Superficially, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV have a lot in common, gameplay-wise. Both are, after all, hotkey MMO’s in (broadly) medieval fantasy settings. But despite running on similar archetypes and party roles, the Classes of WoW and Jobs of FFXIV can feel distinctly different to play, sometimes to an overwhelming degree for an unfamiliar player.
The most immediate difference is simply the amount of options you have to choose from. FFXIV has about 21 Jobs (22 if you include the Blue Mage), but each class generally has only a single way to play them. Each Paladin you meet will have the exact same capabilities as any other.
In contrast, WoW only has 13 base classes but each of those has around 3 specializations that can drastically alter the playstyle or even its role within a party, for a total of 38 different options. Depending on their specialization, a given Paladin could fill the role of damage dealer, healer, or tank, though not every class is quite as flexible. Warlocks and Mages, for example, will always be fulfilling the role of a ranged DPS, but the spells they use and their priorities or cooldowns can be wildly different.
And it goes further because each specialization has a talent tree, which gives players to option to tailor their class further. They obviously aren’t quite as impactful as an entirely different specialization but they do mean you will have to choose between picking up certain abilities and bonuses over others, which can lead to builds more focused around single target damage, dealing with various larger groups, or perhaps simply providing more utility options to a raid. It’s a lot to get your head around if you’re used to a more streamlined system, and it will only get more complex as The War Within expansion adds new Hero Talents on top of everything.
Then there’s the Global Cooldown difference, which may be less obvious until you get to higher levels of play but nonetheless underpins a lot of the immediate game-feel differences. The Global Cooldown or GCD is essentially the short delay between activating an ability and being able to activate another, though there are abilities that are aren’t affected by it. In FFXIV the GCD is around 2.5 seconds long before any reductions from stats, which at lower levels can feel sluggish and unreactive. However, at later levels this develops into a deliberate, rythmic dance as you weave in abilities from off the GCD in between your main rotation.
WoW, on the other hand, has a base GCD of 1.5 seconds going down to 1 second for certain classes. It’s much faster, and will only decrease as you amass certain stats, though the difference is less than you would imagine once you factor in the more consistent usage of off-GCD abilities in certain FFXIV Jobs. The Summoner, for example, will often be using off-GCD skills regularly to command their minions, sometimes two within the same GCD period. No, the real difference is felt when you combine this with the way rotations work.
A rotation is basically just what order you need to press your buttons in to put out the most damage (or healing, or damage mitigation…) possible for your class. Performing well at higher levels in MMO’s like FFXIV is all about executing your rotation optimally while also dodging hazards and performing whatever mechanical tasks the encounter asks of you. In WoW, it’s much the same, except its classes tend not to use fixed rotations.
While both games use basic builder-spender frameworks for most of their classes (you build up a resource, then spend it for damage/healing, etc.), WoW‘s class design has slowly moved over the years to focus more on Procs. Short for Special Procedures (Or Programmed Random Ocurrence, there is a little bit of disagreement on the origin), a Proc in this context refers to an effect that has a certain chance to activate, usually on using an ability but sometimes things like taking damage too. A critical hit is technically a kind of Proc, but the effect could also be applying a buff, refreshing a cooldown, or enabling or upgrading a certain ability. Certain Jobs in FFXIV also use them, such as with the Archer’s Straight Shot skill, but they aren’t nearly as common as in WoW.
Because this random element throws a wrench into fixed rotation sequences, WoW Classes tend to use a system of button prioritization. A basic priority may include a fixed opening rotation that sets up your buffs and DOT effects, but once you get into the meat of the fight you’ll need to maintain a degree of flexibility. Your biggest damage ability might suddenly come off cooldown, or you may find a string of lucky procs inundates you with your class resource and you’ll need to spend it before doing anything that might generate more. It’s a more reactive system to be sure, and getting to smash the big glow-y button that just activated sates the lizard-like part of the brain like nothing else. But it can also be trickier to learn a priority than a simple rotation sequence, and if you’re accustomed to FFXIV‘s steady dance then WoW‘s combat can feel frantic or button-mashy.
This is the part where I have to disclaim that it’s not about one game being flatly “better” than the other, but I’m going to skip past it because this should be common sense to most good faith actors. WoW is a more *complex* game to be sure, at least in terms of density of mechanics, but complexity does not always equate to depth, nor does relative simplicity imply a lack of it.
Instead I want to encourage a look at the effects these small differences in design have on two games that occupy very similar spaces. How something as small as the wait time between casts can change the tempo of combat so much, and how a different mechanical focus can change the way players think about their inputs so drastically. And most of all, I’d like to encourage players of both WoW and FFXIV to give the other game a try, if only because a look at another system may refresh your perspective on the one you’re more used to. They both have free trials, after all, you have nothing to lose but time.
World of Warcraft is immediately available for PC and Mac, with The War Within expansion launching on August 26, 2024. Final Fantasy XIV and its latest expansion Dawntrail are available on PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Published: Aug 17, 2024 12:00 pm