the latest FF14 expansion. shadowbfringers. kind if did a great lore payoff, and has refined game play a great deal, so people playing it are really happy and jazzed for the next expansion.
The game can be a hike. ARRhas an okay story, but it's super drawn out, and clumsy. and the game play and dungeons are a bit simplistic.
Heavensward has a great story, with better gameplay and dungeons, but is still a little sloggy.
stormblood has a decent but a little disjointed story, improved gameplay and dungeon. stormblood also builds on a lot of previous story telling to really make you feel all the characters. most are well developped.
shadowbringers has a really great story, the characters are well fleshed out, the pacing is good. the dungeons are good, the game play is smooth. it's got all the years of feature building and vanity items and all the content built up.
So most current players are here, at the end of shadowbringers. they were rewarded by having played ARR, HW, StB as story build up, and then SB really spikes the football and uses all the lore and elements to make a good story.
So everyone is excited for endwalker because the same writers, same composers, same modelers and everything are working on it as with shadowbringers, so it looks like a 'good time' to check it out.
that's the 'ff 14 is fun' angle. the other true angle is that WoW has choked on it's own shit with its head up its own ass so long, that no one is pretending like it's okay anymore so people are venturing into FF14 to poke around. and because it's 'new to them' it feels like a fresher experience. its easy to feel lost with the wide array of weird features and optional game play modes so you 'feel' new again in it. so it captures a little 'new to mmo's magic in a way.
it's really easy to shit on though! You could try FF14 and hate the weebies, hate the lala or cat girls, find the combat slow or the ARR content too fetch questy (it is). you have to want to play through all the expenasions ot get to the end.
if you do want to. and enjoy the story, and jjust gloss over some of the weebier things, it's pretty excelent.
it's easy to find something you like in it. you can play a big manyly man and avoid all weebery. you can make anime waifu, you can make weird looking character. you can take or leave just about any aspect of the game and enjoy the slices you like.
the game also respects your time. the devs have said they are okjay with you only coming back for the new story, or playing once a week. you can progress in all but the ultimate things with very littel play time. and then even in ultimate with minimal play time after you are rolling. so even if you just enjoy some of ff14 it's not going to eat all your gaming time. you can go play other genres or mmo's and not 'fall behind' . '
rambleramble
na.finalfantasyxiv.com
