FFXIV has lost it's magic

[Wildsprite]

XI was never really that small post the US release

actually pre CoP it was not very big

The rest of the zones in XIV lost about 30-40% or more of their actual mass after the 2.0 relaunch. 1.0 was much much bigger.

they split the zones into something like 18 smaller zones for each one. as for the areas being smaller sadly that is supposed to be due to what Bahamut did to the land.

As for your second paragraph. My guess is you rushed your way through your own opinion. Of course XI wasn't like that, there was no rushing through XI at launch. You fought and scraped through every encounter for your hard earned, yes hard, exp and levels.

unfortunately it was not long before this changed. on Bahamut not more than a year after CoP was launched people were finding ways to rush their way to endgame.

ARR's biggest problem (imo) is that it is not more like XI and 1.0 in the area of leveling. You shouldn't be able to max anything out in days. Period. Fast leveling wiped out gathering and crafting from being truly relevant since you don't need to buy much if any gear whatsoever since you aren't in the level range very long. They completely blew over 1-50 solely because of RMT concerns (imo) to prevent RMT from controlling the markets like they did in XI. While no I don;t want something as long leveling as XI or 1.0, I would have liked 2.0 to be something more between of where it is now and XI/1.0. Like maybe take 5-10 days to go from, say, 45+ per level instead of a couple hours.

I agree with you on this but unfortunately the masses do not.