I hope this game doesn't become like FFXI

[Griss]

I'm sorry, but no. The last thing we need is another mishap like absolute virtue. That was probably the only time I've ever felt true hatred for a team of developers. Specially after seeing how they reacted to any mention of AV.

There's a difference between a boss that is overtuned to a point it is nearly unbeatable by the best raid comp (C'thun, pre-nerf M'uru) and the crap that was AV. What I want is a well-balanced encounter that can be downed after some practice. Not something to wipe on week after week with nothing to show for it other than repair bills and the task itself turning into a chore.

Not very well versed in wow raid boss history so i will have to take your word for it.

Perhaps i was hasty to invoke the name of the nm who shall not be named. Perhaps i am tilting at windmills here, but my point still stands and your more then welcome to disagree it. But a Final fantasy game with out optional things that will hand you your rear until you figure it out and get your strategy down pat is a hollow one.

[Duelle]

Not very well versed in wow raid boss history so i will have to take your word for it.

Long Story Short: C'thun was overtuned when AQ40 hit live servers during vanilla. Even with a perfect raid comp, perfect gearing and legendaries, you still could not beat him. If memory serves, the world first kill did not happen until he was actually nerfed.

M'uru in Sunwell Plateau was a similar story, though that boss was beaten. It required a perfect raid comp and flawless play (and no one DC'ing). Once the top 2% got their fill he was nerfed so that more guilds could down him and make it to the final boss of the instance. Pre-nerf M'uru was and still is a measuring stick for how well a guild handled raid encounters.

But a Final fantasy game with out optional things that will hand you your rear until you figure it out and get your strategy down pat is a hollow one.

Here's the problem: this works in console FF games because most of those guys are there for bragging rights for the most part.

That doesn't fly in an MMO because you need the gear carrot-on-a-stick to get people to do anything. I can concede in the event that it is something completely unrelated to storyline content with plenty of alternatives to whatever they may drop (AV happened to drop the best haste belt in the game amongst other goodies).

In the end, it could be that what I consider hard is different from most of the stuff cited from FFXI. People say Kirin was hard, whereas I say Kirin was a poorly-designed boss that had to be kited to be killed because otherwise he did too much damage. No interesting mechanics, no abilities to watch out for. You just kited Kirin, used WS once your DPS slept to 100-300 TP and you were done. Fafnir was the same thing, leaving the damage to your black mages and monks spamming chi blast while your DPS played cheerleaders because you had to avoid giving Faf TP. Even divine might was basically a bunch of stuff thrown together and leaving the players to figure out how to get around the mechanics rather than take the encounter head-on (hence why super tank and 18 BLM method became so prominent).

To restate my other point, you can make stuff reasonably challenging without making it all timesinks.