Quote Originally Posted by Rhianu View Post
Guild Leves are not like WoW style questing at all, and your claim that they are only proves that you never truly understood how either Guild Leves or WoW style quests actually work.

WoW quests are different from Guild Leves in that each WoW quest sends you off to new and unique areas, has you fight different mobs, you get quests from a variety of NPCs, and most importantly, you're not forced to repeat the exact same eight quests over and over again once every 36 hours. All these things are present in FFXIV's Guild Leves, however, and they serve to make FFXIV's Guild Leve system highly inferior to WoW style questing.

However, you are correct in saying that the more recent Side-Quest system where we get quests from NPCs is like WoW style questing, but it's a half-assed, bastardized version of it. I'm sure the Side-Quests SE adds in the future will be better, but the ones we got so far have felt very shallow compared to similar offerings in WoW.

Yes, a lot of people have left FFXIV, but I guarantee you it's not because FFXIV had WoW style questing, because it didn't until just a few short months ago. The REAL reason so many people left the game is because FFXIV lacked engaging and interesting content, had copy-pasted terrain, had a clunky battle system and a horrible interface. THAT'S what caused people to leave.

I have played the quest driven MMOs. You are correct that stones are not npc's, and wow quest lines do take you through a some what linear path (this is really bad in AOC and AION) through all the different zones leading up to the end game content. However, its still an endless string of kill 8 of this and bring me 10 of that, and help grandma poopy pants clean up her garden. In the end, they are the same, one you strip them down and look at them for what they really are. A mostly solo grind.

I do not require a NPC to get me to go adventure and explore a world, nor do I need a reward to do so.

What I do need is a group of people to go do it with and have fun with.

As far as your commentary about why people left, I can sum it up since I played through all of it.

Party play at the outset was a zerg with no strategy and unpredictable experience points. The only way to really progress effectively in a grind style party was to do it with 24 ppl or whatever the limit was, its been so long ago now I have forgotten. Once they stablized exp, those grind parties died, because partying at that point was NOT EFFECTIVE for leveling up. That left leve's, which you know where I am at with, and much of the community (as seen in this thread) agrees.

People left because of a lack of a "Fun" way to group together and party.