To give people a bit of background who maybe haven't watched the stream before. During the subathon one of the stretch goals was to play FFXIV, and then one of the other ones was to name his character and choose his race by poll. Hence why he is femroe and his name is Floor Inspector (a running joke on the channel). He got to choose the job.

I picked dragoon early on and also got really worried about the 2.5 second gcd, however... Starting with heavensward it turned really quickly from "eurgh i'm falling asleep" to "i don't know how to weave off-gcds into my rotation while doing positionals and ever increasing boss mechanics, send help".

Watching this 2 years later and knowing how Preach's journey went... this puts one helluva smile on my face.

Literally everything in the game gets better with time. The combat, the story, the zones, the voice acting, the battle content. I can't wait to see Preach's reaction when he gets into Heavensward, when the game improves very considerably. Nice video. I enjoyed it :)

One of my favorite things about FF14 is how a quest to collect something only requires you to kill 3-4 of that mob. "Collect 3 stag tails" means you only need to kill 3 stags. Boom! easy. No 10% drop rate or some garbage like that.

"The cities are packed" He hasn't even hit Limsa yet. Keep that in mind.

The recommended gear button at the top of your character window, is your best friend. Specially while lvling to make sure you wearing the right things.

Solid and unbiased evaluation. It ramps up in Heavensward, slows a bit in Stormblood, picks up the pace again and then it never stops. I just hit 80 and I have 100+ hours of raid content to do even before the new expansion not to mention crafting and side content. Amazing game.

“Fates sync your level and prevents you from using higher level abilities” Laughs in blue mage

Took me a few tries to get into the game, starting a couple years ago. Gotta say, finished Shadowbringers about a month ago and it is one of the best RPGs I've ever experienced. It's hard to disassociate from WoW but once I was able to, what a ride. What. a ride.

The "keeping you engaged with distractions" thing is really spot on - I ended up getting to Heavensward nearly a month after I would have if I"d just played through the story because I saw someone zoom past on a flying chair mount and I dropped everything to level alchemist for several weekends in a row.

Some of these tutorials actually appear from some of the very first side quests in the city as you accept the the quest, teaching you some basic systems (using items at specific points, handing over items, using emotes, etc). While the tutorials will still trigger later on if you never did that side quest, it does, unfortunately, appear after you've already 'done the thing'.

I love his pacing actually. Going through ARR super chill is nice. I'm glad he's comfy reading stuff because a lot of WoW friends of mine skip through tips and text too quickly and can't figure out where anything is.

Preach always does things his own way. I like how he, unlike any other content creator I can think of, just shut the door on Warcraft, and never looked back. That is incredibly brave, given his occupation and fanbase.

12:30 preach has been spared the pre-nerf “pray return to the waking sands” chain

I started the game around 2 months ago or so off the back of dissatisfaction with Blizzard and WoW, and I've never enjoyed JRPGs or Final Fantasy in general but I've found the game to be a massive breath of fresh air. A Realm Reborn - it can get a bit tedious, the delivery quests, go here kill 3 things quests, etc etc that just keep pushing along the quest can be painful and at times be very "filler quest" like. The thing is though, it pays off. Once you get past about level 40 - 45 in the MSQ it really kicks off the story hard, and especially through though the ARR patch content. By the time you hit its finale and about to go into Heavensward, it's just complete hype and all I want is more time in my day to play now I'm half way through Heavensward. One of the best things I did during ARR was try out nearly all the jobs to at least around level 15. See their abilities, story quests, gear, get a feel etc. The GCD does seem rough at first, but it improves with off GCD spells and its reached the point now on dragoon that I barely notice. What I love is that jobs feel more complex now than WoW with long combos and specific trigger mechanics and buff systems that need to be weaved in, when I jumped back to wow to raid log on my ret paladin it just felt so simple in comparison. Now I just want to level up more jobs and spread my time between them whilst pushing the story.

Your complaint about your character being a bit expressionless will get a lot better later on, as the game has been adding more emotes with basically every patch to allow the character to be more expressive. It can also vary by race, as IIRC my Hyur Midlander Female was more expressive to start with as far as I remember. Edit: Also, the gameplay issue is mainly due to how the dev team pruned the ability bloat in Heavensward and especially Stormblood by removing some of the early additions. Starting in Shadowbringers they started using a different method of rebalancing the classes with the new expansions to avoid breaking the early gameplay, but it was a bit late by that point.

The voice acting DEFINITELY improves as you progress through expansions

19:00 There's a great story writer, she started with dungeon quests, then got rogue, ninja, Dark Knight, and after that main writer of shadowbringers, and co main writer of endwalker! highly recommend her classes/class stories, I absolutely fell in love with the DK.

i know you said your looking forward to dungeons just remember even the boss mechanics build up slow over time. first few dungeon will not be mechanic heavy at all. around level 41 when it starts get good for mechanics and they still add new mechanics over time or call back to one that you had not see for awhile.

Mike, just an fyi, when you are using a spell with a cast time, you can move in the last .2-.5 seconds of the cast (I don't remember the exact number) without interrupting your own cast if you need to get out of an enemy aoe.

Just remember to always do content unlock quests (blue quest icons with a plus symbol) and class/job quests every 5 levels (shown under the main story quest in the top left)! Also, these "collect x" quests are a lot better in ffxiv as there's no % drop rate, you'll always get the item, and they start being delegated to side quests later on.

It’s always entertaining seeing people’s first impression with 14. The game preach is playing is not the same game I’m playing. Shadowbringers is such an incredibly beautiful experience. The raids are very difficult, classes are complex. The fact that he’s enjoying ARR story means he’s set up to be utterly blown away by heavenward and shadowbringers.

Preach man. The moment you said you played plenty of the FFs, it was then I knew you were in for one hell of a treat. Enjoy it!

Oh, I think I know why you got some of those Tutorials at a weird time. In the main Cities (for you Ul'dah) there are normal quests around Level 1-3 that are meant to be the Tutorials. So you pick up those quests and the Tutorial triggers and shows you what to do before you do it. Since yous skipped those they triggered after you have done what they're supposed to teach you.

I actually like that the tutorials pop up after. They let you figure it out, but also eliminate that feeling you get in games of "Wait what did I just do? How did I do that? What is that?" by explaining it after so you know for next time.

Welcome to Hydaelyn, Preach! The GCD will become less of a concern as you level; get new spells, a proper rotation and some off-GCD abilities. Though if you want something a bit more movement-oriented, you may want to look into changing from Black Mage; as standing still is their entire shtick. Some jobs get access to attack/cast speed increases; such as Monk, Samurai and Ninja; or work with a special way of handling long cast-times such as Red Mage. Best advice is to just stick with it and let the gameplay evolve and grow.

i love this video so much such a very fair assessment of my favorite game i PROMISE youre in for a treat later on

Great review, hit the issues right on the head. Keep in mind Black Mage can be a tough class for leveling, it changes completely every 10 levels or so, and doesn't really feel complete until about lv 60. After 72 and on, it's great, simple but satisfying if you can execute it under pressure in raids and such.

It's always a great idea in FFXIV to avoid doing the side quests on your "main" job, if you can resist the urge. Because most quests are not repeatable, if you save the side quests for later, you can use them to help level up another job on the same character, and you can play ALL jobs on just one character. That said, always do the "blue" quests if you can (blue quest markers) as they unlock extra systems for you (such as the dye system, materia for crafting, the gold saucer, etc...)

great video btw! i been wait fer the last of yall to come over lol. and i think given some time yer gonna enjoy it more.

Cant wait to see more! Glad Preach is doing ff content now, I'm on ARR atm coming from wow but I enjoy seeing other players having fun with FF. Definitely feels a lot more relaxing than wow.

@Preach Gaming On the longer global cool down (when compared to Wow): When I first started playing it felt a bit slow yes. But as soon as you start playing around with a melee DPS class it becomes kind of needed. Melee DPS skills are build around your position towards the enemy. For the most part if you are behind or to its flanks. You actually need to use the global cooldown to re-position before you use the next ability to do max damage.

I am loving your first hours of play through Mike! Very fair assessment of the early game and love the idea of periodic reviews as you journey through the game. Hope you have fun!

I am excited you've started playing 14. You're one of my favorite content creators and ever since I fell out of love with WoW, I still watched your content but not as much as before. 14 is the MMO I' have played the longest and I think your approach to diving in is perfect. Keep up the awesome work! Nice hair!

I was pretty confused when you said "Menagerie system", but then I realised you must have meant the Hunting Log! And yes, pretty much all classes start out very slow (I'm speaking of those that start at lvl 1 in particular) and you can feel the GCD on melees more, but it gets a lot busier when you're higher level, plus you start getting gear with Spell/Skill Speed on it (that said, of course not all jobs want Spell/Skill Speed, but that's another topic). In my experience, on some jobs you have so many things (off-GCDs) to fit into that GCD that sometimes you wish it was actually longer xDD But anyway, hope you keep having fun with the game! P.S. Don't get discouraged by ARR dungeons by the way, they're pretty boring, especially the earlier ones.

I don't play WoW, nor do I play FF14, so I don't have a horse in this race, I've watched and mostly lurked for a long time because I simply think you're a great content creator who's able to convey his thoughts well. Stopping to exclusively cover one game has been a blessing, because you're far too good a content creator to be stuck to one game, whichever game that may be.

It took me 6 tries to get into FFXIV, which all come down to my overwhelming myself. Once I focused on MSQ and job quests I rocketed through it. ARR is rough, but man does it reward your efforts. Once I hit Heavensward I was full throttle and I shot all the way through to complete Shadowbringers within about 2 months (maybe less). The journey was everything I had hoped and more. I actually consider the entirety of the experience to be amongst my most profound MMO experiences, right up there with the first time I saw Ultima Online during its Beta. It goes without saying that my deepest wish is that you take this journey in its entirety, and I genuinely do not think you would regret it at all. However, with that said, I appreciate how you approached this side quest journey into FFXIV. Heartbreaking to think of you not completing it, but joyous knowing you at least tried it out.

Thanks for sharing this Preach. I had played WoW from Vanilla day 1 to January 6th 2021 and was interested to see and hear what you had to say about FF14. Great insights and many things you mentioned resonated with me. Cheers and keep up the good work.

When the Pharos Sirus dungeon theme started to play at 5:00 ... I literally got chills. Great video! The gameplay really does improve drastically, it's just unfortunate that they haven't gone back to the early gameplay and improved the pacing... hopefully at some point!

If it makes you feel better, they showed the new map system for Endwalker. it is getting SIGNIFICANT improvements.

*** Gameplay doesn't pick up in later expansions, but later levels. You need off GCD spells as gap fillers, and FF does that quite well.

Nice. I'll be glad to tune in for these videos Mike.

I just started Ff14 2 weeks ago, also coming from Wow, PoE and in my case D3, and this game totally gets better as you progress through the story. There is a lot this game got right and I'm told it gets better in the next expansion. I'm excited to follow this series and see how both your journey and thoughts progress. Cheers my friend

Glad to see you're giving this a shot, Preach! Definitely stick with it until you get access to the skills that are off global cooldown. Not sure how many good ones the Black Mage has since it's one of my lesser played classes, but most classes get loads of buttons that you end up weaving in between casts. As you get into higher levels, they introduce extra gauges, resources, and mechanics to manage that totally change how you play each class. The rotations get a lot more intricate and the decision-making becomes more involved. Some of the melee at lower levels are literally just doing a 2 button combo over and over, but once you get to a higher level, you have like a 30+ button opener. You also have different jobs open up, like Dancer, which has a ton of procs, and those procs proc other procs. It's kind of like a ranged support version of WoD ret pally where you just have buttons lighting up all over the place.

It finally happened! :) Happy journey Mike! Play it as a single player at first for maximum enjoyment.

I'm super glad that you're enjoying yourself! Take it at a casual pace. Nobody is rushing you to get to end-game. I recently resubbed to all your channels on account of you telling Blizz to eat a bag of dirt and trying out FFXIV! Kudos to you for doing what's right!

Thanks for giving the game a fair shot! Glad you're enjoying some aspects, and yeah I think most of your gripes will be mitigated as you level and reach more modern parts of the game. I've played all the jobs to max level and I can assure you once your Thaumaturge/Black Mage is leveled higher the combat will not feel slow. I think of all the jobs I found playing that one most stressful, in terms of properly executing my rotation while also dealing with fight mechanics. It's a challenging and rewarding job to learn to play!

"Begging for my character to show some kind of emotion" - Oh buddy, you're really really not ready, you will get your wish

ARR makes you appreciate everything that comes later. The story gets so, so good around 50+ and the gameplay just gets better and better. You'll really enjoy everything the later game has to offer, just power through ARR and take in the story.

Dude you seem to be enjoying the game and you do look really happy :) I might sub up as soon as our working hours normalizes

Welcome to ffxiv preach! :D Knew youd come sooner or later! Enjoy your stay and enjoy the story. You are in for a ride.

Dude, I can't wait to see your reaction to raiding! Really curious to see if you'll like it. If you can make it to final coil of Coils of Bahamut, than I believe you will have a clear picture of what awaits you further into the many expansions. It is a gem of a raid and a hell of an experience, on all difficulties. Also, gameplay does pickup with off GCD talents later on. Also, really want to see you do Golden Saucer some day.

Morning mike. Thank you for always making good content for us.

I'm so excited to see your journey in Eorzea! I hope you have a great time with it!

Welcome to 14, Preach! I hope you enjoy, buddy! Yes, things start off kinda slow but it picks up as you progress. Good luck on your adventure and hope you have a load of fun!

I have to say: it starts slowly until you get to about 30. Garuda in MSQ. From there, it is a very respectable game. As expansions release and funding increased, the story only improves. More off global cooldown abilities really spice up the combat. I played wow from 2008-21 and started ff14 after CE this tier. Loving the game, just about on the last expansion. Haven't touched wow since. Though it's been a few months, I have not touched endgame but I look forward to it in my own time. The game is a little dated, it's clear they did their best with what they started with and have built upon it within their limitations. They are certainly investing money back into this game.

Yeah almost every single one of your gripes with gameplay are entirely addressed by the time you reach the end of the free content (around lvl 60, at the end of Heavensward). All your criticisms are accurate for ARR, 100%, and the fact that those problems still exist in the earliest parts of the game is another topic on it's own, but they really did go out of their to address everything the players had issue with, or in other words Blizzard doesn't run FF14 thankfully lol

Loved it. Can't wait for u to experience more of the game.

Im glad you brought up the map issue - it really put off the start of the game and I found myself spending more time planning my route and navigation than actually travelling there!

JUST WAIT till you get to HW and later expansions! HOLY CRAP it get SO good(Voice acting included)! i went from never playing an MMO in my entire life (aside from some Runescape and WOW in my early years) to FFXIV and im hooked, i literally spend every second of my free time on it. i never once thought id love it this much! And i picked it up rather quickly. IMO you will enjoy it!

HOLY SHIT YOU'RE FLOOR INSPECTOR!?!? I saw you walking around Ul'Dah!!! What a coincidence!

Glad youre having fun preach!

Hi Preach. I love your streaming and your videos a lot, and i feel happiness when i watch your stuff. Keep it up. :D I have played FFXIV since first day because i played FFXI Online back on X360 days.

I love that you named yourself "Floor Inspector".

Best thing about FF in comparison to WoW is that the quests that are like “collect hearts from these creatures” will give you the heart every single time. So you aren’t killing 20 mobs to get 6 hearts.

keep at it preach game will hook you in when you get to the first expansion and even more after that :D

Glad to see you trying out ff preach. I watched you for years in wow and eagerly await watching your journey through ff. Enjoy man have fun

Preach playing FF14!?! Great to see you trying it, i think you'll really like the later expansion content, in particular heavensward and shadowbringers.

Totally valid complaints for the early game. I felt a lot of the same. Thing i had to keep in mind is take it with a pinch of salt and consider the fact it's the "PS3 era" ..which is absolutely improved upon in later expansions.

Thanks for giving FFXIV a try! Its definitely my favorite MMO nowadays, even after playing WoW for over 10 years. I'm really excited to see your journey and hear your thoughts as you progress through the early content and beyond!

Awesome content as usuall. And jeeesus you made me laugh my as off at 12:50

ARR is severely hampered by the 1.0 Spaghetti code... when they build on it, it's actually fantastic. Heavensward was the first time they got to show what they could themselves, and it really shows I think!

Welcome! Excited to see your progression. Jumping straight into BLM, the leveling isn't going to fee lSUPER good until level 60 really, where your "main" class mechanic really kicks in. It is NOTORIOUS for feeling kinda bleh. That holds true for most classes though, and is absolutely a fair gripe and I think the devs have recognized this. The story only goes up and up and up from here though. If you are invested now, I'm excited to hear your thoughts once you've caught up.

Really enjoyed my 1st month in FFXIV. The change of pace from WoW has been awesome. Enjoying healing again. Enjoying instances again.

Actually agree with you entirely on all fronts. Very excited to see you get into the later content, especially when you can start doing the Trials and Extreme Trails, I think you'll really like those.

I did every single side quest in the entire game. I love questing, and I enjoy all the little stories that were told during it. Also a nice touch to meet familiar NPC's during holiday events or in the story or what have you who might recognize you. The dialogue changes depending on that. I can see how that would not be for everyone, but it made me smile.

One thing: your character DOES stay silent, but various inside jokes and jokes from other characters sometimes makes this better. And trust me, you probably don’t want voice acting. In fallout 4, it was notorious for having a voice acted protagonist that many people didn’t connect with so they made mods called “Silent Protagonist” One of those differences you just get used to. I find it amusing these days when the character does the anime headnod. But I’m glad you’re enjoying and giving it a shot and not going in TOTALLY blind. Sure it’s a tough sell to have to trudge through a bunch of entry level content to get to the “good stuff” but you’ll learn later looking back the base game isn’t “bad” but that every seed it plants in terms of story and gameplay eventually gets improved so substantially and THATS why everyone says the later stuff is so much better. But hey, it’s final fantasy. These are NOTORIOUS for being long. Haha. Welcome! I came in as a WoW refugee a few months ago also and it’s really fun and i look forward to seeing all your thoughts as everything unfolds! :)

This is fun watching the start of his epic journey lol.

Hey Preach, looking forward to you playing hope you have fun!

Man, you're on the money with those closing thoughts. "It makes no sense... But it's fun". Like literally, one job (Blue Mage) is literally an unbalanced mess that learns spells from monsters (literally, you learn abilities from enemies, by getting hit) and you can select a full class's worth of spells from your own collection (over 100 spells can be learned, up to 24 or 28 can be selected as active spells to use). They made it so you can't queue Blue Mage into regular matchmaking from Duty Finder, but only with either pre-made parties (There is also a Party Finder for stuff like this) or solo-ing the content. And let me tell you, it gets cartoonishly weird, but it is so much fun. Pulling a Yoshi-like tongue pull followed by dropping a magical hammer on your enemy and interrupting enemy cats by throwing a fish in their face. It makes no sense. But it is fun!

Just as a warning that I'm sure you've heard before, gameplay takes a while to pick up. In my case it happened at around level 57. Dungeons and normal content are intended to be easy so every player can experience the story. Hope you enjoy your journey in Eorzea! :)

Love you’re playing through it! To make a note on the tool tips/tutorials like others have mentioned they come up at weird times or not when you expect them because like many mmo’s there are a lot of systems and things going on so SE is just trying not to bombard you with 1,000 different things at once because that would be overwhelming. You can go into the help section and look at all tutorials also, or ask a player or ask in shout, I guarantee someone will help you, might even make a friend! (Just don’t do it in Limsa :p) welcome to Eorzea Preach!! Also a side note I like to think of XIV as an rpgmmo instead of mmorpg looking at it that way helps with perspective on somethings

Accurate and fair. The black mage experience in particular is something I relate to strongly. I wasn't even aware of the GCD until I tried another class, and I believe that helped me get through the early parts of the game without getting frustrated with the gameplay. Looking forward to seeing how your journey goes.

wait why are you calling the Hunting Log the "menagerie" i was so confused lmfao

I can tell you from experience Preach, how the game flows and plays at the early levels you're at is NOTHING like how the game feels and plays at max level. It's totally an apples vs oranges comparison. Frankly, the first 60 or so levels feel like a tutorial in a lot of ways and it's a pretty slow ramp up. Once you get to 70 and eventually 80, you can tell that the training wheels come off, you have your entire tool-kit, the whole 2.5 second GCD thing becomes totally irrelevant, and you absolutely will see that at higher levels if you stick with the game. Can't stress that enough. Honestly though, I went into 14 thinking I was going to hate it. I only decided to download it because Asmon and other WoW content creators decided to try it out. WoW is pretty much the only MMO I've known for 15+ years and I thought there was zero chance 14 could live up to that standard. But then a week passed by and I was still playing. Then another week. Then a month.. and yup, still playing the game. Pretty much the same sort of thing that happened with Asmon. Ended up liking the game way more than anyone thought, and the same is true with me. I've been subbed for a little over two months and my /playtime right now is astronomically high for that amount of time. It is the ONLY game I've played these last two months, I've leveled multiple jobs to 80, finished the MSQ, did a lot of extreme trials and some savage raid content, and it's been a blast. The raid design, mechanics, difficulty, has thoroughly impressed me as a former mythic raider in WoW. Impressed me to the point that I pre-ordered Endwalker weeks ago once I first got a taste of the end-game content. I hope you stick with the game and see it through to 80 with your stream. It'll make for great content. I think if you get to 80 and do some of the high-end content, you're going to totally understand why a lot of people love this game. The story is another topic all-together(I loved it) but I'll leave it at that. Straight up, I haven't felt this excited about playing an MMO since probably WOTLK, and the same goes for how hyped I am to take part in my first expansion launch with Endwalker coming out in a couple months. It's been an unreal experience so far.

Awesome to see this Preach. Been following you since MoP. I stopped playing WoW just a bit before you and have been in FFXIV since. Sitting at about 250 hours /played, which in FFXIV is /playtime. The game gets very deep, and I feel I'm only scratching the surface. I can't wait to see your thoughts on the game a month from now. I will 100% be watching all of these with the same fervor that I watch your Drama Times!

Cool that you're giving it a chance. I love the game. Been playing since launch. I do agree that the worst parts of the game are levels 1-49. It picks up much quicker and gets way better at 50+ as you start getting all the epic spells and off-globals to weave between your rotation. With each expansion you can tell where the devs have learned and improved with each release of content. The best tip I can give to anyone is turn the music up when you enter a Trial/Raid.

A femroe huh? Such refined taste.

I was amused about your comments about the player character being emotionless because I've had the opposite reaction. Yes, there's that little solemn nod (which they even make fun of at some point), but your character is also portrayed in cutscenes as puzzled, thoughtful, angry, sad. Much more expressiveness than I've seen in other games.

I love watching this after all he's gone through

Glad you're enjoying it Mike, and excited to see you carry on. Also 95% of your problems are totally gone or at least significantly alleviated later on :)

"Your character just nods mostly" All the characters just nod mostly

Player expression in ff14 is great. I love wandering through the housing districts.

as a long time sub of yours mike, and now a FF14 player (left wow in 7/2020), stoked to hear your thoughts. FF14 is the first and only game, my wife of 21 years, has played with me. She's a console player, me PC, and that we play together, is also another big win for this game. as so many have said, grind through the early rougher parts, and it really opens up. this game is super rich with content. hell, I'm still unlocking new stuff. Great video!

I have started ffxiv a few weeks ago and also started as a Cater. I have since leveled some other classes and man, you really feel the 2.5s on those... like REALLY feel it for the first couple levels.

It's fetch quests all the way down, the quest structure never fundamentally changes from teleport here and talk to NPC, possibly kill some enemies and then teleport to the next quest marker.

I’m so glad you are playing 14… even if you end up deciding it’s not for you I’m just glad you gave it a shot. I have enjoyed your content since Pandaria and you were always my favourite WoW creator. Sadly when I quit in BFA I stopped watching the vids because WoW felt like an abusive relationship I finally got out of. I’ll be happily lurking in the streams while you play through the game.

Mr preach , i welcome you to ffxiv =) . Accualy glad your playing ffxiv , your perspective is mostly appriciated. Have your fun in ffxiv .

Thank you for the Taliesin Jaffe appreciation frame Chris!