Pay to Win in FFXIV vs WoW: Exposing the Insidious WoW Token 

You did great :) Its a spicy tocip and opinions are bound to clash but then again, "call a spade a spade" and dont sugarcoat it.

Popo ASMR reading VO of the EW Endwalker When?

My first thought Whoa wait this is actually a real video. (Was expecting a meme) Nicely done! Loved how you closed the video with omotone remix of civilizations

Holy shit, your voice sounds great btw. Haha

Really like it. You have such a calm Voice. You should do it more often.

Let's be real. You're actively doing yourself a disservice by skipping the story anyway. So in essence you're basically paying SE a courtesy fee for not playing through the part of the game they worked the hardest on.

And the ones that just skip are in 70 content, aka a WoW perspective of "outdated and dead content" in their mind. And boi have I seen obviously boosted trash in lv.70 trials. Peak Quin stuff.

@@thew1ngman honestly. Sure, it’s an mmo, but it’s still a final fantasy game. Even the bad ones have bearable stories.

Then why doesn't the store money flow back into the game? FF14 grows more and more successful, yet we see no expansion in terms of its content. In fact, they actually downsized since ARR and excusing that with the fact that some generic grind zones you need to do for the relic weapons are taking too many ressources. Zones which have less effort put into them than the worst of WoWs grindzones, like Korthia.

@@shizachan8421 Sorry, it took me 5 minutes trying to figure out what you meant by "no expansion in content" in FF14. And I still don't get it. Could you elaborate more on when, during your gameplay, you've felt the game has reached the end of its content, and no further contents were announced?

So that's why they did Pandaria first, they wanted a place to put their most expensive stuff in the game. And the Brutosaur was helluva expensive in BFA.

@NovemberRain It was sad that they moved it to the bmah, but it was so much fun to farm it. I never would have had the incentive to get it if they didn't motivate me. AH is so much fun. With all the things I learned back then, now it's so easy to make millions, especially with the Mage Tower timewalking boosting all professions.

I haven't played BFA. I have heard about the Brutosaur mount. I thought that's just a quality of life goldsink but I never knew the devs wanted to "kinda delete it" by putting it only on BMAH. I would be okay if they didn't because having a portable AH isn't something that op... at least from POV of a mage player who has portals.

You could try shouting in a major city for someone to link you the outfit(s) in a tell so that you can try them on in game. Especially in Limsa Lominsa you're bound to get someone that has the outfit(s) and would be willing to link them to you.

There's an online model viewer you could try out. It's not particularly heavy on features but it lets you see how particular items or item combinations look on certain races/genders.

@@WhiteRKnight1 I tend to use the Market Board when planning glam ideas, since you can directly try on from there and a vast majority of gear tends to sold.

There is definitely some pay to win aspects in ff14. The SDSfenrir mount you can purchase on the mog station moves faster than most mounts. This is an advantage players can use to speed through areas they have not unlocked flying in.

@@mikepower8999 Every mount has the same speed; it's determined by the area itself, or whether you can fly, not the mounts themselves. A reason why it could *look* like it's faster may be because of the mount's animations, size, or even shape. Or a player just has unlocked faster ground speed for that specific area.

That's the biggest difference between WoW and FFXIV - promises kept and broken. Patterns, histories, and reputation. XIV players say "hey can we get X" and Yoshi-P's like "we were thinking the same thing and have been exploring ways to add it, here's the exact patch we would like to add it in a year from now, so look forward to that". Wow players say "can we have X" and get an "actually that's not an issue or a priority" or worse, the dreaded "we hear you, we think you'll like this thing that actually worsens the problem".

And now we r getting oceania

Wow, I didn’t know that as a more recent player. That’s really cool to hear, and I don’t think the cash shop is inherently bad, since most of the items were available free in game at some point in time and none of them are necessary to enjoy the game to the fullest. It doesn’t feel so bad to support a company that clearly cares about us and uses the money to make more things for us.

This right here. YoshiP has a track record of making and delivering on promises when it comes to what the shop pays for, and we get a consistent product too. FF isn't immune to criticism and there's criticism to be had about the store. But we can also recognize that it isn't the same - the Blizzard store is bloody egregious and the Token in particular had incentivized terrible behavior from both development and community. You launch Bnet? Adds everywhere. Launch Hearthstone? 2-5 pop ups trying to sell you stuff. Launch Warcraft? The shop is right there in-game - Heck I remember when they removed the GM Help button from the main action bar to add that stupid shop button, and then buried the GM/Support Help behind increasing layers of menus, drop-downs and forms.

@@Xenos_hive Actually sad we're getting oceania since a few of my static/FC friends are from Australia. They're definitely switching because the lag can be atrocious at times. Hopefully the cross data center thing works well otherwise I won't be able to play with them anymore.

Thanks so much friend! I felt pressure all the time to buy WoW tokens just to keep up. I’d appreciate you sharing with your friends!

Thanks so much for your comment friend! I agree with you. (Also, I think your English is very good :)

Too nice of you ^^

Considering that changing a single eye colour costs the same 7$ I think SE should try the barber approach of wow cause as of right now , fantasia feels so bad to purchase if u want to make small changes.

@@TheDarkarox There is an aesthetician in the inn room (you summon him via the Crystal Bell) that works just like barber in WoW and you pay for the changes with gil. But you must first unlock the aesthetician by a short quest chain which starts in Limsa Lominsa.

@@keshalav4035 Doesn't do as much as the barber nowadays but my bad for saying "small changes". The option to gender swap and change faces, skintones to match glamours on the fly would be a tremendous feature which wow does have.

The influx of WOW players probably helped re-enforce it too, Since a lot of (former) WOW players like to complain about the state of that game and Square Enix actually puts time and effort into listening to the player base. As long as there is the people there to listen to the players (esp Yoshi P), I don't think we will see anything majorly negative for quiet some time.

@@DoomsdayR3sistance Then why don't we see SE reacting to year old complaints from the Healer Community and of DRK Players? SE and Yoshi-P are just listening to complaints if its easy to do fluff. Especially when it comes to the state of healers, the devs are actively insulting Healer players as incompetent to justify their bad design.

@@shizachan8421 I dunno what complaints you're on about but then I haven't got into end-game savage... so guessing it's there. However my comment was but I don't think FFXIV has any of the major issues that WOW has and class balance will always be an issue. Personally as far as I have got. I don't see that many issues. Going to finish Eden normal soon and basically ready to start on End Walker.

@@shizachan8421 what complaints about healers so far? I’ve only recently started playing 5 months ago but haven’t heard any complaints from or about healers

@@kinetic6637 Basically that the incoming damage is too low and predictable while healers have too many powerful ogcd spells, so that encounters barely require you to cast any healing spells and allow you to dps most of the time, which is problematic because most healers dps rotation is comprised of only one dps cast/aoe spell and their dot, so you spam one button for most of your gametime. Square Enix knows this and doesn't listens to the community, less than Blizzard would do actually whenever it is something involving gameplay and not fluff as we also see with dark knight, because they consider healers to be their cognitively disabled aka they feel like they would overwhelm healers by increasing healing requirements or giving them more dps tools, as when it comes to this particular role, they don't design it to be engaging or fun but to be playable by the worst possible players in the game and succeed at every level of content. And I'm not hyperbolic here. I picked up a sage after not playing for a long time and after maining tank for the longest times and just jumped into leveling through dungeons with my boyfriend. I was nearly immediately able to heal a dungeon with wall to wall pulls while dpsing most of the time, really only once or twice per dungeon being forced to cast heals, usually when my boyfriend had gaps in his mitigation because dps wouldn't kill trash fast enough or when people soaked to many avoidable mechanics, but that was it. So its not something only doable for pro-healer mains but really anyone.

The launcher does have adverts for sales and new items on the FFXIV cash shop. I've bought pretty much everything I want from it (mostly mounts, and a few emotes not otherwise available through gameplay) and don't regret spending any of that cash because the game has brought me so much enjoyment over the years.

Skips in 14 actually make some sort of sense since leveling alt jobs can be a bit of a slog sometimes. Personally I think it should be limited to people who already have at least one job leveled to at least the level of the skip, but that's just me.

@@1337penguinman I don't think there's any shame in skipping the filler story quests between the end of the base game (After beating the huge Imperial stronghold) and Heavensward. There was WAY too many of those and after I beat Shiva I just hit "Fuck it, let's skip to Heavensward". I love FF14, and yes some of those quests do set some stuff up in Heavensward, but those quests are a FUCKING slog.

Lalassemble community!

Also what people especialy new dont realize is that SOME of old evenst got reintroduced back several times meaning some items couldve been obtaine dfor free several times.Like for example they returned the regalia car to get it for free bcs there was a huge surge of players.Then they did streamer events wher ethey gave Black Chokobos for bit cheaper price by donating to specific streamer.Then tehre were several otehr events that got reintroduced back.So its not like FF14 didnt ocasionaly bring some old events back.

@@goranstojanov1160 And they are even going to try to bring back that super long-lasting Garo Event for PVP.

​@@goranstojanov1160 The black chocobo has only appeared in that one promotion, which has not yet been repeated. Promotions in association with unaffiliated companies (rather than other Square Enix games) are the only ones that haven't been available later due to contractual issues. And even then, in some cases they will bring the item back in a slightly altered form later so you can get it, like the cloud mount.

@@ArmageddonEvil I'm actually excited about this, because I've seen the Garo top for casters and I need it XD hopefully the same can be said about the Dreadking ser from the Feast cause that one also slaps

@@rei-rei Actually this years twitch campaign was the second time the fat black chocobo was available. First was spending $20 on certain amazon items before shadowbringers.

While money cannot buy inherent skill in chess, it can however purchase the most expensive 1 on 1 sessions with magnus carlsen and the likes. To imply that u cannot buy skill with money is honestly just false. Many of the most talented and skilled individuals in this world did so by investing capital. Not every success story is a broke person who’s just magically good at something. Most stories of success come from inherent planning and financial investment from those who came before the successful person. To have the time to invest in a skill set, first means developing the finances to be allowed to do so. This is how all of life works, why should any video game be any different?

@@premejon8300 Doent change my point at all: sure, you can but lessons from super expansive teachers but that still doesnt take away the fact that you have to bloody train yourself. Magnus Carlsen cannot tranform you into a master chess player if you dont put in the several hours (!!!) of training yourself. As with every other skill you aquire. You can buy the best teachers in the world, if you dont put in the effort, all that money goes down the drain!

Bragging platform. Well said. That's what WoW feels like nowadays.

@@markup6394 You seem to lose part of my point in ur rebuttal. I never said u didn’t have to put the effort in, but most often than not that effort can EASILY be reduced if u have PROPER lessons and guidance. Magnus cannot make me an overnight chess sensation, but I can guarantee his teachings will be better than ur standard run of the mill chess “guru” in the park. Money truly does help bypass all the prerequisites in life, whether u like it or not that’s just the bloody truth.

@@premejon8300 Sorry, I dont agree. Good teachers of course are important, that much is true, but they dont take away the fact that you have to work yourself. Like you said, their "guidance" is important, no question, but you have to walk that way yourself. Also, if you dont have super teachers doesnt mean you cant make up for that yourself. What makes a master after all compared to an amateur is only the amount of failures he had endured before becomming a master: Even Carlsen has to play chess 10 hours a day, otherwise he wouldnt be a master much longer.

Reminds me of Metzen when he would go on stage and speak passionately about WoW, sadly the real downfall started when the old guard retired, moved to other projects or went to other companies.

Yoship actively plays FFXIV in his free time, he is a Lalafell Black Mage main and raids/plays with the general JP public, but he does not reveal his in game name or server to my knowledge.

Thanks so much friend! I’d appreciate you sharing with your friends!

@@Professor_Popo hopefully the "Bald king" will see this and react to it since he is streaming again, I really wish Asmon would react to your meme videos too 😅 . You will get enough exposure from it

O⁰

@@overlord7647 o

@@overlord7647 00

I think the only exception is that motorbike that goes max speed regardless of your level. Yes, its an advantage - but nothing game breaking and nothing you couldnt optain on your own... Or did I miss something?

@@markup6394 Was it that Cloud Bike but once you unlock flying its faster (That mount is ugly looking imo)

Sure but just to be fair, if you count all that boosters in FFXIV you can boost everything including all the jobs and it takes multiple transactions.

@@markup6394 Given the bike lets you ignore the an game mechanic it seems hypocritical they say no pay2win yet don't fix the bike, whoever has that bike for the next expansion/Eureka/Bozja will have an advantage over everyone else and if it doesn't matter why do they continue keep the speed setting in? They can't have it both ways. Please don't misunderstand, I think this pales in comparison to the WoW token as that debases the entire in game economy but both games have room for improvement.

@@simonbarker980 yes but at the same time no, why because I've been playing this games for about two months now and I've only seen two people has that kind of mount so if it really gives that much advantage people will buy it, but they don't because the advantage are so little that it doesn't matter and also you cant flex it compared to endgame mount or just the golden sauser mount.

Thanks for the update friend! It’s been a few months since I’ve logged in to WoW and my sub finally expired so I wasn’t able to check the group finder for myself. Interesting Blizzard doesn’t follow their own policy on not allowing advertisements in Group Finder.

Imagine seeing Ion cosplaying a class from wow like that. The amount of passion and love for the game can pretty clearly be seen just from a first glance at Yoshi-P.

@@ruily276 I mean, Ion probably has at least quite a good grasp on how the classes are supposed to work and how most roles are actually played in the game. Yoshi-P outright refuses to understand how Healer Classes are actually played in the game by any mildy competent player, he outright lies about the way encounters are designed by claiming healer DPS is not taken into consideration when it was proven wrong over and over again and he refuses to listen to complaints by the Healer Community for years. The same with Tanks, especially Dark Knights, really, with both roles losing more and more of their complexities. But great, he plays Black Mage, so at least that class will always remain the strongest DPS I guess.

@@shizachan8421 Yet the community of ff14 keeps praising Yoshi-P over and over again while people keep on hating on Ion. Weird how that works.

@@ruily276 Because he's charismatic and the FF14 crowd is easily to please with fluff, while not giving a fuck about proper endgame content or class design.

Thanks so much for watching friend!

In WoWs optional shop, you actually can pay for anything with ingame currency. And the items tend to be even cheaper than many of the more expensive goldsink mounts. Also why do we ignore the fact that FF14 has a much bigger cash shop without the option to buy the stuff for ingame currency and yet ends up with having less pve content than an expansion like Shadowlands which was actually cut short one patch?

@@shizachan8421 in the FFXIV cash shop most of the items there were earnable for free at one point during holiday events and the like that you can no longer get otherwise bc they were only there for that year's event... And all the old gear sets are still earnable thru boss drops today... If I want to get let's say the tabard of frost which is a TCG item I either have to spend 5,000 dollars for a card code OR spend hundreds of thousands of gold in the BMAH... FFXIV would just put that on their store for like 3 bucks

@@shizachan8421 We have a very different definition of content if you think Shadowlands had any to write home about. To each their own. But I don't find doing menial checklist activities to be considered content.

@@totallynottrademarked5279 I mean, just in terms of raid content it has more bosses than your typical FF expansion and that despite missing a tier.

I agree with ESOs shop being intrusive. I ended up downloading an add-on to skip the store pop up when you log in etc. and ultimately, their shop was a main reason I stopped playing ESO

The story skip is meant for people just starting the game who want to get straight to playing the same content their friends already in the game are.

And Crysta (which is a roundabout way to pay via PayPal) is basically 1:1 in Euros, like 1 Crysta is 1 cent.

@@necrobabe6190 I mean, not quite. Most older players will tell their friends who have just started to just play through the story because it's worth the play through at least once. The story and level skips were actually added due to requests from the raiding community to allow them to speed up the process of getting an alt to raid-ready status, as without them it could take weeks if not months to get an alt to max level and geared for raiding on top of playing their main as well.

I like to think the story boosts in XIV are there for folks who want to level up an alt without going through the whole story again. I have never used one, because the story is so good I enjoy doing it again (especially after the cutting out of a bunch of post-ARR/pre-HW quests and the addition of PLENTY of Vesper Bay teleport tickets... no longer does one have to dread "Pray return to the Waking Sands"!

WoW also has a few multi-seat mounts. A motorcycle, a mammoth and a dragon potion mount but like you said with FF14 - these are only useful if you are playing with newbie friends who haven't unlocked mounts yet and that's something 99.99% of players have anyway.

You can raise your flying speed in ff14 by doing hunts, takes 250 seals to unlock it for each zone, but I still want that bike

@@josephmckee3605 speed increases are only for ground movement. Flying is always the same exact speed (max) no matter if you get ridding maps or not

That's odd, I had it for about a year and not once did I feel like I was going faster than those who didn't have the upgraded mount speed, even when I didn't have the upgrade unlocked at the time. Could just be my own sense of depth being really fucked up or something.

So when will the money you invest will be lead to more ingame content that is comparable to the size of content WoW offers in even a cut shirt expansion, considering that they are currently as successful? Like, when will we get actual raids each tier, instead of 4 single boss rooms? When will we get ultimate encounters for all raid bosses, like WoW has with the mythic mode. When will we get proper PVE? When will we get actually interesting grind and catch up zones each patch? And when will we get challenging dungeon content? And most importantly, when will they hire class designers which actually understand the game, especially for tank and healer roles?

@@shizachan8421 I don't know if you are joking, but I am just gonna say: NEVER!

I assume you mean "Real PVP" and not real PVE, so the answer to than is Endwalker when they're overhauling PVP entirely. When will we get an Ultimate for every boss? Never, and we never asked for it. Also Ultimate and Mythic are not the same. When will we get a real raid tier? We have them, three tiers for normal raids and three for alliance raids. Them not being WoW raids does not make them not-real, no matter how much you want it to be true. Interesting grinds and catchup zones for every patch? What does this even mean? FFXIV has one huge grind, your glowy weapon, and it updates with a lot of content every patch especially in Shadowbringers. And why do we need... Catchup zones? What does that mean? Why do we need it? The only thing to catch up on during patches is story and the new dungeons or raids. And we have the tomestone system for catchup gear which you can get anywhere. Your problem seems to be "This is not like wow and therefore it sucks, alsowhatboutthecashshop" when the answer is "The cash shop is sucky, yes, but they don't hammer it in our faces at all times through an ingame menu where you can swipe and buy a WoW token to sell for gold to buy a run from the CEO of blizzard who absolutely doesn't have any sort of conflict of interest in this at all, so it's bearable. And also not that expensive compared to just about every other cash shop in existence."

@@tashikat9040 My problem is the toxic positivity and the climate of holding the lowest expectations and celebrating everything FF14 does while condemning WoW for the same shit. And it is 3 tiers of 4 single room boss fight each expansion, which are combined with the ultimates the only really hard pieces of content the game offers. If we discount mini-raids, which are often included in between raid-tiers, a usual WoW raid has twice as many bosses minimum each tier. And SE is just unwilling to expand on that. If Blizzard is able to release raid tiers with twice or tripple the number of bosses with 4 different difficulty settings for each level of player, then its just something they do objectively better. And maybe it should be something, where the FF14 community shows some standarts for once and demands more, considering that they are not the small downtrodden MMO which is trying to compete with the big boys after a rough start anymore but the most popular MMO right now? The issue with FF14 is that content the game releases is basically fluff which doesn't offers any significant challenge for anyone trying to do coordinated content. Alliance Raids are LFR levels of difficulty, their challenge comes from being grouped with random people many of whom may not now the mechanics and do the content the first time. Dungeons are normal levels of difficulty. The game is even cutting down on content, looking at the individual job quests which were scrapped in Shadowbringers in favor of role quests. And being honest, the whole SEs cash shop is not accessible ingame, so its good is just a strawman. The WoW ingame ship doesn't really ever jump in your face, its just a button you have in your menue and its actually a more comfortable feature. Its actually a feature FF14 should have, considering that quite some of its items are of a nature in which you would buy them spontaneously, like dyes or fantasia. Also, here: www.ssegold.com/ffxiv-gil?gclid=Cj0KCQiAhf2MBhDNARIsAKXU5GRhrP93hK5ZunLTM9-qNcoZoxg7SSCU7XNIOlRB39iuKr7HQN4RqWIaAkktEALw_wcB You can still buy gil in FF14 for real money, only that in that case, you are supporting criminal activities. mythicboost.com/ffxiv And it has boosting communities. The only thing that SE did against it was some fluff action, pushing advertisement for it on discord while making it explicit that customers can put their bids into group search. And tbh, FF14s cash shop is quite expensive considering that most of its services are character bound, not account bound. And it has by far more unique items on sale. And there are no means of purchasing the items with ingame money. Like, seriously, The WoW token is a blessing for just about everyone who farms gold ingame, because it means that you can buy any item in the Blizzard store, including entire games and your subscription for ingame currency. You can literally buy any Activion-Blizzard game for free, for WoW gold.

@@shizachan8421ok

Thank you friend!

It is if you have the time to farm it. I was just using it as an example of a constant gold sink. Similar to boosts… you could farm all the gold… but if you’re buying boosts its unlikely you have the time to farm gold.

Thanks friend! Will do! Have lots of plans.

Im playing whiout irl money and im buying game time with gold,even bought shadowlands epic edition with gold

Mine server was backwards, instead of prices rising they just drop way to the ground, to the point where you can't sell your stuff or even make more gold (farming bots ruined that experience)

Introducing mission table that gave u thousands of gold in WoD had definitely nothing to do with that and didn't create massive inflation, it's all fault of the evil token.

You were bad at making gold

@@seanynee really...? I am on other games who doesnt have something like wow token and everything is fine now i can see what pyromancer mean in his famus video

The Community is shit. You can literally banned for telling players that they play their class wrong, because you aren't allowed to tell others how to play the game. And the toxic positivity basically leads into a cult mentality in which people praise an objectively worse cash shop than WoW has as being more fair.

@@shizachan8421 Oh. I tried to address your other points in another comment but you're just... Kind of vomitting everywhere, aren't you? Never mind replying to me over there, then.

@@shizachan8421 All right then. Tell me what is so unfair about the cash shop? It doesn't offer anything other than the ability to change your appearance, buy cosmetic items, collectible things like Orchestrion Rolls, etc. You can boost your character or a retainer or skip the MSQ. How is any of that unfair? Tell me how positivity is toxic in FFXIV? Tell me how bashing another player for how they are playing their job is acceptable? In all the time I played, I have never been banned or even suspended, or put in Gaol. I have given advice, even after the updated rules of conduct. The difference is HOW you give advice. If you tell someone they are rubbish, then yes, you can probably get banned. But if you offer and they accept and you give constructive advice instead of telling them they are a waste of space, then banning isn't likely. The positivity isn't such a bad thing. In fact, I have always preferred it to the kind of garbage that happened in WoW. In all the time I played WoW, if I ever asked for advice or help, I was told to look it up online instead of someone actually taking a moment to explain it. In FFXIV, if I ask, there will be at least two people ready to give suggestions, ideas, or help. If I wasn't getting something right, I was trash-talked until I left or blocked them. In WoW, I can literally count on ONE HAND the number of times I have been trashed or saw it happen. And that was BEFORE the updated rules of conduct. There wasn't really a great need for those new rules. They just defined what was presumed to be acceptable behavior by it's player based. If FFXIV's positivity is toxic, then I will gladly take that poison any day. The fact of the matter, there is a reason why this game has managed to come from it's original launch failure to be a viable solution for so many WoW players who felt like they had been betrayed and treated like trash by the very developers that took their money. FFXIV managed to be so successful because the developers actually listen and participate in the game, with the players, and actually treat what they do as a service and not a job. So again, I'm not sure why you feel why it such a toxic culture, but obviously all of the FFXIV players and many of the thousands of WoW players who came recently feel otherwise.

Thanks friend! Glad you liked it!

I can see in 10.0 literally having you pay to unlock features in their game. lol

When I was looking at it (because I was still playing WoW then and I really wanted the Brutosaur)... I was considering just buying WoW Tokens (thankfully never bought even one)... and it was like 130k gold per token... so yeah it would have been closer to $800, but I wanted to be conservative and not super hyperbolic with my estimations.

Thanks friend! Much more variety coming to the channel soon!

I don't recall exactly which one I picked... but it was one of the Neneko presets. I believe it may have been one of the cinematic ones.

Thanks friend!

I would if I could!

Forgot about that! Thanks for reminding me.