Quote Originally Posted by Ventus View Post
One thing I'd like to people to respond to is this:

the main staple people plug for grind parties is "better world immersion/exploration and stronger sense of community" but there are literally HUNDREDS of other ways a game can accomplish this and be ten times more entertaining than killing the same monster 100,000 times.
What then would you suggest? Should we have xp events going on 24/7? In that case, the event itself would become a grind, no better than killing the same mobs over and over again out in the field. In my opinion a basic grind is necessary in order to not only give players a viable way to rank up that can also be done at almost any time, but to also make events more appetizing - that is, something else to do besides grinding. If the players just did events all the time, they would eventually grow bored of that and event participants will dwindle.

Quote Originally Posted by Ventus View Post
On top of that we can explore the world while being part of the game's story without grind parties. Plenty of other MMOs have you doing limitless exploring while taking you along a fun storyline.
Sounds like questing to me, something that FFXIV already has. Not to mention the main storyline quests now give very good exp. Both can be done either solo or in a group.