Quote Originally Posted by Deusteele View Post
I skipped XI since I was told it was an elitist douche factory.
In all fairness, as far as douchebaggery goes, FFXI got off a lot easier than most MMOs. That's not to say that there weren't elitist jerks a-plenty, but if you can tolerate the negativity and elitism in FFXIV, FFXI would be a breath of fresh air for you.

As for WHY it had a typically more mature audience, I can't really say, though I've heard many theories. Some say its because it takes (or used to take) so long to do anything worthwhile, ADHD spazzes tend to lose interest quickly and so don't clutter up the population with their juvenile antics.

Instances generally required gathering trigger items that were difficult or time-consuming to obtain, so once you actually got into an instance, everyone gave it their all; if someone wasn't satisfied with the performance of their party, they couldn't just drop out and pop back in with a new party, they had to make do with what they had.

And folks worked HARD to keep from getting known as slackers - since there was no cross-server instancing, the people you party with were all on your server, and if word of your suckiness got around, you'd get a server rep that's hard to shake. It was virtually impossible to sneak into a party for a carry - or, at least, not more than a few times before folks started to catch on.

Don't take this to mean that it was a paradise; elitism still had a firm presence, and even non-elite players frowned upon folks showing up with oddball gear or mainjob / subjob combinations. But from what I've heard of WoW, and what I've SEEN of this game, it wasn't nearly as bad.