Quote Originally Posted by saevel View Post
Unfortunately MMO's don't work that way. The "high end" players don't contribute enough financially to justify keeping the servers going, it's the casual players that are actually footing the bill for the game's development. Creating content that they are, by design, locked out of is not only ethnically wrong but will eventually result in a loss of total subscriptions and money. There should never be any content / reward that is out of reach of casual players. The separator between "hard core" and "casual" should not be the gear that is obtainable but rather the speed at which it's obtained. Hard core folk will simply get the gear faster then the casual players, but the casual players should still have the chance at obtaining that gear, provided they put in the time. This is one are that SE is really struggling with, they can't seem to find a balance with accessibility and are really afraid of allowing gear from hard event A to become accessibly through easy event B at a much slower rate. Abyssea was the closest they got to getting it right, casual players could still get their stuff eventually, hard core folks with plenty of time and access to lots of resources would have it done much faster.

If every "hard core" player in FFXI quit tomorrow, the game could easily continue on and the developers would end up adjusting it down. If every "casual" player quit tomorrow, the game would shut down within a month. That is how little hard core players actually matter to non-competitive MMO's.
MMO's do work that way, what are you smoking? If you look at any MMO, the people who play two hours a week don't have the best gear in the game. I'm not sure how you can think otherwise, its clear as day. If you play with such little playtime, you shouldn't need to have the best gear in the game. This has been true for almost any MMO I've ever played, even FFXIV where you need ilevel gear to even enter some of the instances to do the fights. You can work towards the gear in FFXI just like the others though, even with minimal play time but it takes a lot longer. There are shouts for Delve all the time, and plenty of people who sell the wins to others where you can buy one and use the items mobs drop in the field to obtain plasm. None of the content in this game is out of reach of players, NONE, it is simply an issue of laziness or unwillingness to participate. How is it my problem that you have two hours a week to play? Why should I be penalized with dumbed down easy content just so you can obtain it? One guy even posted he doesn't have a win because he is a DD meathead who refuses to play support to help a party. Catering to people like that is ridiculous. I also think you are quite wrong about the hardcore players. If you haven't noticed, this game has a very niche userbase and the sub numbers aren't exactly super high. If all the hardcore players quit, I doubt you would have a game left.