Quote Originally Posted by MeowyWowie View Post
The problem here is that there is nothing worth playing for if you play a lot. Everything is obtained extremely fast and quickly leaves many of us with less and less things to do in game. If you didn't like the way XI did something, how would YOU improve it? We get it, not everyone likes to sit in one spot for hours for a pop. I have yet to see any real solutions from any casual players to improve this other than "instance this, or make things spawn faster." Those are not solutions, it's a cop out and still leads to the same problem.
Sitting around rewarded people for having lots of free time to play the game and for being able to schedule their lives around pop windows. That's not fun, and instead leads to the game intruding on real life.

Instancing content means you can still grind for gear, but don't have to worry about in-game conditions like pop windows. I've done gear grinding before, and we would schedule one to three nights a week to raid. That's doable, long term and can keep us busy for a prolonged amount of time. It's not a cop out, its a solution that keeps people busy while giving those of us who otherwise would not an actual shot to see content.
FFXIV was marketed as a casual game and should remain one (hopefully that's the last time I have to say that.) That's doesn't mean it can't have content that takes longer than a week to beat. So instead of telling us to stop trying to turn this into a hardcore game, which we're not, share some of YOUR ideas which you think would please everyone.
Rep grinds would be one way to do it, as it introduces pacing. The Shattered Sun Offensive base near the end of TBC and Argent Tournament Grounds near the end of WotLK went a step further by making rep grinds that were paced through daily quests.

They actually have a decent opportunity to do this with the introduction of the jobs, provided they actually decide to back the jobs up with lore. I figure a group, organization, order or something like that for each job to work your way up through rep and job-related quests. Granted, that is very unlikely given what we currently know, but still...