Surprisingly, The outdated MMO is WOW, not FFXI/XIV1.2

[akaneakki]

Then it was Cop and Zilart, and treasures was the pack I got. Before WotG. You can't expect me to have great memory for a game I played for a month 11 years ago lol

Subjob could be done pretty much with only doing leveling in dunes, just not the skeletons, but this is an MMO so the ''force'' you talk about is expected. I mean, do you do dungeons as in roulettes solo? You can't and you have to do it with someone. Yes it's easier here because it's cross server, but it's actually less social to do so. I like FF14, but FFXI at it's primetime was just better experience and a whole different dimension that was amazing back in the days.

[Felis]

And none of those items actually had any ingame method telling you what combination of items you had to put in the box to get the desired item out!

Every finished crafting leve gave you a recipe in the chat box, that you can write down on the paper. But yes, most players just looked in a Database site for the needed recipe.

[Aronys]

Those are not quests, those are FATEs

I'm talking about hearts in GW2, not Live Events. Live Events are the closest we have to FATEs and in GW2 they actually have an impact to the world, not to mention that they are often than not a part of a chain of events throughout the entire region. FATEs have barely any chains, like... in SB I think there's like... one chain. The one in Azim Steppe.

[Maeka]

-snip-

Again, cliques.

If you were in a clique, life was rosy!

If you weren't, FFXI was a huge disappointment, and flippin' boring as crap.

Nobody wanted you, nobody had any reason to pay any attention to your existence, and if you weren't among the first players to max level then it was infinitely harder for you to get anywhere, as there were pretty much no catch-up mechanics whatsoever. You had to compete against people who had better gear than you (that you had no way of obtaining yourself without a group which had no reason to take you). Your one-and-only hope was that you were the exact job that an LS wanted bad enough to carry up to their level.

So yeah, YOU had a good experience with FFXI because you were part of those inner circles. Thousands of people, however, weren't and had a terrible experience with the game.

[Bobs]

Again, cliques.

If you were in a clique, life was rosy!

I can attest to that. FF11 was great if you were the right job. My main was RDM from the start (before people knew what the end game was). I would get tells as soon as I logged in with people wanting to level or do quest, etc; before I was even fully loaded in. I had my pick of content because just about everything needed a RDM, all the way to the late end game.

Leveling THF however was a nightmare. I had to make every party. Know all the proper set ups to make it work. All the best locations. And it was not until I had AF2 gloves and a THF knife that people wanted me in end game content as a THF.

I suppose it's the same in FF14 to some extent. If you are not the meta you are nothing.

Add: the moral of the story is; put the work in.

[KaldeaSahaline]

As someone who played vanilla WoW rather extensively when it came out there are aspects of it that I do miss. Most of it is Nostalgia though. I played briefly on a private server with a friend and we got to like level 30 or so.

There are things I miss quite notably:

• Danger in the outside world. I still remember accidentally running into Stitches for the first time or traveling across higher level zones and Horde territory to try and get to a dungeon that had great loot. Group quests that actually took a few players to do. Not a zerg, but like a buddy or two. In general mobs could kill you if you weren't careful. I miss that
• The obvious but impossible piece of exploration. Very difficult to do in today's world because everything is known instantly

But there are also aspects of modern design that make the game much better IMO:

• Auto AOE loot
• Better boss/raid/class design
• Not having to train weaponskills
• group/party/duty finder

Everyone thinks it was fun waiting for hours to get a party together, but it wasn't.

You do realize WoW is going on like 15 years now right? FFXIV is not going to fail anytime soon no matter how much you personally may not like it. The game currently has the highest concurrent subs since 2.0s launch. So again, as much as you personally may not like certain aspects of it- its thriving and its showing absolutely zero signs of degradation- So the devs are doing something right- aren't they? FFXI is still there, go play it. I don't want this game to become like FFXI- at all.

Mind citing your source to the game having the highest concurrent subs since 2.0 launch? I didn't see this (not doubting you, just curious where it comes from).

It also wasn't really until the post-MSQ (or, post-flight) Moogle quests that people had reason to loathe them. All previous ones were visible straight from the main roads or barely behind the corners of the ruined structures. It was only when they could hide among any of many floors of the ruined ampitheaters', each with hundreds of columns to hide behind that it became newly difficult to find things, and even then it wasn't by any new restriction or removed hand-holding; it was just an increase in the number of places something could be within a marked zone.

The only actual removals of hand-holding I can remember are alike to the quest starting from the corpse by the wall's flood-grate in Yanxia, such as used to be frequent in WoW quest design (though these quests were usually reduced to memes, as one would rather google or ask zone chat for the locations than figure things out themselves).

Ah, the good ol Mankriks wife in the barrens. I very distinctly struggling to find that as well.

[Selova]

I find it funny that you claim its the most outdated mmo, when it hands down, has the most QoL features that most mmos still don't have, including FFXIV.

Their current transmog/glamour system which destroys most cosmetic systems that exist in other games even FFXIVs "Glamour commode", bind on account gear/transmog/ect.. just to name a few.


Don't get me wrong it's s old game, but its far and away from being the most outdated.

[IllyriaKnotfred]

@KaldeaSahaline

It was during one of the more (or most?) recent live letters. I'm not gonna go digging through those archives trying to find it lol

[Maeka]

I can attest to that. FF11 was great if you were the right job. My main was RDM from the start (before people knew what the end game was). I would get tells as soon as I logged in with people wanting to level or do quest, etc; before I was even fully loaded in. I had my pick of content because just about everything needed a RDM, all the way to the late end game.

Leveling THF however was a nightmare. I had to make every party. Know all the proper set ups to make it work. All the best locations. And it was not until I had AF2 gloves and a THF knife that people wanted me in end game content as a THF.

I suppose it's the same in FF14 to some extent. If you are not the meta you are nothing.

Add: the moral of the story is; put the work in.

But yet, in FFXIV, there's enough content that I can do as nearly any job (though I hear SAM is having it pretty rough), just..... not cutting-edge raiding (which I was never into anyways).


But for 5-mans and Duty Finder raids, just about any job is fine and you don't need to be the best of the best to enjoy that content, either. And there's enough content that I'm reasonably content and there's not really THAT big of a part of the game I'm missing if I don't do the latest hardcore raid.

However, in FFXI.... pretty much -everything- was locked behind Group Content. In Vanilla WoW, you could do "some" of the questing solo (some quest chains were locked behind Group Quests) and there was no dungeon finder at all until mid-Wrath (2nd expansion later).

Today in WoW, you can do all but Raids (there's a watered down "tourist mode" called LFR, great if all you want is to see the story!) and Mythic Dungeons with the use of the "Duty Finder" (LFD/LFR/RBG as they call it over there), and Group Quests are few and far between (and it's much more likely you can solo them with more classes, or once you get better gear). They also have a button that you can click that uses the Duty Finder system to find you groups across different servers wanting the same quest and immediately place you on the correct server with your new group members in just a few seconds for those few group quests that do exist.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I liked FFXI better because for a dated game, it was far more massive than FFXIV. FFXIV is MMOing pared down to the bare minimum, almost to the level of an action game. Something as simple as going on airships and ferries in real time, and having meaningful travel time adds so much to an MMO. Fishing on the mhaura/selbina ferry and having to duck into the ships hold to avoid the sea horror was so much more immersive than the little static ship out in Costa. Seeing people leveling in the world was better than everyone just hanging in limsa and only gatherers and the occasional quester in FFXIV zones.

I will never understand this obsession with real time travel or some pseudo-equivalent. Black Desert does this, and while I admit the first few instances do offer a sense of immersion, it quickly grows incredibly tedious when I wind up spending more time traveling than playing the actual game.