Rogue/Ninja Starting Class?

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FFXIV is also extremely casual friendly and puts a heavy emphasis on helping those who are behind catch up. I would be very surprised if they expect brand new players to level 1 class/job all the way to 50 and play all the way through the main story line. And believe it or not there are brand new players (and I'm sure SE is hoping to attract some more with ninja).



Death Knight is a bad example. Sure you had to be 55 to unlock Death Knight, but Death Knight itself started at lvl 55. So you level to 55, create a new character and pick up where you left off and continue to the max level of 70 at the time. So unless you're saying that we should start rouge/nin at 50 after unlocking it (horrible idea), this is a terrible comparison

FFXI is a bad comparison, it's a dated MMO structure with more hardcore and rigid requirements for things. FFXIV is intended to be much more casual and they do much to move away from this sort of thing.

For a game that just handed out i110 gear to hunt participants in order to catch them up with equivalent hard core content that was released 3 months ago, it would be baffling that they choose to require brand new players to attain maximum level in one class just to play another completely separate class.

Dark Knight isn't as bad an example as you make it seem. You still had to have a job at 55 on a character to create a Death Knight, meaning you still had to put in the time to level up said character. It's essentially the same thing as leveling up to 50 and doing quests up to 2.2. The argument that Death Knight as a job starts at 55 is irrelevant, the simple purpose was to show you that you needed to spend some time leveling up before you could play the class at all (Wrath of Lich King Release, it's obvious that character boosts exist now)-- the job itself was walled by a level up barrier. Now people already had 55+ jobs at the time so it didn't apply to them, but newer players who were interested in the job had to start from level 1 like everyone else. I wasn't saying that we should start from 50, but simply using the example that a barrier existed before being able to play the job.

FFXI also isn't a bad comparison -- the MMO being dated or not is irrelevant. It simply had a level up requirement and the jobs itself were walled by quests as well, similar to how FFXIV works (but of course far harder to achieve). And again, leveling your first job to 50 and doing missions up to Ultima Weapon IS casual content. There's absolutely nothing hard about leveling your first job to 50; you're given quests along the way as well as rest exp bonus, new player dungeon completion exp bonuses, bonus dungeon exp, guildhests, leves, FATEs, and now the Challenge Log. They've made it very well known that leveling up is casual content and the real game doesn't start until post Ultima Weapon SM.

i110 gear being given away easily is entirely a new subject that will correct itself with the next patch. If you've been watching, they have been doing this since 2.0 release -- they have seemingly difficult content that give great rewards -- they make this content partially easy (or give reasonable alternatives) by the next major patch, and then outdate the gear completely by the patch after that. This is a 3 and 6 month process (so far). i110 is simply on a patch where they made it easy to obtain. The hardcore players who got it first have since gotten the gear and now they are making it more accessible for semi-hardcore and causal players. Patch 2.4 will have higher iLevel rewards, which in turn outdate the current gear. Barring this, iLvl really doesn't have anything to do with playing a new job to 50.