Ludicrous game mechanics are ludicrous

[Evandis]

Yes. From what you are getting at, it seems that you have very little experience in RPGS or even other games in general. Go play games that have compassess to show you the way or the ones that give you directions to where you need to go. Those games are over in a matter of hours. Start at point A, go to point B as instructed, game finished. They lose all replayability. Games should be like this and not handed to you ona silver platter. The point is, is that if oyu want to, someone else already did go through the same thing and has told other people of such. Even before teh hard information age we have now, there were stratagy guides for this kind of thing.
My first serious RPG was Crono Trigger. Aside from 5 or 6 things that had to do with the main story, you weren't told jack. You had to go out and figure out everything by yourself. This is how games should be. Things from one area affecting another without you even knowing about it. I.e. Things from the past changing the future and then you aren't able to take on said thing in the furture anymore. All of this is called effort, it's a dirty word I know. Back in '04 I never touched any online sources to play FFXI. I would say to people in the LS, "Hey, how do I X?" And guess what, there were people who knew, or knew people who knew. "Oh btw, you need fame for that."
"What's fame?"
Admittedly, perhaps there should have been some blurb when you go to somewhere like Norg from quest NPCs saying something like, "Who are you?" With increases like "Weren't you that guy?" or "Weren't you here before?" much like the fame NPCs change what they say. It would show that there might be something there later.
But the biggest point is, is that back in the day, you had to you know. Go places and talk to people.

Oh please get off your high horse and stop spouting this stupid silver platter crap. This is a game and when you look around at other MMOs, specifically the one that you are putting down indirectly, they have far more players. You know why? Because it's fun for more people than those who have no jobs or simple jobs that require no deduction skills. Many people go to work 5 days a week and solve complex issues and want to come home and enjoy a game, not a second job.

The real reason the game is so bland on information is because, as usual with SE, they want to force you to buy the strategy guide as well. And there was quite a large one sold for this in 03/04. This mixed with SEs apparent disdain for anything not Japanese is one of the major downfalls to this game, and the fact that 500K subscribers was the peak of it. This game seems to have been released outside of Japan begrudgingly, as a money making idea and not a true decision by that idiot Tanaka, and he is an idiot that can kill games with promise because of BS mentioned above.

Many MMO makers have found ways to make a game both fun and challenging without just adding 2 billion collect this and collect that items and quests. You say that those games have a short lifespan...please, WoW is smashing on MMOs with their subscription AND player loyalty rates and will have a much longer lifespan thanks to it.

WoW was too cartoony for me, but there are many things about FFXI that are frustrating, and downright insulting to those who want to play and enjoy a game. I don't want to see everyone walking around with Mythic, but maybe if there was some sort of logical hint and progression system with most of these quests and fame based scenarios, there would be many more new players who play and stay.

Also, the JP gaming community has gotten a lot more localized responses to their questions and hint dropping from SE. It's why when this game started in the NA in 2003, most of the information was gleaned by NA players who could read the JP sites.