So I'm not seeing how this is them changing things up from 2.0/3.0

[Talraen]

FFXI came out in Japan two years before WoW came out at all, but they both came out in 2004 in the US. They aren't actually that far apart. And aside from WoW itself, FFXI was the most popular MMO of its time, equaling Everquest's peak. If it didn't win over the mainstream, neither did EQ. And I think that's accurate; WoW was so huge compared to both of these because it was the first MMO that did attract the mainstream.

The problem with the assumption that having to interact is rewarding is survivorship bias. Yes, the people who played FFXI long-term had a great community, quite possibly better than the one here. But that's because the players who couldn't or didn't want to deal with FFXI stopped playing. A wider community is almost always going to be more flawed by its nature, but they're trying to appeal to as wide a community as possible. Having a good community consisting of people with very narrow desires is no great achievement.

As for the party finder, that's not the only reason FFXIV has better recruitment than FFXI. I spent many a week shouting in town looking for people to do CoP, and never finished it. There was no incentive for anyone who had completed the content to help, and the content was too long and difficult to consistently clear with other people looking to do it, assuming you even found them. The party finder would help slightly with this, but the reason this works in FFXIV is because of the duty finder. Now I can queue for the dungeon, and someone else is incentivized to come because of roulettes. And they can be rewarded for doing an old dungeon because of the tomestone system. If you change these systems, as people seem to want, you risk going back to a system where people have no incentive to help other players. I'm stubborn, so I stuck around in FFXI, but none of my similarly-casual friends did. I only ever finished most of the plotlines in the game because of the increased level cap and Trust system.

TLDR; everything you're asking for is what frustrated me about FFXI, and made all my friends quit. My story is not exceptional.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

FFXI came out in Japan two years before WoW came out at all, but they both came out in 2004 in the US. They aren't actually that far apart. And aside from WoW itself, FFXI was the most popular MMO of its time, equaling Everquest's peak. If it didn't win over the mainstream, neither did EQ. And I think that's accurate; WoW was so huge compared to both of these because it was the first MMO that did attract the mainstream.

The problem with the assumption that having to interact is rewarding is survivorship bias. Yes, the people who played FFXI long-term had a great community, quite possibly better than the one here. But that's because the players who couldn't or didn't want to deal with FFXI stopped playing. A wider community is almost always going to be more flawed by its nature, but they're trying to appeal to as wide a community as possible. Having a good community consisting of people with very narrow desires is no great achievement.

As for the party finder, that's not the only reason FFXIV has better recruitment than FFXI. I spent many a week shouting in town looking for people to do CoP, and never finished it. There was no incentive for anyone who had completed the content to help, and the content was too long and difficult to consistently clear with other people looking to do it, assuming you even found them. The party finder would help slightly with this, but the reason this works in FFXIV is because of the duty finder. Now I can queue for the dungeon, and someone else is incentivized to come because of roulettes. And they can be rewarded for doing an old dungeon because of the tomestone system. If you change these systems, as people seem to want, you risk going back to a system where people have no incentive to help other players. I'm stubborn, so I stuck around in FFXI, but none of my similarly-casual friends did. I only ever finished most of the plotlines in the game because of the increased level cap and Trust system.

TLDR; everything you're asking for is what frustrated me about FFXI, and made all my friends quit. My story is not exceptional.

I think the issue is that you're still thinking of open world content in a very old MMORPG sort of way. You're thinking of FFXI which had unforgiving systems in place, a game that had some of the worst class balance in an MMO (legit some classes were useless or inferior for most content). FFXIV is a far more balanced game by comparison with far more modern UI and match making systems as well as design and functionality. We don't have to do this like FFXI.