I'll reiterate again that I don't like having mobs from rank 1 through 99 in starting zones. It feels like the adventure is over before it has even started. But I wanted to mention something about the current "fade to black" zone changes that are present in the game, and what they say about the world. I'm referring to the non-seamless transition when moving between Thanalan and the Shroud, Coerthas and Mor Dhona, etc.

Yesterday I decided to take a run around various parts of the world. Exploring the world is one of my favorite things to do in an MMO, and while Final Fantasy XIV's world at present lacks diverse areas with distinct local identities, I wanted take a little trip. I wandered around the southern Shroud into Thanalan and back. Then I teleported to Camp Bentbranch and ran from there over to Camp Crimson Bark and all the way into Mor Dhona. Once in Mor Dhona I went clockwise to Camp Brittlebark, around to Camp Revenant's Toll, and then into Coerthas, where I finally logged off. Yes, I realize that my choice of path was insane; I did it just for kicks, dying several times.

So, on to the point: I was thinking about the "fade to black" zone lines as I ran across several of them yesterday. Unlike FFXI, the next zone starts loading before you reach the "zone line". There's a certain point that the game starts to "zone" you before you actually hit the little arrow on your mini-map. If you pass this invisible point you will zone no matter what, it seems. You can stop in your tracks and wait for it to happen, or you can continue running toward the "zone arrow" on your mini-map. You can even be in the middle of a battle: I tried pulling a couple of the marmots in Thanalan on the zone to the Shroud and zoned automatically while I was fighting. I started the zone process when I moved in to fight the marmots, and when the game was ready it faded to black and zoned me before I defeated them :P I also tried running as fast as I could toward the zone lines a couple of times. Possibly due to lag, I was able to get to the arrow on the mini-map twice before the screen faded to black. There is actually an invisible wall there that doesn't show up on the map, so my character kind of did the moonwalk for a couple of seconds, running in place until the black load screen finally triggered. The loading screen itself is very short: only a couple of seconds. It seems a lot faster than in FFXI, probably because the next zone is already loading in the background before any fade to black occurs.

That made me think: I wonder if the loading screen was even a necessity. Perhaps they could have had the forest run smack into the desert in a little loading passageway. However, since that would look strange, and designing a transition area would have been a lot of work, they created a fade-to-black. It could also be that they designed the five regions completely separately and just pieced them together at the last minute using the fade-to-black loads. It seems like the five regions function like lego blocks, which the designers sort of stuck together at the end. They may have considered having more areas, such as something between Thanalan and the Shroud, but they didn't have the development time to do it.

I'm not arguing against loading screens in this post: while I'd prefer a seamless and diverse world, I'd gladly sacrifice seamlessness in favor of diversity. But I do think that FFXIV's current fade-to-black loads seem a little too convenient, like there wasn't enough of a plan for how the world should fit together. Even the map shows a wall a little past the zone arrows. There isn't an open passageway indicating that the zone connects with something else (like in FFXI maps); the arrow says "zone", but the map says "dead end, actually". I guess they just didn't want to have to edit the map when they added new zones.

I apologize for the meandering nature of this post. My point is that it feels like the game was developed without an overarching vision for the world and how it should fit together. As a result, the current world lacks a feeling of cohesion. I think that's one reason why my in-game experience yesterday felt like I was crossing between separate "modules" rather than walking around a continent.

This problem could be solved by adopting ideas presented elsewhere in this thread. A major map redesign would be best, resulting in distinct areas that flow together in a natural progression (with or without load screens). The second-best option would be to make existing sub-zones much more distinct. In such a case I think it would still be necessary to better "sell" the fact that the larger areas connect together, such as more trees near a zone into the Shroud.

Whatever changes are made to Eorzea in the future, they need to emphasize that this is a unified world. As you leave town and move from zone to zone you can feel yourself striking out into the world, getting farther and farther from home. That's when "running through a zone" starts to feel more like "embarking on a journey".