FFXIV - A clash of communitiesFollow

I rated you up Hynamen. That was a pretty sweet compilation of the newer WS's that some of us veteran players have might not have seen. Thank you^^

The way a character throws their hands in the air when they cast a spell. None of the things I am talking about are "special effects" lightshows. To the best of my knowledge, every skill in WoW has a completely different special effect. Though some share character animations.

I'm pretty sure there are three, very different animations for the casting of a magical spell for a player.

One is for "bolt" type spells, like flinging fireballs or lightning at an enemy. Pretty straightforward attacks. Typically looks like something like a Kame-Kame-Ha, or maybe throwing a baseball, or some other general slinging animation.

Another is for more subtle magic spells... buffs, healing, a spell that summons roots out of the ground to entangle the enemy's feet. Tends to look like something like throwing one or both of the hands over their head, the character may have one hand in a fist over their heart, or something like that.

The third animation is for channeled or Area of Effect spells, spells like summoning a meteorstorm that lasts for 20 seconds or something like that. Tends to look something like a "powering up" animation from an anime.

Every single race has a very different different animation for each of these three "types" of spells. There may be a few animations I'm forgetting though, I haven't played a caster for a while in WoW.


There are several types of weapons.

Two handed swords. Two handed Maces. Two handed Axes. Two handed polearms. One handed axes. One handed swords. One handed Maces. One handed daggers. Fist weapons, AKA brace knuckle type weapons (typically known as "unarmed"). Each of these weapons has two different animations for a basic auto-attack, that the game choses randomly between which to display.

As for melee skills (AKA special attacks, active abilities), they have different animations. I play a female tauren, one of my animations is shoving the shield into the enemies face, one is backhanding them with the shield, and one is a dramatic spin slash with my sword. Several skills tend to use the same animation though, sadly.


The skipping in WoW can be annoying. There seems to be a priority system of which animation shows up on the screen, if multiple occur at the same time, which leads to an animation getting interrupted midway through on occassions.

I promise to watch your video later hun when I'm not on a public computer that blocks youtube.

It depends. Some are worse than others. The animations really are supposed to reflect the races. The animations of Taurens and Dwarves for example, are very solid, like you would expect such large heavy creatures to be. Very slow but determined animations. On the other hand, elves and gnomes tend to be very bouncy and mobile. And Undead look laughably paranoid and slightly crazed.

It's a different style, but it isn't bad. I can easily appreciate both a realistic style, and an exaggurated cartoony style. I honestly think the reason I like my Female Tauren so much is primarially because I like her animations better than other races.

Exactly right. As a Navy veteran, I was absolutely ashamed of some of my fellow Americans, who were being plain rude and obnoxious to the locals there, expecting them to know English. I did my best to dress like a European, because I was so embarrassed by drunk sailors starting fights, throwing beer bottles, and being overly crude to females. However, I never did pick up Italian, though I lived there for two years. It was impossible to learn when I spent that two years traveling to 31 countries. I could spot an American 1,000 yards away.
Fortunately, my grandparents taught me how to respect elders. I treated my time in the Navy as though I were a diplomat, representing the best of what America has to offer. Not all of us are pricks, but many of us are.

I don't know what is wrong with the people where you live...maybe you have a horrible circle of friends but most of the people I know are decent respectable people. I have lived in Europe (Portugal, to be exact) and even though I am a 6'2" 250 lb red headed American who looks nothing like a Portuguese (or European, for that matter) people often had me mistaken for a European of various nations and actually, at the end of my stay there, when I had full command of the language, they often mistook me for a Portuguese. Every single American I saw there acted much the same way. In fact, if there were any people there that I would consider pigs and jerks during my stay it would have been the French.

I also think it laughable that you think Americans have the lowest ethical standards. Have you even been to Europe? Or maybe you're a European who has never been the the US. And then you link this to WoW...your whole post is pathetic.

I've been to Toulon, Versaille, and Monte Carlo. The French were kind of rude to everyone. Great food, though, btw. No offense if you happen to be French, but sheesh. Been to Lisbon, Portugal, too. Beautiful city^^

Edited, Jun 16th 2009 3:47pm by TheJollyjokers

If I'm not mistaken, it's actually the British that are known for being the worst tourists...

Dreanei deathknight walks up to a monster and begins swinging his 2 hand axe once every second.

He then uses blood strike. One extra swing is performed between normal swings with no additional effects.

The word BLOODSTRIKE 2000 damage floats slowly into the air!

He uses an icey touch. Points at the target as a snokeflake appears on the monster momentarily.

The word ICYTOUCH 2000 damage floats slowly into the air!

Particle effects != character animation.

I don’t actually mind that lol, if all WoW players play WoW2 instead of FF14 I’m totally fine with that;D And I really don’t think FF14 is any threat whatsoever to WoW, atm Aion seems to be on their neck, so I guess they are trying to fight of that MMO.

Are you are describing the same game I've played?

Death Knights would swing roughly every 3-3.5 seconds because they use two handed weapons. Ability names don't float in the air. Damage doesn't float into the air, it pops up for a split second way that is mainly there to look cool, as opposed to being functional (It does manage to look pretty cool).

Blood Strike and Icy Touch both have a different animation. Blood Strike uses the melee special effect animation. Icy Touch uses the instant cast projectile animation. I'm not familiar what these animations are for a Draenai, but for a Female Tauren...

Autoattack melee = Swing the two handed weapon with one hand (Haha, cause Taurens are big <.<;)
Blood Strike = Two-handed overhand swing, red particle spherical blood like particle effects, with a 2D gash effect over the top.
Icy Touch = Flings hands forward into the "KameKameHa" position, with the palms together. Because it's a death knight, they will still have the weapon in their hands, and it will resemble placing the left hand on the flat of the blade (or handle in the case of an axe/mace). Very large swirling snowflury particle animation.

They do not use the same attack animations, and you are vastly under-describing the particle animations. I don't think the particle animations are that low, even if you set the graphics abysmally low (and of course if you have the graphics set low, the graphics will look bad.)

EDIT: I even youtube'd Draenai attack animations. They are some of the most dramatically absurd attack animations in the game, they have at least one animation where they flip a weapon out of their hand and catch them in midair before swinging them, with virtually every type of weapon.

They spin crossbows like a pistol *laughs* Terribly stupid, but I've never liked the Draenai anyway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5NQ9m9gOk

Edited, Jun 16th 2009 8:10pm by Karelyn

Oh...

You are one of those people with a wall of addons in their default settings that makes the game impossible to see? I don't know how you enjoy the game like that.

I have large amount of addons. Over 500 and still growing. And yet, the screen residential space that is taken up is significantly smaller than the Default UI of FFXI or the Default UI of WoW.

Way I see it, if you aren't going to at least attempt to make the UI look attractive, and not block your view of the game world, why even bother using something besides the default UI?

I raid in WoW too. You can still get all the critical information you need without it being cluttered.

Raid Frames = Grid
Threat Meters = You only need to see around 5 total bars
Damage Meters = You do not need to see these in combat. Hide them already, and set it under your threat meters (since you don't need to see threat meters out of combat).

It isn't that hard to contain in a space roughly 1.5 - 2 times the size of the default minimap, something that many people seem to think should take up well over half their screen... And in the process, obscure things like patches of fire that they probably should not be standing in -_-;

Edited, Jun 17th 2009 3:17pm by Karelyn

Wait.. Most of them are <1second, while summoning animation is around 1,5~.. what has WoW done to you!?

Those in particular aren't anything impressive though, you're right about that.

This. I'm almost positive the characters blink as well. But as for the idle animations, I find those annoying as sh*t. My character is standing idly, not getting confused as to why he's not moving, or tapping his foot impatiently. He's just standing because that's what I am making him do.

Because that's what their master is telling them to do o_0..

Point in case: I don't do stupid things with my body because I have nothing better to do, or because I'm just currently not walking or engaged in battle.

Idle animations {Yes please} just dont make them silly or trigger to fast one after another thats just annoying and feels alot less real.

Point well taken, Cody. I agree, as well.

Shrugs. I don't work for Square, so I don't know lol.

Oh good God I hope not. But even some little things get to me. I remember playing this game where the character shrugged every now and then... It bugged the crap out of me! I don't know why, but every time he shrugged, in my head I was like "What's so damn confusing?!"

Personally...I hope that most of the players come from ffxi so they have a basic understanding and that the first month of ffxiv isn't like the dunes for a month straight.... Which will probably hapen... Also, most of the people I know in rl who play wow are potheads and/or realllly annoying.

That's funny, because I play both. I have found WoW is much more likely to have immaturity in its playerbase than FFXI.

Perhaps that is just because of the availability of trade chat and the Barrens.

So let's hope there is no 'Barrens' in FFXIV.

And if you live in a neighborhood full of thieves, it isn't wrong to say you live in a neighborhood full of thieves, even if it might be politically incorrect to do so.

Edited, Jun 19th 2009 2:01am by Shazaamemt

I saw more than enough shout spam in Jeuno/Whitegate to refute the idea that there is an enormous difference between the WoW and FFXI playerbase. I would agree, however, that there is some difference. We're talking generalizations here. WoW is more mainstream and is catered to a predominantly young North American audience. FFXI was originally aimed at the JP market which, when I played FFXI, consisted mostly of people in their late 20s/early 30s. By and large, they came to see the NA community the way the FFXI NA community tends to see the WoW community.

How does that make you feel to read that? Is one of the first things that springs to mind along the lines of:

"Well, screw the JP...I don't behave like that and if they want to judge me based on the behavior of a handful of idiots, they can keep their JP onry parties and their stuck up judgmental attitudes."

Sound familiar?

That's how a lot of WoW players feel when they get branded as part of a community based on the actions of a small handful of individuals. On any of the WoW realms I played on, trade chat idiocy was usually instigated by 2-3 people tops. Sadly, it would tend to trickle down and more people would get involved, but ultimately it was no different from what I saw in FFXI, just more constant. Fortunately, I couldn't ever really level up or grind rep or farm effectively in cities in WoW, so I spent most of my time happily oblivious to the 4chan crowd. As I recall, local chatter in the Dunes and the starter cities of FFXI tended to be a step below mature during peak hours, not unlike Barrens chat in WoW.

There's definitely a difference in demographic between the two games, but I think in fairness to my fellow future FFXIV players, I'm not going to be walking into the game with a mindset of one community trying to merge with another, or an adversarial situation, or "lolnoob u r play teh sukk game" nonsense. It's just people logging in to a play a game...a new game...and who played FFXI and/or WoW will be about as relevant to me in FFXIV as who played EQ in FFXI or WoW.

This is exactly my thought on it, thank you. More than anything I see all the people who might be playing the game simply as possible converts: Depending on how the dev team molds the game, we'll see how many people stick and learn to appreciate the world around them. That's my #1 concern. The community will be what it will be, no matter where people are from. Even if there's a large influx of people with terrible habits, if there's enough good people leading by example then I don't foresee a problem with it.

I think FFXI was more tedious than hard. Hard is ok, but tedious is not something that should exist in the majority of a game, even an MMO. I did not come to WoW until Nax, because I was one of the few who refused to convert. But, I got sick of FFXI and my friends were playing WoW. To be honest, I could not tell the people who played FFXI from WoW at all, unless they told me, or made a reference. Trade chat was trade chat, among other things.

I do feel like the FFXI commnity is more close knit. If you're dubbed a bad player early, you're going to have a long road ahead of you. But in WoW you can make up for these shortcommings on your own time (since in WoW it let you, in FFXI you actually HAD to party with people). To be fair, I played both games for around the same amount of time, but I definatly think I had a closer connection to the FFXI community opposed to the WoW one.

I'd like FFXIV to have a close community, but not be tedious. The problem is the close community was kind of a by product of a flawed system in FFXI, and if they fix the system the community might become kind of shallow. I'm not saying WoWs community was shallow, but it was really much easier to get lost in. However, I really doubt anyones preference in games will effect the community much at all.

But I'm not sure that making FFXI "easier" is a bad thing. In all honestly like I said FFXI made somethings needlessly difficult to acomplish (like bad drop rates for QUEST items) and lack of an alternate leveling/playing option. Honestly in WoW Nax was probably the pinacle of difficulty, most players never even saw it before BC came out.

Edited, Jun 19th 2009 7:33am by CalArvian