Quote Originally Posted by Bled View Post
"really I'm not complaining about something taking a lot of work or time to get done", that's exactly what you are arguing... you sound as though you played FF11 if your convictions you are portraying are true then you must be a masochist.
No what happened was is that I was once like you, convinced that FFXI had depth and complexity and was truly rewarding, then I took a break for 2 months (this was in 2005) and when I cam back I found that I wasn't having fun anymore, the seams were beginning to shows. I started noticing how long it was taking me to get anything done, when I used to be able to spend a whole night playing, I found leveling up was just repetative, I mean hell what did you do after you hit the level cap...YOU KEPT GRINDING, you ground out merit points, you waited for monster to spawn, it was like a rat on a wheel going round and round and never getting anywhere, it just never stopped and then as Kona has pointed out, trying to actually get content done was like pulling teeth because of the lethargic player base, top that off with nearly deserted servers and it just started dragging my will to play down further. and then it dawned on me...I had never had fun with the actual game, I had had fun with my linkshell mates and they had all long since abandoned ship, and thus so did I, and I have never looked back.

Content that takes time and is hard to do should be rewarding, FFXI just never had any of that reward...it was a perpetual motion machine of mediocrity that should be left in the past where it belongs.