If i like raids and dungeons in WoW the most, will i also like this game?

[Maniac]

I already have playd before but never got the chance to do a dungeon or raid (if something like that exists here) but thats the part of the game which makes the most fun, to get better over time and finally defeat the bosses.

And is it easy to find groups for this content?

[Alternity]

For current content you can find statics or use the party finder.

For older content, assuming you want to do it Minimum Item Level and No Echo Synced (as close as possible to what it was like when it was released) it might be a little bit harder to find people.

Dungeons in this game is casual content.
Trials are also casual content, so are Raids (normal difficulty).

Extreme trials is where the difficulty starts to ramp up.
Savage raids is where the difficult stuff is at.
Ultimate raids is where masochists go, very difficult content that only a small percentage have cleared, impossible to cheese as this content is item level locked and level synced.

There is also 2 large scale raids (around 50 people) in the game that aren't easy at all.

Here is some insight from people who were WoW raiders that relatively recently started raiding in FFXIV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZpyTTn4msk

[Sunny]

So, you need to be aware:

Making a character in this game, you are required to do the Main Story Quest (MSQ) to progress. Every single thing is locked behind this MSQ. It as if you make a human on WoW, and you _must_ do the chapter quests in Elwood Forest before you're allowed to go to Westfall, and no matter what your level is, until you advance the chapter stories to where you unlock Deadmines, you can't do it.

And you have to do every expansion, in order. Dungeons unlock as you progress in the story.

Lots of people (me included) really REALLY like the story, but some people -- especially those coming from WoW -- get....really, really, really frustrated with it, especially the first 50 levels (Everything up to when you go through the Dark Portal in WoW).

The second factor to consider is that this MSQ is the focus of the budget in this game. Level / encounter / dungeon design is not The Top Priority here like it is in WoW. Again, plenty plenty of people like it, but it's _different_. Alternity covered that mostly.

If you try it out and you can't handle the story requirements, I'd recommend buying a boost and then going and either specifically queuing for dungeons in order (the game will scale you if you use LFG), or looking up how to do Palace of the Dead (it scales you down to level 1 and you level quickly / get ability unlocks at a swift pace).

[Hex]

Addons are not allowed here, so prepare to actually learn how to play instead of just doing what an addon says.

[MOSLEY]

Casual content in XIV is even more casual than WoW but there's a huge step up from that to extreme, savage and ultimate content, which is comparable to heroic/mythic in WoW. Extreme fights will usually take an evening of prog, savage a few sessions and ultimate will take most groups months.

You can PF extreme and savage and do those with randoms without too many problems. Some people prefer statics for savage but it's really up to you and your preferences. Ultimate in PF is doable but generally a bad idea as there's likely to be hours of waiting around for parties to fill and one player who hasn't progressed as far as the rest of the group getting in can mean you make no progress that day.

You can story skip and boost if you want to but I'd give the leveling experience a chance first and if you do decide to skip, please spend some time learning the game and your job before jumping into endgame content.

There are a lot of QoL plugins and a damage meter that are widely used by raiders, there's nothing in place to prevent people from using them, but mechanics are much better telegraphed than they are in WoW so something like DBM isn't necessary and you can play with 0 plugins and do fine if you prefer.

[marsHm311oW]

If you liked the raids in WoW you will dislike the raids in XIV. All 24-person raids you clear without any strategy with a random grp on the first day of release. All other "harder" raids are with 8 persons but they take just around 10 - 20 minutes.

So if you liked wiping hours on one boss for days (Ahn'Qiraj, Vashj or whatever else :) ) you will not like raiding here. XIV just dont have a real endcontent.

[Hex]

Originally posted by marsHm311oW:

If you liked the raids in WoW you will dislike the raids in XIV. All 24-person raids you clear without any strategy with a random grp on the first day of release. All other "harder" raids are with 8 persons but they take just around 10 - 20 minutes.

So if you liked wiping hours on one boss for days (Ahn'Qiraj, Vashj or whatever else :) ) you will not like raiding here. XIV just dont have a real endcontent.

It just doesn't waste your time with trash mobs and corpse run times, that's the only difference.

[Alternity]

Originally posted by marsHm311oW:

If you liked the raids in WoW you will dislike the raids in XIV. All 24-person raids you clear without any strategy with a random grp on the first day of release. All other "harder" raids are with 8 persons but they take just around 10 - 20 minutes.

So if you liked wiping hours on one boss for days (Ahn'Qiraj, Vashj or whatever else :) ) you will not like raiding here. XIV just dont have a real endcontent.

That's just false. Most WoW world first racers that tried FFXIV high end raids love the way FFXIV works.

[marsHm311oW]

Originally posted by Alternity:

That's just false. Most WoW world first racers

How is this false if 10 of 10 million ppl say "we like the ffxiv raids"? -.- You can count all real world first guilds on one hand.

[Alternity]

Originally posted by marsHm311oW:

Originally posted by Alternity:

That's just false. Most WoW world first racers

How is this false if 10 of 10 million ppl say "we like the ffxiv raids"? -.- You can count all real world first guilds on one hand.

How many WoW raiders actually progged and cleared a FFXIV ultimate? Not that many. I'll only count the opinions of people who actually experienced both.

[Lord Doober De La Goober MXI]

depends on what you're looking for in raids OP, if you're looking for the "rush" of playing with X number of players fighting a boss then yeah ffxiv has it, if you wan't something equal or more challenging than WoW's raids you'll wont find it here.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Lord Doober De La Goober MXI:

depends on what you're looking for in raids OP, if you're looking for the "rush" of playing with X number of players fighting a boss then yeah ffxiv has it, if you wan't something equal or more challenging than WoW's raids you'll wont find it here.

Well, Heroic was the highest difficulty i was able to beat, for mythic difficulty i would never be good enough.
the main aspect i liked was trying, failing, improving and at some point beating the boss then.

[Yenkei]

that's hard to answer, they're not really comparable in raid design, difficulty, or how they feel to play

xiv's fights for the most part are heavily scripted, heavily choreographed dances

it's one of the few if not the only "wow clone" that didn't copy wow and went in a completely different direction with it's style of raiding that works well for how the game plays

[Sunny]

It has been so long that I don't remember the name itself, just that fight in WotLK -- the Simon one in the necro dude's place flying over the first zone (if you chose that zone's path)?

These boss fights are mostly all made like that. It's more about where you stand and when than anything else. That changes a little at the high end (you HAVE to be good at your class, at that point), but once you're competent in your rotation it's back to just being about where you stand.

WoW has a LOT of situational abilities that you must use with some measure of skill (or at least it used to), things that only came up when a fight had particular mechanics. There's very little of that here; a couple where specific people have to use their limit breaks at a given time (BIG PARTY SMASH ABILITY), but aside from that, what you do as a Class X in any given fight, you're going to do that as a Class X in EVERY given fight (exceptions exist; they are VERY rare).

The biggest, most impossible learning curves for me have been 1- doing damage as healer, and 2- not saving 2 minute+ cool downs as oh poop buttons. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to stop saving mitigation abilities as a tank for when my healer's mana was looking a little sad. =) IT NEVER GETS SAD. I don't even think there's an /oom emote, for goodness's sake!

Oh!! Last thing, hopefully. The gear grind is different, in that it's barely there. You don't have to kill the first boss of a dungeon eleventy billion times to gear your party before moving onto second boss. There's an iLVL requirement to get in the door, that's all.

From what you've said, OP, I think you should invest the time to check it out. Do the free trial, because you will be able to get access to examples of the content you're interested in, even if not the current ones.

For your situation, I would recommend that you either make a character on the Primal datacenter (there are servers that are open currently), or Dynamis. If you do Dynamis, investigate early how to data center travel to Primal before you queue up for dungeons. If you play on Dynamis there's a huge XP buff (and some other rewards once you sub) for being on a New server, but the population is still poop and I see queue times of 26+ minuets that when I pop over to Primal, are three minutes or less.

You'll also be overleveled for overworld stuff BADLY on Dynamis, but even if you're not overleveled, it's stupid easy (think Elwood forest). All instanced content is level adjusted, and the level adjustment here is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than WoW's. It's not perfect, but it does a much better job of making you "feel" like you've got an appropriate challenge in front of you (even if you smash through it because it's babytown casual content).

[MOSLEY]

Originally posted by marsHm311oW:

If you liked the raids in WoW you will dislike the raids in XIV. All 24-person raids you clear without any strategy with a random grp on the first day of release. All other "harder" raids are with 8 persons but they take just around 10 - 20 minutes.

So if you liked wiping hours on one boss for days (Ahn'Qiraj, Vashj or whatever else :) ) you will not like raiding here. XIV just dont have a real endcontent.

Extreme, savage and ultimate definitely don’t take 10-20 minutes unless you’re playing with a static and have cleared them previously.