I sure hope HW is not going to be more armor grind treadmill!

[Asmodaeus]

is that what all mmos are tho you kill monsters to get gear and you kill bigger monsters to get better gear process just repeats...

To some extend sure, but if you compare the typical theme park MMO´s to older stuff like Everquest, FF11, SWG or Daoc you can see a big difference. The process in obtaining those items is nothing of worth in the end if all what it takes is to spam the duty finder with random people you will never see again (just speaking for the majority of people). Its the same with lots of FC´s. A few leet people get together to finish the stuff which brings the items. You cant really blame them, since the 8 man tuned stuff requires you to play ace like and leave the poor newbs (which might be nice people) in the dust. A lot of these groups dont care for each other and when they finally get the last piece of gear there is nothing that will hold them in the game, thats why they leave.

What I want to say is, the only thing that keeps players hooked for the long run in an MMO are the people they play with. Items dont matter in the end.
You wont look back and say "It was so nice getting that belt from Dungeon X after 8 weeks of farming!", but you will look back and remember fondly of that stupid Bard who startet dancing in the middle of an AOE which never hit him while others tried to dodge and failed.


And unfortunately FFXIV is one of the most antisocial/anonymous MMORPG`s I´ve ever played. Maybe that is why there is such a huge shift in the playerbase. It´s also the same with other theme park´s. Funny enough, in all the old ass MMORPG´s I´ve played this never happend. And I dont mean that as rant, I know what FFXIV is (not my definition of MMORPG) and I treat it just like that.