Interim Report – Sorry to keep you all waiting!

[Prrsha]

The majority of the current player base (which is a very low number compared to old ones) that favor speedleveling are who stay with the game. The people who don't like what the game has become, have tried it for a few months, then left without a word. The simple fact is because the game is tailored that way, then those people who like speedleveling stay, have access to the forums and as such a vested intrest in the game. Those people are the "vocal" minority (due to their ability to post here).

What if SE was to take a poll to all of those players who LEFT due to the current state of the game. I am sure you'll agree that number FAR outweights the current numbers of the playerbase. Heck the people in my LS above are a prime example of that. A good 80% of them quit the game due to the changes. Will they ever return to be able to post here? Doubtful. What you have here is the great silent MAJORITY.

In order to see the numbers SE saw way back in the golden days of 2005-2006 they should at least consider their thoughts (Maybe a mass e-mail poll to ex-players would do the trick) to get an unbias poll.

Arcon has stated that levels don't matter anymore, and they should be removed. As crazy as that sounds, I'd have to agree with him if SE treats the road to level 99 as something that is an unwanted after-effect of the game. If this is the case, make every player level 99. You might as well make the test server, the "player server", so they can have access to every spell, set of gear etc. What you have now in FFXI is not a level progression ladder, but a set of ability/gear progressions... but you know what... it's the same thing. Both are time sinks and what is worse... some forms of obtaining gear is entirely luck based. At least with levels, you are guaranteed to get them. SE has just about removed the risk of leveling down (since exp is so plentiful).

So yeah same progression and time sink... different names.

Edit: clean up