how big did ff11 area grow before and after all the expansion?

[Alipoprocks]

This is Eastern Altepa Desert.
It is involved in 11 quests, none of which are all that necessary. Its only role is to serve as a teleport point . . .
11 quests is fewer than any single zone has in FFXIV. And this zone is easily as large as some of our zones.
This zone, therefore, has little reason to exist, yet the developers went through the effort to do so.

I have to disagree with you. Personally, I spent so much time in every zone (except Windy areas) that I still vividly remember each one and it has been 6 years since I played XI. I spent time in both eastern and western altepa leveling many jobs. I remember camping a spider NM and occasionally killing a fast running cactuar NM. There were some lower dungeons that were used for leveling and other things too.

It really doesn't make a lot of sense to compare XI with XIV because the open world was used for everything. There were very few instances compared to XIV.

[Blazer]

I remember camping a spider NM and occasionally killing a fast running cactuar NM. There were some lower dungeons that were used for leveling and other things too.

The spider NM was awesome, Cactrot Rapido is legendary, but I spent the most time trying to get that damn intruder earring off the 21-24 hour NM.

EVERY ZONE IN FFXI has a purpose and you better believe you would be going there multiple times. White Mages would literately stand around town and shout making money from teleports because of the time save they gave you. The FFXI zones are so massive and ugh... I'll just stop. I miss the good ol' days.

[Alipoprocks]

The spider NM was awesome, Cactrot Rapido is legendary, but I spent the most time trying to get that damn intruder earring off the 21-24 hour NM.

EVERY ZONE IN FFXI has a purpose and you better believe you would be going there multiple times. White Mages would literately stand around town and shout making money from teleports because of the time save they gave you. The FFXI zones are so massive and ugh... I'll just stop. I miss the good ol' days.

Oh yeah, that HNM that was kited around a bush until your friends showed up to help kill it. I still miss that game and those days too.

[Sanne]

While I do miss FFXI at times....

The things I don't miss are the zones, a lot of them felt empty (not interesting) to me, and most zones I never done anything in, expect passing through, now I had never interest of NM.

And I hated traveling them, at first it is great, it gives a really large feel to the world, but soon it gets boring, and took me out of the game, watching youtube and forums etc, to pass time while my chocobo was autowalking most of the time.

I had 3 chars in the end, and all 3 at leats had WHM for the first 3 teleports, and even with that it was still very long travel times :/ (which to me meant, out of the game time)

I do hope to get a lot more zones in FFXIV with the expansions. But I do hope they all make it interesting.

(I played FFXI from 2003 and the last time I played was in 2013, I did have many many breaks through the years)

[Magis]

[QUOTE=Lexia;2934550]

I have to disagree with you. Personally, I spent so much time in every zone (except Windy areas) that I still vividly remember each one and it has been 6 years since I played XI. I spent time in both eastern and western altepa leveling many jobs. I remember camping a spider NM and occasionally killing a fast running cactuar NM. There were some lower dungeons that were used for leveling and other things too.

It really doesn't make a lot of sense to compare XI with XIV because the open world was used for everything. There were very few instances compared to XIV.

Wasn't Altepa also a major leveling area? Recall being there in the early level 30s I think?

The zone housed several NMS, entrance to underground open world dungeons, and Leveling camps as well as a few quest.

XI was NOT A QUEST DRIVEN GAME.

Honestly the zone has more reason to exist then alot of areas in XIV currently which have no purpose once the leveling quest are done.

Bingo. People are applying WoWs system and every game that copied it after to FFXIs more general world system. The game gave you a bunch of things to do in a zone, zones weren't just hubs for quests... Then to die after you completed them.