Quote Originally Posted by Winrie View Post
Sorry to break it to you, but before Abyssea, we had Limbus, Dynamis, Salvage, HNM, ZNM, VNM, Sea, Sky and Einherjar all to do, that all held a relevance to actually do. Im sorry but tending to the casual gamer did more damage than it did good, it gave veterans a year of fresh air to move on from the game, and it gave newer people a chance at decent gear without having to grind out. As for the comment to whomever the hell said it, HC players back before abyssea were not capped on most endgame content, Hence camps still had 60ish or more people at them, salvage still was some of the best stuff in the game, hence worth doing on a regular basis, HNMs still held great gear, and odin was a viable option for king gear among some other rare pieces.

Im not even going to mention the essence of teamplay and SKILL that was needed before abyssea, now its mindless f'n zombies flailing at everything til they cap, and its easy to cap, when you cap you quit. Considering people were doing all the above endgame contents for how many years obtaining gear? and now most the playerbase is bored and were one year after abyssea year long reign? im wrong right? Abyssea killed your game. Anyone even notice how abyssea and new nyzul is harder now? if SE believed an extreme casual environment would save ffxi then those pieces of new content would be easy mode as well. Argue it if you wish, it doesnt matter at the end of the day for anyone.
@ first rambling paragraph-

To say it as simply as i can, grindfest for gear ad nausea in lieu of actual game design is not a good thing. I've done all the events you rattled off and a few you didn't, all came before Abyssea and none of them were hard once you do them a few times. Having to wade into the grungy cesspool that was Endgame pre-Abyssea and stay there for YEARS on end to get a shot at gear that might boost your play a few %age points was not cool. Saying it was is being disingenuous. Your figure, 60+ ppl at a camp trying for 5 year+ old gear, is also not cool.

And wth do you mean by players not being capped on endgame? If you mean not having every single item, then i know of very few players that have a fraction of that. If you mean having done everything there is to do, can't say i know anyone that's done that either.

@ rambling paragraph the second-

How much teamplay and skill were needed to have tanks engage, DDs zerg, and mages support rinse-alot? Not trying to be Abyssea white knight extraordinaire here, but you can't say that those roles magically vanished when Visions went live. Not only did they remain, they had Abyssea's nifty quirks melded to them. And really that synthesis of old and new took skill and teamplay to a fun place that hadn't been around for most oldtimers since WAY back in the day.

Cutting my rambling short, you know what is atm and will ultimately kill FFXI? The current mindset held by the dev team and their insistence on trying to put the genie back into the bottle. Abyssea worked and worked well. Now instead of behaving like a real business and building from what was considered a win by the vast majority of players and most non-players possessing the common sense the universe granted a cat, the dev team is trying to time-shift FFXI back into a period where it was bleeding subscribers do to ingame stagnation.

Personally, i loathed Salvage and Dynamis both. What i didn't do however was try and pin all of FFXI's ills on those parts of the game i found distasteful. I've said before, if you don't like Abyssea-that's fine. Just own your opinion and roll with it without tearing down one of the few critical successes that the game has enjoyed in a while.

Your final line was spot on though. End of the day it doesn't matter much either way.