Originally Posted by
Enma
It is true. Final Fantasy XIV misses something the XI has, the magic. First XIV failed for this reason, it was not able to catch players'feelings as XI did.
About difficulty, I think that Ifrit Extreme and Van Darnus Hard should be take as examples of what Yoshi and his team think an hard fight should be. I don't know if you experienced them but they are not so easy as you can think. So from this point of view, and from what you write, there is a huge difference between exping (old way, now in Abyssea you don't need any skill to level up) in Final Fantasy XI and in Final Fantasy XIV, but it is a problem of many modern MMO, where the exping phase has been destroyed, and the sense of satisfaction for earning a level has been removed. I think it's a loss, but not necessarily it will ruin a game, not hopelessly though.
On SOLO playing I can't say much, because if you play an MMORPG you should interact with other people, so if you don't like it, playing solo has not much sense. But I agree about NMs, it's something that Final Fantasy XIV definitely missed.