Do you respect or awed by level 50? No?

[Devilray]

No.

If this is what you want, this game is clearly not designed for you.

Go to Kickstarter and find a niche sandbox 1998-era MMO to grind away your life on.

How do you know what the game is designed for? You are not the DEV. FC housing was the first nail in the coffin for people like you. There is more to come that will destroy your hopes of it being casual forever. I run through the low-lvl zone to do relic quests, and there is no one that gives a crap about high-levels because there is no danger in the open-world. Don't understand all this nonsense about grinding when that's not even what we are talking about.

And to address further opinions about this matter, have you guys seen the anime .hack //sign, Sword Art Online, Log Horizon, etc... All of them are about MMO worlds where the high-level characters were sought after and respected the most. Just more evidence that FFXIV ARR is kind of going against the trend. High levels are supposed to be adored and respected, but there is honestly no reason to bat an eye at them in ARR. The only achievement worth bragging about is Coil Allagan weapon, and that is really not enough because it is something really anyone could do within a couple weeks. FFXI, you would be head over heels for someone who had 75, and especially a 75 with a relic. WoW, 60 in vanilla wow was pretty admirable. PSO (Phantasy Star Online) lvl 200 was awesome. Don't know why you guys are proposing to flatten the hierachy when that is what keeps people playing. FFXIV ARR lvl 50... BORING, not even going to examine you. You will see, the market will return back to its ROOTS. ARR is only a branch of a tree that will wither away in due time if it doesn't start embracing its roots.