Please stop making old content super easy

[Garlyle]

XIV is a game for the masses and as such, most of its content has to be made for them. It's a sad truth. The real shame here, however, is that all MMOs that have come out in the last years are trying to grab the WoW-carrot and all of them are aiming for a high amount of costumers.

First off, Customers. Not Costumers. Although many players are indeed interested in vanity.

And second, this is the reality of a large portion of gaming in general, simply due to the side effects of continuously improving technology. AAA studios are often mocked for an unwillingness to innovate, but the reality is that in order to pay the costs of the games they make, they need customers - and as technology has improved, the cost of keeping games looking relevant (and therefore being able to catch people's eyes) has improved massively.

MMORPGs have it worse - there's a constant, perpetual cost associated with the existance of an MMORPG just to maintain servers, nevermind continue to update, nevermind continue to update at the level of quality and fidelity that is expected of a modern day game. Just getting people to notice your existance in the face of the giant that is World of Warcraft is hard, nevermind convincing players it's worth making the switch. I'm sure someone could make a super hardcore MMORPG in this day and age - but you'd better be ready for it to look like the original Everquest did, and a lot of players would not be. Because if the gameplay turns away a huge portion of the customer base, that's what they'd be able to afford - which in turn would push away a lot of even potential customers, even many that the game is being designed for. Right now, MMORPGs are in a tight spot - they either need to succeed massively or be ready to crash and burn. And massive success means the game has to be able to played by massive numbers of players.