E3 2019 Aftermath: Shadowbringers Positions FFXIV in Becoming King of all MMORPGs

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers is just around the corner, with early access to begin June 25th. After E3 2019, we are confident it will become the #1 MMORPG on the market. Check out why we think Shadowbringers is truly a game changer.

Shadowbringers Positions FFXIV in Becoming King of all MMORPGs

Let’s just outright say it, World of Warcraft has dominated the MMORPG scene for over 15 years. It popularized the genre and every single MMO to proceed it tried to emulate the multiplayer space it masterfully created. While many subscription-based MMOs came and went, none had come close to toppling it from the number one spot. Final Fantasy XIV was one of those games that failed miserably at taking on the king at launch in 2010, tarnishing a long-storied franchise and devastating Square Enix’s financial outlook for the future. Most developers would have thrown in the towel, accepting defeat, and reallocating their assets into a new project. Square Enix, however, isn’t just any developer.

Time and time again, Final Fantasy XIV released expansions with high praise, with the latest release coming in 2017 with Stormblood. Since then, the landscape for MMORPGs have changed and the only major players remaining with exclusively subscription-based models are World of Warcraft and FFXIV. Both MMORPGs have coexisted over the years, without either necessarily gaining too much ground on the other. That is, until recently. With the launch of Battle for Azeroth there has been substantial amounts of content released from longtime players declaring they are migrating to FFXIV. These content creators often citing the dramatic changes to BFA turning them off to WoW, meanwhile, being warmly embraced by the notoriously friendly community of Final Fantasy XIV.

The discord fans have with WoW could not have come at a better time for FFXIV. With its new expansion Shadowbringers launching in mere days, the positivity expressed by former WoW players acts as free marketing for XIV’s launch campaign. Which Square Enix has clearly taken very seriously. The shift in mechanics in 5.0 (the patch iteration of the new expansion) have also been tailored to become more approachable to new players. In fact, I got a chance to dive into the new expansion at E3 this year, trying out changes made to classes and how they function in an actual trial in the new expansion.

Titania Was This Year’s E3 Challenge.

This trial was part of a sort of a “rite of passage” for gamers at E3 and has been for years. Every year at E3, Square Enix hosts a Final Fantasy XIV booth where it debuts a trial/raid for players to complete. Players are expected to come up with their own teams of eight and are only given a certain window of time to clear the boss. The lucky few players who are able to complete this trial are awarded an exclusive shirt at E3 signifying their achievement. The boss known as Titania was this year’s challenge. After three attempts and many frustrating wipes in between, the team I assembled managed to beat her. We were the 13th team to do so at E3 2019.

The Team and I After Clearing Titania’s Trial.

This event may only seem noteworthy to E3 attendees, however, each element of FFXIV’s presence at E3 poetically parallelled FFXIV’s recent positioning to overcome the task to take down WoW as the number #1 MMORPG on the market. For instance, I had to tap into the wonderful community of FFXIV in order to find teammates at E3 who synergized well to clear Titania. This was no easy task as there, unfortunately, isn’t a real-life party finder. In addition, Shadowbringers had an insane presence in Downtown LA, with advertisements of the game plastered everywhere, from buses to high profile billboards. Heck, Square Enix had even given away hundreds, if not thousands, of Final Fantasy XIV bags to E3 attendees. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who hadn’t been walking around with a gigantic FFXIV bag to carry their belongings in. Granted, the strict regulations on bags prevented most attendees from bringing their own, Square was smart to capitalize on this need as a marketing opportunity.

You Couldn’t Walk a Few Steps Without Seeing Shadowbringers Out There.

The subtle strokes to overcome the reigning king of MMOs isn’t so subtle anymore. Square Enix’s aggressive advertisement of Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers is a clear indication that the company will not settle for #2. The love FFXIV has received from fans has elevated game director Yoshi-P (Naoki Yoshida) to near rockstar levels and, evident of the response he received at Square Enix’s press conference, this momentum continues to grow. As early as next week, we could be looking at the largest population/subscriber increase in an MMO we haven’t seen since WoW hit the scene; and what a story that will be, easily becoming the biggest comeback story ever to be told in the world of gaming.

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers enters early access on June 28th for both PC and PS4. The full launch becomes available on July 2nd, 2019 at the price of $39.99.

 

9 Comments

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    What this a *** article. I’m pretty sure this expansion is great but the whole “FFXIV Shadowbringers is finally going to dethrone WoW as King of MMORPGs” sentiment is just nonsense and full of cringe

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    That is rather presumptuous considering the extreme lack of fun content(no, boring FATES do not count) in the game, the ossification of the game in general, the fact that it is still horrendously crippled by being based on 1.0’s engine, and how much they’ve alienated people with things like the bizarrely oblivious healer changes.

    This would be like saying “GW2 is positioned to become the king of MMO’s” after WoW’s dramatic subscription fall during Mists of Pandaria. In reality, GW2 was severely held back from that for several structural reasons, as one would expect from any launch MMO frankly, since launch MMOs are always severely plagued by issues.

    Luckily for FFXIV, FFXIV is not a launch mmo – however the slow pace at which it tries to improve itself is worrisome, and what is even more worrisome is the bizarrely incompetent failures we’ve seen from SE. Diadem and Eureka show they seem to have no idea what makes open world content in other games fun, Blue Mage is just bizarrely bad(want a class that can’t play any fun content, and has to do repeated grouped RNG to unlock abilities from bosses?), the healer changes in Shadowbringers show they do not understand healing in their own game, Stormblood’s ruined DRK gameplay followed by “We can’t fix this mid expansion” and yet the resulting fix two whole years later is almost the exact same(very simple and boring, if pretty) but just less mashy, literally breaking people’s groups by splitting up their servers, the absolutely ridiculous housing debacles, etc etc.

    Seriously, no other major MMO in 2019 stops players in a region(such as in Europe) from playing with other people in that region. That is an extremely anachronistic and basic server setup, reminiscent of 2008 or earlier, not 2019. “I’d like to play with John and Jane! Oh, John is on this server and Jane is on this server, so I can’t play with both.” It doesn’t happen anymore because there is no good reason for it to happen anymore. That has been solved for 14 years.

    You look at other mmos and all the reasons you have to play again and again, putting things like daily carrots aside- and you pretty much always have pretty fun PVP, open world, and PVE instances. But then you look at FFXIV and you only have PVE instances and arguably crafting, and among that *only* raids since dungeons are a shallow afterthought. And for such a story centric game, you’d think they’d make sidequests rewarding, but apparently not. Even if you like crafting, it doesn’t involve the combat jobs you’ve leveled- you only have one thing to do with those, even though they are the meat of the game. Raids or bust.

    Certainly the story is fun to do(and Heavensward’s story was truly great), but does not last players anywhere near as long as everything else does- it can’t make up the game’s deficits on its own, especially when the world of the game is not enjoyable to actually go out into, unlike other MMOs. The game is very pretty and has fantastic presentation(abysmal early game aside, anyway), but after you start to sink your teeth in you realize it is really lacking compare to other MMOs. Which is a shame, because it has a wonderful aesthetic, wonderfully grandoise bosses, a few very distinguished classes, and a consistent and clear visual language for mechanics.

    Edit: Just wanted to add that I have nothing against the author at all and I don’t wish to see FFXIV fail by any means. I just think that becoming a megalith of an MMO to surpass WoW is much more difficult than it seems, and that a careful, knowledgable comparison of FFXIV to other major MMOs reveals several large weaknesses in it that cripple its ability to grow and retain an especially large population. (poor early game, lack of gameplay options at endgame besides raids, anachronistic server issues, etc) It is easy to fall in love with a quite enjoyable game- it is much harder to understand why a game you love won’t likely become a supergiant like Fortnite, WoW, Starcraft, etc.

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      Excuse me do you even play the game? Funnily enough I own a sub to both WoW and FFXIV and the 2nd easily has tripple the amount of content unless you count every single m+ you do as standalone content. The only thing you are right with is that probably even GW2 has more content than WoW.

      Also your own personal Opinion about stuff =/ The norm. While Diadem was bad a lot of people enjoyed the continued updates to Eureka and where those brought you to. That relic + Clearing the Arsenal is a super satisifying expierience made for everyone and not only HC raiders. Which is btw ffxivs strength – this game doesnt say a big fuck you to everybody but mythic raiders. Unlike WoW.

      So with the recent leaks about Blizzards internal struggle FFXIV is indeed on a good way to become a very good MMO. I wouldnt count out ESO tho as ESO is also doing an impressive job even tho it isnt subscription based.

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        Yes, I have a sub to both, and I play GW2 regularly.

        “Easily triple the amount of content”? That’s simply delusional. Do you even play WoW? I bet you count FFXIV dungeons as some sort of fantastic content that even remotely competes with WoW content or FFXIV raids, rather than the throwaway content that they are. Even if you do count those, you get nowhere close to double, let alone triple. Next you’ll tell me that facetanking mobs with no cc, little sustain tools, little mobility, and not even being able to kite because of the extreme aggro tethers in FFXIV is really fun and comparable to open world in other games. Go ahead, give me a count that justifies “Easily triple the amount of content”.

        Wow says “fuck you to everyone but mythic raiders”? You do realize that WoW has many more difficulties for its content than FFXIV does, yes? FFXIV is the one that made ultimate raids that literally only a tiny % of the population can play at all, with no easier version whatsoever. WoW did not do that, and it is very generous with things like catchup gear.

        The relic grind being praised is also hilarious. Sure, the skins are pretty, but the things you do for it are miserable.

        GW2’s content amount is “more” in a sense because it doesn’t make things irrelevant due to ilvl treadmill. The rate at which they add content is actually considerably less than FFXIV/WoW. So whether that counts as “more content” is sort of complicated- yes, if you’re new then you have a ton to enjoy, and as a veteran at any given moment you have more legitimate choices for what to play than in FFXIV/WoW simply because the game continually accrues content and never dumps it due to patches and expansions.

        But you also get considerably less novelty, and if you “main” GW2 and play it a ton throughout a year like a major variety of WoW/FFXIV players, you’ll simply have a ton less new stuff to play throughout a year, especially if you don’t care about open world combat. I guess it depends on how much you need novelty or new challenges, versus simply needing a decent pool to repeat from as you regularly play. I’m not sure how much to weigh that, but notably there is sizable dissatisfaction among GW2 players about this.

        Arsenal is cool though, yes. Aside from that, your post is largely a huge joke.

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        Almost everything you said about being a Supergiant like Wow, Starcraft or fortnite and then the shortcomings of FFXiv versus WoW can be just flipped and you would still be accurate in everything you said.

        Looking back that is quite funny would you not agree?

        FFXIV active subscribers has already substantially surpassed those of WoW.
        The only reason your mind thinks WoW is a “Supergiant” as you stated is because of posterboys like you who for some reason just cannot see reality as it is.

        Anyway out in the real world I don’t care who wins, it’s a game and I’ll play whatever I feel is worth playing in my own opinion and so should you.

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        “FFXIV active subscribers has already substantially surpassed those of WoW.”
        lol, citation needed. Just like the guy who claimed FFXIV had triple the content of WoW. Delusional.

        However, you allude to a fair point that it is perhaps reasonable to not consider WoW to really be in the “huge” category anymore, due to subscriber losses. Comparing it to fortnite probably hasnt been realistic since… WOTLK, I suppose?

        Regardless, blind FFXIV fanatics seem to refuse to acknowledge the severe flaws the game has, which cripple its ability to grow. That was my central point, and you still refuse to face it, let alone address it in any meaningful way.

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      You are grossing misinformed.

      They rebuilt the ENTIRE game engine for 2.0 ARR. The 1.0 Engine was designed for PS3 era hardware and graphics. Not to mention the original game engine couldn’t even render shadows! They built a new game engine that would end up being a modified game engine that is the guts behind FFXV.

      You wanna talk about a company that actually LISTENS to their players. That is SquareEnix. Activision Blizzard ego is so huge they deserve to fall flat on their face.

      I been playing WoW for 14 years, and decided to pick up FFXIV. It is by far the most fun I’ve had in an MMO in ages.

      WoW is stagnant and A/B has lost touch with what made the game fun originally. They moved from the RPG roots of MMORPGS and decided to cash in on the E-Sport world.

      Also, pretty apparent you NEVER played FFXIV or didn’t get past lvl 15. There is literally tons of content to do. From housing, to crafting, to dungeons, raids, game holidays, the golden saucer, etc. Oh and BTW the hard modes for dungeons are actually different in their path and mobs. So you’re not just doing the same route over and over again. Unlike, M+ in Wow where the only thing Blizz can think of doing is adding different affixes that aren’t fun, just annoying AF.

      I can go on and on. But seems like to you’re just upset that tons of people have left a stagnant game (with abysmal writing at this point) and decided to play something different. You think WoW is still top dog. Go ahead keep thinking that. Cause at the end of the day, its your opinion vs mine.

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        Hm, that’s strange, whenever people bring up all the code and server issues with the game, people always bring up “Oh, it’s because of 1.0”. I was able to confirm they held a couple things back because of 1.0, like allowing for compatibility with 1.0 items, but otherwise I’m finding a lack of confirmation of what people say.

        If you’re right that they’re not held back by 1.0’s code, then their code is unbelievably amateurish. The gigantic latency that makes PVP awful, being unable to add inventory spaces because of “server limitations” is a joke(What sort of garbage database design is that?), the buggy ways things like Ten Chi Jin and pets work, the fact that the US servers are split into various groups that cant play with each other(and same for EU) as if it is a 2004 MMO, etc etc etc. Absolutely ridiculous and anachronistic. I had thought it was just because of legacy code from 1.0, but if that isn’t the case then it is sheer incompetence.

        Speaking of incompetence- You apparently didn’t even read what I said. There’s a difference between “This has a lot of good content” and “This has a lot of throwaway content that either bores you to death, or you wouldnt do for more than 5 minutes.”

        As I already pointed out, things like dungeons in FFXIV are a shallow afterthought. They have lots of graphical work wasted on them, but then you just autopilot them and fall asleep except for one boss every now and then.

        You mention golden saucer, game holidays, etc but most of that is either boring or extremely limited, and they dont do them better than other MMOs anyway.

        The crafting is solid, yes, but like I said: You want to play your class? You know, the thing *the bulk of the game is designed around?* Here’s 5-6 relevant raid/trial bosses. That’s it! Everything else in the game is a vapid pushover. (Although, they could solve that very quickly if they were more aggressive about ilvl scaling, achieving more of an evergreen content design like ESO/GW2- I would instantly resubscribe if they did that, because at least then i would have a lot of raid bosses I could enjoy playing.)

        “You wanna talk about a company that actually LISTENS to their players. That is SquareEnix. ”
        lol, yeah. Listened to their players and gave them the joke that is Blue Mage. Listened to their players and when healers complained about spending 70% of their GCDs spamming generic damage spells like Broil because there was no healing to do, they made their DPS rotations even more boring. (Not to mention- which scholar players asked for HW scholar to be gutted and turned from a fun dot juggling mage into boredom like everyone else?) Listened to their players and ruined HW Dark Knight, and then when asked for a rework said they couldn’t do it mid expansion because a big overhaul would be too much work, and then once the next expansion came the rework was very simple, disappointing, and easy to implement. Listened to their players by splitting up their statics. Listened to their players by giving them Diadem again in the form of Eureka, content that makes you wonder “Have they ever played a single game with fun open world combat?” Listened to their players with gender-locked races as if this is 1.0. The list goes on.

        Sorry, but square enix is not some magical company that listens to their plays so much more than everyone else and cares so much more. That’s just PR propaganda uncritically swallowed.

        “WoW is stagnant and A/B has lost touch with what made the game fun originally. They moved from the RPG roots of MMORPGS and decided to cash in on the E-Sport world. ”
        It is true that they’ve moved from being a game about heavy roleplaying to a game that is about a variety of enjoyable combat. Also, it has been that way for many years, and FFXIV is no different. Blaming it on chasing “esports” is also a very random grab- that’s obviously not what they’re doing, they’re focusing on people who want quick gameplay, not on esports players or roleplayers. Been like that for several expansions. Also, FFXIV is even more “sit around in cities and feel like a lobby game than an RPG” than wow is, once you catch up on story. Going out into the world is a bad, boring idea.

        “Also, pretty apparent you NEVER played FFXIV or didn’t get past lvl 15.”
        I have scholar/summoner, black mage, bard, and paladin at max level. Played lots of Stormblood and played the end of Heavensward. Started playing Scholar for a unique healing experience in HW, ended up liking summoner’s extreme flexibility in SB and found black mage’s “simple to learn, hard to master” style that is extremely fight sensitive to be extremely good, got turned off by SHB’s gutting of summoner by making it into a rigid, boring mess. Maybe accept the fact that i’ve been playing longer than you and I’m not happy with the game, instead of trying to dismiss my opinion as inexperience when you’re the one who has some early praise-filled idea of FFXIV dungeons that will inevitably fall as reality sets in.

        “Oh and BTW the hard modes for dungeons are actually different in their path and mobs. So you’re not just doing the same route over and over again. Unlike, M+ in Wow where the only thing Blizz can think of doing is adding different affixes that aren’t fun, just annoying AF.”

        Seriously, how much have you played FFXIV? Nobody talks about hard mode dungeons being separate “routes”, nor do they brag about supposed “Hard” mode dungeons – hard mode dungeons in FFXIV are basically just the same as any other dungeon. They’re never really the same as what they’re the hard mode of in any meaningful way, but they’re still just a single, linear path with a bunch of mobs you mindlessly spam AOE on, with largely boring bosses, etc. It is a new set of paint over the same shallow dungeon content they’ve been putting out for years.

        Oh boy, I can take a “different path” in a “hard mode dungeon” that isnt actually hard. I cant wait to fight generic mobs that have no significant abilities, and fight faceroll bosses that do nothing to me(90% of the time, anyway- the last bosses of The Burn and Fractal Continuum(Hard) stand out a bit, and The Vault bosses can be hard to heal, but those are extremely rare exceptions and they certainly don’t make up for the rest of those dungeons). I can’t wait to spam more broil and be bored out of my mind! Oh boy, what fun content!

        It is also ironic that you’d bring up “actually different” in terms of path and mobs- Tell me, which of the four big MMOs is the one where you never use crowd control and other miscellaneous utility in dungeons? Which one is the one where mobs dont do anything special besides a simple AOE occasionally, and you just do your AOE rotation and fall asleep mindlessly? Which is the one with the blandest dungeon combat that nobody writes home about? Oh, that’s right, FFXIV!

        PS, M+ has been a great success ever since they added it. Meanwhile, when was the last time FFXIV added something *major*? You accuse WoW of being stagnant- but when was the last time FFXIV added something actually substantial besides “Just log on and do your raids and log off” that max level players actually want to regularly do with their classes? Not doing that could be fine, but when you have a little as FFXIV does, it is a big problem. 3 expansions in a row where dungeons are vapid, open world content is a bland joke, PVP is a joke due to shitty servers- the only thing people even do with their classes is 5 raids at a time(since gear makes everything else boring as hell), and maybe Deep Dungeon if they’re not sick of its sameness yet.

        5 expansions of the exact same cycle- new patch, beat 4 new raid bosses and later 1 new trial boss, having nothing else to do with your class, log out. New patch, beat 4 new raid bosses, and later 1 new trial boss, have nothing else to do with your class, log out. At least GW2/WoW/ESO have some decent success with things like new challenging ways to play dungeons, decent PVP, decent open world combat, things like Brawler’s Guild and Queen’s Gauntlet, etc etc- meanwhile, FFXIV is ossified as hell.

        And let’s not forget- FFXIV has had only 3 healers since Heavensward, and 2 of them have very similar healing toolkits – even GW2 has more healers than that, and it started with 0 and came out at near the same time as ARR! Every other major MMO has way more! FFXIV tanks are all samey as hell. FFXIV healers still spend 70% of their GCDs mashing Broil or Glare or Malefic. And fights are becoming increasingly samey feeling because there is so little design space in the game. Tell me – which of the four big MMOs is the stagnant one again?

        Again, FFXIV does have amazing story and fantastic presentation. I am really attached to my femroe and I have many fond memories of the game. But the ridiculous exaggeration of how good the game is and the dismissal of its weaknesses is bad for the game’s longterm improvement.

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    I believe the author got the 8.2 WoW patch release date and early access date of the 28th for shadowbringers mixed up. OOF.

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