I just don't get it.

[Shurrikhan]

The turning point for the game will be 4.0 anyways, at least for me. If they go the whole Heavensward route again like they are doing now, I'll gladly quit.

The one thing I will not deny though, I really loved thordan ex, even with almost 205-210 and hating it at first, it felt like I did something. One of the few rewarding things in my eyes but primal fights are always nice, even if they are a script show and rarely have any randomish moments to them.

If 4.0 is another rehash, I'll probably switch to about a 50% membership, appearing just before patch and disappearing just after Ex primal farms, and gradually fade from there.

Just because of all the skilled players who were farming for Tidal Mirrors over DF at one point, Levi Ex really claimed that place for me. Losing GL3 only once in that fight just due to people both keeping up the pace and respecting my "please leave us Monks the last punch on the marked spume" was an amazing experience. Not that BLMing, Barding (especially co-Barding, love that), DRGing, tanking, or healing it were any less fun, actually. Just goes to show that every fight ends up at the mercy of its combatants though. Sometimes you enter, take a look each at the two BLMs and know the adds are going to be Flare ash before they can touch anyone, and neither tank moves to intercept, and sure enough, the adds are dead before they reach either BLM or the healers. Other times, you know that PLD will be going Sword main, and the whole set of triggers that might cause seem to just lay themselves out in front of you for you to play around with; anything goes, just make sure to double Regen per Conv as always, and if things go south, track tank CDs. Those little things make XIV for me. Sadly, apart from a couple good Ex roulettes, I haven't felt them in a long time. More and more the ideosycracies seem to fade, and I feel like it's due more to the fights, somehow feeling less open-ended, and reduced community experimentation than to any internal (class/job) design.

As for rose-tinted goggles, one of the funny things to me is that a lot of my complaints I'd put up on the forums back in 1.x haven't changed at all going into 2.x and now 3.2. I expected I'd be wanting more of the 'good old days', but instead it's just the exact same worries that seemed problematic then, although perhaps magnified.