The new player experience...

[Zeargi]

You clearly have no memory of what it was like on your first few days in the game, knowing no one and understanding nothing. One of the core problems with XI these days is the amnesia suffered by so many long-term players.

But the thing is that time is LONG gone. I remember having no clue what to do, but I had people to help me in my linkshell or in parties. Now a days, those parties aren't there, but the knowledge of those people is. The Wiki is open to everyone and has that information ready at a click of a button. So a new player has MORE than enough resources to do this. It just takes a little foot work on their part. FFIX had a quest line that most American players didn't even know existed, but that didn't stop some people from learning it by playing the game. It's an RPG, and in the same sense the First Final Fantasy was the exact same, you had to talk to people, and had to learn which ones you needed to talk to to get a quest or main story line completed. But then again, I grew up playing Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. People nowadays just don't play games to actually PLAY them.