What went wrong? Is it the game or the grenre?

[NefGP]

^ and therein lies my beef with ARR and "modern" MMOs in general (including FFXI now) in that it's no longer about the content, only the shinies at the end.

The shinies are always the main reason for doing anything, but at least back in the day content was made to last and be fun - even if you had all the loot you wanted from it there as still incentive to help friends or just genuinely enjoy it (like Assault/Nyzule Isle/Campaign). Now it's just grind the current stuff until the next patch comes out so you can grind that and so on - it's never-ending cycle that's also going to keep enforcing caps on the newer content so people can't even fully enjoy the benefits (limited as they are) of the armory system.

XI never penalized me for playing every job. It never said "you can't be a Warrior AND a White Mage!" (though granted that's a horrible MJ/SJ combo anyway, my point was we had more freedom to mix and match jobs and playstyles). Everything on here is just solo until you hit 50 (like WoW) and then spam the DF for endgame. Oh, yay.

I also just love how I've got all DoL and DoH @ 50 but they're near-useless outside of repairs and making my own food.