea of clouds and some major reveals happen with Hrasfalger) of the story can be shaved down a fucking shitload. The first half with Fortemps and Iceheart can be trimmed a ton (the sons stuff was a waste), same with all the bullshit filler of trying to reach Zenith. Then, even when you do reach sea of clouds, a good portion of it is again ridiculous filler, with all the Moogle bullshit at the beginning.
Maybe this shit blows completely wide open soon for some "omg!" moments, but I just reached Iddlshyre in the MSQ and I'm struggling to find why HW gets so much praise.
See, for all the complaints about ARR and its filler(don't get me wrong, it had a lot), I feel like HW isn't much better. The entire first half (until you reach sea of clouds and some major reveals happen with Hrasfalger) of the story can be shaved down a fucking shitload. The first half with Fortemps and Iceheart can be trimmed a ton (the sons stuff was a waste), same with all the bullshit filler of trying to reach Zenith. Then, even when you do reach sea of clouds, a good portion of it is again ridiculous filler, with all the Moogle bullshit at the beginning.
Maybe this shit blows completely wide open soon for some "omg!" moments, but I just reached Iddlshyre in the MSQ and I'm struggling to find why HW gets so much praise.
Well yeah it has fillers still as I said. But the story is good, at least imo.
Going into spoilers but not further than where you are:
You first arrive in Ishgard as a fugitive, which already is pretty interesting rather than the usual adventurer stuff you start with in vanilla.
You instantly get shown that 1) everyone there has been fighting constantly for as long as they lived with no hope for a better future and they're completely exhausted 2) they have a different political system than the stuff you're accustomed to, with the noble houses and the clergy, very reminiscent of the middle age stuff which is both familiar but still different than the stuff you've been used in the game.
Ishgard is a gigantic looking city in the sky and lives up to the hype in my opinion, including its awesome music.
Then you decide to go on an adventure, a real one, not preparing a banquet or delivering shirts, to stop a war that's been going on for over a thousand years. You're accompanied by a dragon hunter, or more like, THE dragon hunter, and a woman who's the reincarnation of Shiva, who believe dragons are actually the good guys. They each develop over time, learning to accept certain aspects of each other as you sit by campfires and explore the world to try to find the real truth behind the war. It feels like a proper journey. And yes on the way you end up wrangling chocobos, gathering potatos and playing hide and seek with moogles, and that part is a bit weak but also kinda fits, it's a serious journey but it has some relaxing elements cause it can't be work work work all the time. Some of the scenes also help build up the characters a bit more.
As you progress, the truth gets clearer yet it stays without a clear black and white result. There's a clear bad guy that appears, but defeating him isn't going to magically stop everything, it's a more complex issue than that. The nuances is what makes it interesting, versus "yo we the empire, we invaded you before and are gonna invade you again, btw here's our new ultimate weapon(quite literally)" or "we are the Ascians, we dress in black and say mysterious threatening things while doing very evil things, wahahaha".
Finally one of the big scene which I believe you should already have seen was pretty impactful for a lot of people. I'm talking about the scene at the end of the Vault. Since I'm not 100% sure that's after or before getting to Idylshire I won't go into detail about it. But it was pretty emotional, although I guess it depends on your involvement with the story too to an extent. Same with the last part which you'll get to shortly, which has some really epic fights and epic music.
Ultimately, it's still going to be a matter of taste. Some people watch masterpiece movies and don't like them. And while yes you can say "this is a great movie", it still doesn't mean everyone is going to like it. But many people did like it, so it's probably somewhat good, just not to your taste. I think everyone has several things like that that "everyone" likes but they don't like. For many people HW is one of the best expansion. Mind you, that's mostly for FFXIV players though, so they're already biased. Most people who don't like XIV to begin with don't make it past the ARR bullshit, so anyone who gets to HW probably is already somewhat into the game.
wormie
, I hate to repeat the choir - but you've got to get past this point. I feel like I'm closer to you in terms of that content. Regardless of how amaze-balls the story may be to some - the issues HW had are glaring at best. But I would rather fight your disappointment in the game with facts. The game released in 2010, failed miserably, and was re-released in 2013 as (ARR). Using much of the same art assets that were used originally, but reinventing the wheel to be more steam lined and.. forgiving, similar to WoW. The game had a hard rebound, and even as numbers climbed - ever so slowly (more on this in a second) - the game wasnt making the money it "needed" to make. So they released HW with the hope of retention and bringing back old players that quit in 1.0. Heavensward reused assets again for some new zones, added areas using those same assets to existing zones, and only created a few zones based off entirely new art assets. Sea of Clouds can eat a dick btw. But thats been said here already, just not quite so... direct. Zones not difficult, but travel and questing is infuriating at points.
HW Dungeons and Raids were over tuned to the point that there are entire articles devoted to how ball slammingly tight some of the DPS checks etc. are in that expansion. Which, a lot of articles say caused people to "quit" the game, again. So you'll notice now that a lot of those dungeons, are overwhelmingly easy at times now.. like.. fk I can do this solo, what the fk is going on? It's because they nerfed the everliving shit out of those places because of the complaints.
The end of Heavensward (those last few major patches) and the majority of Stormblood change so much in the game for the good, mechanically and visually, that its a shame the story was only "so so." Shadowbringers is the first expansion, at least in my opinion, where you have the FFXIV team giving you a great story, with up to date questing and leveling techniques, in a graphically gorgeous setting - which very clearly marked it as :
"Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers is currently the best rated PC and PS4 game of 2019 beating out names such as Sekiro, Devil May Cry 5 and Resident Evil 2. "
If you're looking for peaks in the story for HW though? I couldnt get into Sky Pirates, that f'n zone probably ruined that for me. But as soon as we got to the Dragons in Dravania and circling back around to kill the Pope or w/e, then Hralsgar or w/e and back and forth and shit - I was getting into it. I loved the little witch in Dravanian Hinterlands, and the story up to and around the Library there. The Library itself is a bit weird... but all that has new assets and the story of that area really peaks the mystery meters and has your curiosity running wild. If you're in no rush to get max level, do all the content at that level and ultimately quit the game cause you're bored - stop at this point if you're enjoying yourself and do the raids for HW. There are still groups doing them, and that f'n robot in Dravanian Hinterlands / Alexandria raid gave me a few good laughs.
TL;DR; DR Spoiler : All we can really tell you is to keep playing the game. Eventually something is going to catch your interest and you wont put the f'n thing down till you're in the middle of a fucking desert wondering why the hell you're mining water gems when you have millions in the bank. I thought Stormblood improved upon the game a lot. I think Shadowbringers is in a league of it's own and puts WoW to shame. So much so, that if Blizzard wasnt full of arrogant fucks that they would learn a few things from that expansion. Just.. really, dont give up on the game until you play through Shadowbringers. I wish so much that they would redesign the MSQ in its entirety for the previous expansions - but you're definitely going to miss a gem if you quit before Shadowbringers.
wormie
, I hate to repeat the choir - but you've got to get past this point. I feel like I'm closer to you in terms of that content. Regardless of how amaze-balls the story may be to some - the issues HW had are glaring at best. But I would rather fight your disappointment in the game with facts. The game released in 2010, failed miserably, and was re-released in 2013 as (ARR). Using much of the same art assets that were used originally, but reinventing the wheel to be more steam lined and.. forgiving, similar to WoW. The game had a hard rebound, and even as numbers climbed - ever so slowly (more on this in a second) - the game wasnt making the money it "needed" to make. So they released HW with the hope of retention and bringing back old players that quit in 1.0. Heavensward reused assets again for some new zones, added areas using those same assets to existing zones, and only created a few zones based off entirely new art assets. Sea of Clouds can eat a dick btw. But thats been said here already, just not quite so... direct. Zones not difficult, but travel and questing is infuriating at points.
HW Dungeons and Raids were over tuned to the point that there are entire articles devoted to how ball slammingly tight some of the DPS checks etc. are in that expansion. Which, a lot of articles say caused people to "quit" the game, again. So you'll notice now that a lot of those dungeons, are overwhelmingly easy at times now.. like.. fk I can do this solo, what the fk is going on? It's because they nerfed the everliving shit out of those places because of the complaints.
The end of Heavensward (those last few major patches) and the majority of Stormblood change so much in the game for the good, mechanically and visually, that its a shame the story was only "so so." Shadowbringers is the first expansion, at least in my opinion, where you have the FFXIV team giving you a great story, with up to date questing and leveling techniques, in a graphically gorgeous setting - which very clearly marked it as :
"Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers is currently the best rated PC and PS4 game of 2019 beating out names such as Sekiro, Devil May Cry 5 and Resident Evil 2. "
If you're looking for peaks in the story for HW though? I couldnt get into Sky Pirates, that f'n zone probably ruined that for me. But as soon as we got to the Dragons in Dravania and circling back around to kill the Pope or w/e, then Hralsgar or w/e and back and forth and shit - I was getting into it. I loved the little witch in Dravanian Hinterlands, and the story up to and around the Library there. The Library itself is a bit weird... but all that has new assets and the story of that area really peaks the mystery meters and has your curiosity running wild. If you're in no rush to get max level, do all the content at that level and ultimately quit the game cause you're bored - stop at this point if you're enjoying yourself and do the raids for HW. There are still groups doing them, and that f'n robot in Dravanian Hinterlands / Alexandria raid gave me a few good laughs.
TL;DR; DR Spoiler : All we can really tell you is to keep playing the game. Eventually something is going to catch your interest and you wont put the f'n thing down till you're in the middle of a fucking desert wondering why the hell you're mining water gems when you have millions in the bank. I thought Stormblood improved upon the game a lot. I think Shadowbringers is in a league of it's own and puts WoW to shame. So much so, that if Blizzard wasnt full of arrogant fucks that they would learn a few things from that expansion. Just.. really, dont give up on the game until you play through Shadowbringers. I wish so much that they would redesign the MSQ in its entirety for the previous expansions - but you're definitely going to miss a gem if you quit before Shadowbringers.
Oh it wasnt me with a problem with HW, i just got there . I had a problem with ARR and i skipped it about 30% into post 50 quests. Watched cut scenes, bought vendor gear in Foundations. All is well for now. and I am attempting to potato my way through being a decent white mage.
Well yeah it has fillers still as I said. But the story is good, at least imo.
Going into spoilers but not further than where you are:
You first arrive in Ishgard as a fugitive, which already is pretty interesting rather than the usual adventurer stuff you start with in vanilla.
You instantly get shown that 1) everyone there has been fighting constantly for as long as they lived with no hope for a better future and they're completely exhausted 2) they have a different political system than the stuff you're accustomed to, with the noble houses and the clergy, very reminiscent of the middle age stuff which is both familiar but still different than the stuff you've been used in the game.
Ishgard is a gigantic looking city in the sky and lives up to the hype in my opinion, including its awesome music.
Then you decide to go on an adventure, a real one, not preparing a banquet or delivering shirts, to stop a war that's been going on for over a thousand years. You're accompanied by a dragon hunter, or more like, THE dragon hunter, and a woman who's the reincarnation of Shiva, who believe dragons are actually the good guys. They each develop over time, learning to accept certain aspects of each other as you sit by campfires and explore the world to try to find the real truth behind the war. It feels like a proper journey. And yes on the way you end up wrangling chocobos, gathering potatos and playing hide and seek with moogles, and that part is a bit weak but also kinda fits, it's a serious journey but it has some relaxing elements cause it can't be work work work all the time. Some of the scenes also help build up the characters a bit more.
As you progress, the truth gets clearer yet it stays without a clear black and white result. There's a clear bad guy that appears, but defeating him isn't going to magically stop everything, it's a more complex issue than that. The nuances is what makes it interesting, versus "yo we the empire, we invaded you before and are gonna invade you again, btw here's our new ultimate weapon(quite literally)" or "we are the Ascians, we dress in black and say mysterious threatening things while doing very evil things, wahahaha".
Finally one of the big scene which I believe you should already have seen was pretty impactful for a lot of people. I'm talking about the scene at the end of the Vault. Since I'm not 100% sure that's after or before getting to Idylshire I won't go into detail about it. But it was pretty emotional, although I guess it depends on your involvement with the story too to an extent. Same with the last part which you'll get to shortly, which has some really epic fights and epic music.
Ultimately, it's still going to be a matter of taste. Some people watch masterpiece movies and don't like them. And while yes you can say "this is a great movie", it still doesn't mean everyone is going to like it. But many people did like it, so it's probably somewhat good, just not to your taste. I think everyone has several things like that that "everyone" likes but they don't like. For many people HW is one of the best expansion. Mind you, that's mostly for FFXIV players though, so they're already biased. Most people who don't like XIV to begin with don't make it past the ARR bullshit, so anyone who gets to HW probably is already somewhat into the game.
The whole "fugitive" thing is completely ignored though. You're whisking around Ul'dah and Gridania like the end of ARR never happened. I even remember at one point being in Gridania and thinking, "I thought the scions were branded as outlaws? How the fuck am I allowed around these cities?". They try to eventually deal with this by shoehorning in a, "Lolz Nanamo isn't really dead, shit is back to normal!" in order to close that plothole, but you've already been all over Eorzea by that point.
Estinien is a fucking badass. He's probably my favorite character, tied with Ser Aemeric(sp?). I also enjoyed some the Iceheart/Shiva stuff. I get that they wanted to show a "journey" side to it all, but I think some of it was a little much.
I really enjoyed the nuance they added into Ishgard. There's even a point in a flashback where I actually found myself agreeing with the Bishop's outlook on things.
Yeah, the Hoarchafont(sp?)death was pretty impactful and the subsequent breakdown of his Dad was well done.
As a whole, the HW story is clearly more engaging and interesting (minus the ending 20-30 quests or so of ARR), without a doubt. I think I might just be a victim of high expectations. With all the praise people were lavishing on HW, I thought it was going to be pretty mind-blowing. It's definitely better and I'd rate it as solidly good. However, I think it's vastly overhyped and feel like at least 25% of the pre-Hraesvelgr stuff could be cut entirely. Obviously, it really picks up once you get to all the Zenith stuff. But prior to that? I honestly wouldn't rate it much higher than ARR.
Following up on how overtuned some of the HW raids were... abilities and rotations were complete ass for some classes back then. It wasn't just punishing and brutal on fight mechanics you had insanely tight windows on class execution that would cripple your damage for up to the next 20 seconds if you weren't on point the entire time.
Class gauges didn't exist then, ability charges didn't exist, more positional (side/rear) requirements for melee, and forced group composition - couldn't even call it meta some makeups were practically carved in stone.
Ultimates were their way of maintaining that level of challenge but not for everything
HW Dungeons and Raids were over tuned to the point that there are entire articles devoted to how ball slammingly tight some of the DPS checks etc. are in that expansion. Which, a lot of articles say caused people to "quit" the game, again. So you'll notice now that a lot of those dungeons, are overwhelmingly easy at times now.. like.. fk I can do this solo, what the fk is going on? It's because they nerfed the everliving shit out of those places because of the complaints.
Dungeons were fine really, only a few were "hard" and even then weren't really that challenging, just not as easy as some of the post ARR dungeons(but even then there were some harder ones too).
Raid is where they fucked up, and especially the first tier, which was very poorly tuned and was really only doable with really good gear but getting gear was a pain in the ass at the start of HW, crafting was an absolute fuckfest because they introduced scrips but not the current nice scrips and instead some abomination with weekly caps like tomes and a lot of time required to grind the cap every week while gathering had the fucking favor system which was even more retarded so getting mats was also hard.
Meanwhile the first tier of weekly capped tome gear was your AF gear, which means you were basically buying pieces only a single class could use. Wanted to switch your class to do a specific fight? Well fuck you, you can't cause you don't have any gear for it. Even same role.
Even with all that you still needed to wait a while to get the gear it was tuned for and the actual legit strat was retarded, the main reason people started clearing is because a strat that relied on suiciding people emerged(which is most likely not what the devs intended).
The 2nd tier was a lot more reasonable, although still quite challenging, but by the 3rd tier they had already changed their way of doing things and it was A LOT easier. Also that's when they added cooldown resets on new pulls, which cut down the amount of waiting for serious pulls a lot, since before that you still had to wait for your 2-3mins cooldowns between every pull.
As for soloing them cause they were nerfed too much, they weren't nerfed all that much. You're soloing them cause they're several expansions old. Even then savage raids are still not that easy to solo, only the dungeons are, and the dungeons again, weren't that hard when they released.
Well yeah it has fillers still as I said. But the story is good, at least imo.
Going into spoilers but not further than where you are:
You first arrive in Ishgard as a fugitive, which already is pretty interesting rather than the usual adventurer stuff you start with in vanilla.
You instantly get shown that 1) everyone there has been fighting constantly for as long as they lived with no hope for a better future and they're completely exhausted 2) they have a different political system than the stuff you're accustomed to, with the noble houses and the clergy, very reminiscent of the middle age stuff which is both familiar but still different than the stuff you've been used in the game.
Ishgard is a gigantic looking city in the sky and lives up to the hype in my opinion, including its awesome music.
Then you decide to go on an adventure, a real one, not preparing a banquet or delivering shirts, to stop a war that's been going on for over a thousand years. You're accompanied by a dragon hunter, or more like, THE dragon hunter, and a woman who's the reincarnation of Shiva, who believe dragons are actually the good guys. They each develop over time, learning to accept certain aspects of each other as you sit by campfires and explore the world to try to find the real truth behind the war. It feels like a proper journey. And yes on the way you end up wrangling chocobos, gathering potatos and playing hide and seek with moogles, and that part is a bit weak but also kinda fits, it's a serious journey but it has some relaxing elements cause it can't be work work work all the time. Some of the scenes also help build up the characters a bit more.
As you progress, the truth gets clearer yet it stays without a clear black and white result. There's a clear bad guy that appears, but defeating him isn't going to magically stop everything, it's a more complex issue than that. The nuances is what makes it interesting, versus "yo we the empire, we invaded you before and are gonna invade you again, btw here's our new ultimate weapon(quite literally)" or "we are the Ascians, we dress in black and say mysterious threatening things while doing very evil things, wahahaha".
Finally one of the big scene which I believe you should already have seen was pretty impactful for a lot of people. I'm talking about the scene at the end of the Vault. Since I'm not 100% sure that's after or before getting to Idylshire I won't go into detail about it. But it was pretty emotional, although I guess it depends on your involvement with the story too to an extent. Same with the last part which you'll get to shortly, which has some really epic fights and epic music.
Ultimately, it's still going to be a matter of taste. Some people watch masterpiece movies and don't like them. And while yes you can say "this is a great movie", it still doesn't mean everyone is going to like it. But many people did like it, so it's probably somewhat good, just not to your taste. I think everyone has several things like that that "everyone" likes but they don't like. For many people HW is one of the best expansion. Mind you, that's mostly for FFXIV players though, so they're already biased. Most people who don't like XIV to begin with don't make it past the ARR bullshit, so anyone who gets to HW probably is already somewhat into the game.
it's interesting the distinction you make with the "yo we the empire we going to invade you" and the ascians "we wear black and we're mysterious". I consider the Ascian stuff (and to a lesser degree the Empire stuff because of how the Ascians have been driving/influencing them plus more reveals later I won't spoil) the central MSQ, which is why I didn't mind Stormblood kind of bringing you back to the meat and potatoes. It's also probably because I didn't play HW at release, I quit around 2.1 and came back a little before 3.3 I think...so there was already a lot open and had to catch up in HW it wasn't the same as playing SB at release for me. Getting to Kugane for the first time was pretty awesome to see that city and how it looked. Now I can say I appreciate Foundation just as much if not more, Kugane just feels weird at this point with a bunch of random things attached to it.
Ha! I put so much into that little town you build up each week and then when I finally got to Shadowbringers content - its like the Men in Black wiped my memory. Until you mentioned Kugane, I had forgotten all about it. Need to go back and finish that place up for the sake of it.
it's interesting the distinction you make with the "yo we the empire we going to invade you" and the ascians "we wear black and we're mysterious". I consider the Ascian stuff (and to a lesser degree the Empire stuff because of how the Ascians have been driving/influencing them plus more reveals later I won't spoil) the central MSQ, which is why I didn't mind Stormblood kind of bringing you back to the meat and potatoes. It's also probably because I didn't play HW at release, I quit around 2.1 and came back a little before 3.3 I think...so there was already a lot open and had to catch up in HW it wasn't the same as playing SB at release for me. Getting to Kugane for the first time was pretty awesome to see that city and how it looked. Now I can say I appreciate Foundation just as much if not more, Kugane just feels weird at this point with a bunch of random things attached to it.
While I do like them, they were not super interesting as enemies during ARR. They were kinda there, and they were "evil", and that was about it. They were very one dimensional which is why I think the HW story villains were a lot more interesting. Obviously they got fleshed out over time, both in SB and ShB, so they're a lot better now but back in ARR, not only did you not know a whole lot about them, the only interactions were meh. The best part probably was T9 in coil if you played/knew of the 1.0 storyline, and that's not even part of the MSQ(although it should be but makes sense since it's tied to raid).
While I do like them, they were not super interesting as enemies during ARR. They were kinda there, and they were "evil", and that was about it. They were very one dimensional which is why I think the HW story villains were a lot more interesting. Obviously they got fleshed out over time, both in SB and ShB, so they're a lot better now but back in ARR, not only did you not know a whole lot about them, the only interactions were meh. The best part probably was T9 in coil if you played/knew of the 1.0 storyline, and that's not even part of the MSQ(although it should be but makes sense since it's tied to raid).
Makes sense, I didn't play during 1.0. The whole mystique of the MSQ for me, though, was always going to be the endgame with the Ascians. Curious how ShB wraps up because we definitely deep dived into a lot of their story. Wonder how many more expansions Yoshi and company have planned at this point.
wormie
, I hate to repeat the choir - but you've got to get past this point. I feel like I'm closer to you in terms of that content. Regardless of how amaze-balls the story may be to some - the issues HW had are glaring at best. But I would rather fight your disappointment in the game with facts. The game released in 2010, failed miserably, and was re-released in 2013 as (ARR). Using much of the same art assets that were used originally, but reinventing the wheel to be more steam lined and.. forgiving, similar to WoW. The game had a hard rebound, and even as numbers climbed - ever so slowly (more on this in a second) - the game wasnt making the money it "needed" to make. So they released HW with the hope of retention and bringing back old players that quit in 1.0. Heavensward reused assets again for some new zones, added areas using those same assets to existing zones, and only created a few zones based off entirely new art assets. Sea of Clouds can eat a dick btw. But thats been said here already, just not quite so... direct. Zones not difficult, but travel and questing is infuriating at points. 
