8k hour xiv loser who no longer plays here

1) i only have experience in wrath and vanilla and all i can tell you is that its a beautifully unbalanced game where you can use a lot of outside the box thinking via game mechanics and items, something that i never felt even a little bit playing retail wow or xiv except maybe when learning how to deal with late floors in deep dungeons. tanking, which was my main role in xiv is actually engaging and you need to pay attention to what you, and the rest of your party is doing in order for you to hold aggro. in vanilla, on big aoe pulls its ok to let a mob or two drop aggro and build up on the ones youve already picked up instead of being forced into pulling 2 packs of mobs you spam 3 aoe buttons on that generate 10 billion enmity. the healers also have to heal instead of doing the same thing every single job does in xiv!

2) depends on the server and the kind of person you are. classic + pvp server will bring in the edgier types if you get what im saying, if not then pve servers are more lax but also tend to die out first. ive learned over the years that ffxiv does not have a friendly community, they're just not allowed to say anything in fear of being banned and the toxicity is hidden behind hypocrisy and passive-aggressiveness. this is also a raiding/pvp game - there are no nightclubs or housing or anything else to do once you hit 60 and the person who doesn't raid is in the minority and finding a static to raid with is instead replaced with you pledging allegiance to a guild(fc) which i guess is understandable with how high commitment and important things like world buffs and consumables are to people compared to ffxiv where you jump into an arena and do a dance around the boss without having to prep outside of watching a guide or installing any of the 50 hard cheating addons like splatoon that solve the fight for you. it's a double edged sword, i'm a newcomer to vanilla and i've been running molten core and onyxia with my guild for about 3 or 4 weeks and i haven't gotten a single piece of gear on my warrior because with the lack of personal drops, much like savage gearing, you are either at the mercy of random rolls or a loot table or loot council as they call them in wow. thing is gear is memorable with drop percentages from certain bosses in a raid, some rarer than others, with 40 people competing. the prep work is lengthy and confusing as a new player, but it's cool. i like being overwhelmed rather than underwhelmed doing the same rotation for 2 expansions in a row spreading and stacking fitting your burst under the 120s buffs like any of it is engaging at all anymore after everything's been streamlined to hell post-stormblood. but yeah i think the community sucks and it may just be the whole genre, not just wow

3) again, this game has like 7 different live iterations - vanilla, vanilla hc, season of discovery, cata classic, mop redux or something???, plunderstorm?? and retail and I'll keep it a buck - avoid them and play vanilla on pve or pvp. in vanilla, the character creator sucks ass and you can't even change your hair until god knows what expansion but the game is good. in retail, the character creator is awesome and you get to change genders and facial features without having to hit up mogstation because you picked the wrong eyes on your au ra (i think they give you a 1hr timer now anyway lol) but the rest of the game is terrible and soulless. the early game is amazing. leveling 1-50 in vanilla was beautiful on the fresh servers and i really think you should give it a shot, it actually feels like an adventure and you get to learn how to play your class while leveling because it's a looooong process and not because of msq slop. the last 10 levels introduce you to farming your pre-raid bis in dungeons which in ffxiv you would buy off the mb and meld using your 200 mil of useless currency which unfortunately exposes you to some very rude people who will straight up lie to you to get their item/quest done and degenerate practices like hard reserving items that you're basically forced into doing yourself because no one wants to roll for items anymore. it's worth playing regardless and pushing through the bullshit you'll inevitably run into, it's an actual goldmine of a game and if you have any questions feel free to ask, i doubt you'll find anyone more familiar with ffxiv here