Quote Originally Posted by Puck View Post
They'd better have something big planned for Vanafest like when they blew us away with the pre-Abyssea Vanafest. There needs to be a large-scale injection of new zones, innovative systems, and something Abyssea didn't have at all: story.
Dear god, I hope for no new zones. With the exception of the missing hemisphere (reference the area between the Aht Urhgan capital to the east, and the unseen area extending beyond the oceanic space on the Conquest map), there are already dozens of zones that are seldom if ever populated because there is nothing of value in them at this point. Revamp these zones, rather than creating more areas that will not be populated outside of limited times/events.

There isn't enough new blood in FFXI to justify creating a new series of zones, which is why my "I dream of a fully visitable Vana'diel world" to be a fantasy that will never be revealed. So I would advise against getting hopes up on "new zones" while strongly supporting "innovative systems and ... story."

I haven't logged in for weeks, and it's not like I don't have things I could be doing in-game, there's just no motivation to do that. Why get X piece of gear to make X job better? So I can then fight more things to collect more gear to do the same stuff? But why? To what end? It's all just running in a hamster wheel, getting gear to fight things to get more gear. It's pointless.

There's no adventures left to be had. No epic stories left to experience. THAT'S what's really killing the game. I'm just crossing my fingers that Vanafest will bring an announcement that the game's future includes new adventures, not just new battle events.
With most MMOs, the secondary attribute of the game -is- gear collection; and it is vastly easier to create new gear and gear-aquisition challenges than it is to add epic storyline content. I think a lot of players don't know that the whole "getting gear just to make the job better" -is- one of the vital aspects of MMOs, and with a member base that shows limited to know growth, adding hard-to-aquire gear is the best method of maintaining a member base which has already completed the storylines. That is to say, the gear aquisition methods need to not be totally futile (*cough* Nyzule *cough*)