Surprisingly, The outdated MMO is WOW, not FFXI/XIV1.2

[ShanXiv]

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.

Endgame is just no contest, even coil was tiny compared to sky or dynamis. The 24 mans in this game are just bosses strung together. The sad thing is that crafting and gathering is probably more involved than actual combat in FFXIV, in a sense.

I play this game ,but I think if they don't improve on the whole "solo everything, group up with strangers for tokens" aspect, I can't see lasting much longer. You don't really get the same level of stories and experiences here. Like you say "valkurm dunes" or "garlaige citadel" and ffxi vets will tell you stories. Or "run to Jeuno." Here all the edges are sanded off to the point where there's little memorable.

Well said， the theme park formula may be more profitable at the beginning,
but it will cause some kind of permanent damage to the FF MMO title.
I mean, how many players are going to buy Diablo4 or Romance of the three kingdoms XIV? FFXVII? another round of "solo everything, group up with strangers for tokens" ?no

You know what my story of the valkrum dunes is? 3 hours waiting for a party, 20 mins of killing mobs, party disbanding. after 3 weeks of this i quit. Didn't even unlock subjobs. You can keep your XI in XI, I like being able to progress solo when I need to.

When I was playing XIV 1.2x, I didn't have this problem, we can always form an exp/primal party in 10-20mins，
if we can't find enough people, we will disband & do other things, or you can solo the weaker mobs, just fewer exp
and I met new friends almost every time, had many memorable memories

Now, 30+min for PVP roulette, 5-20mins for Leveling or Alliance Raids roulette, with strangers, same old dungeons,
and what you've got so far? some tomes, gil, gears that will be obsolete in 3-6 months, (and the gears are more and more ugly..)
and what?

[Krotoan]

Yeah like the people in FF14 want to down raid or extreme primals but they don't wanna do a decent rotation. I guess decent opener/rotation game is suddenly a job. But that's another topic I suppose.

This isn't about rotation. This isn't that playing my class WELL is a job. That's fun for me. Doing my rotation and completing mechanics WELL is playing for me. The part that's WORK? The person I quoted grinding xp by putting together parties yourself the FFXI way by messaging people one by one and ask if they want to party and HOPE TO GOD that the first person you get is patient enough to stick around till you get the last person, then kill the same damn monsters over and over to level and doing the insane grind it takes to get special gear in FFXI which I had to do several times when I played it back in the day. It required camping monsters for HOURS and still possibly losing it to someone else camping the monster because it was all about tagging first. None of that insanity was fun for me.

If I have to spend 10 hours of "work" to have one hour of fun then I don't want to do it and I sure as heck won't pay for the privilege.

Does that make what I consider "work" clearer to you?

[Shurrikhan]

When I was playing XIV 1.2x, I didn't have this problem, we can always form an exp/primal party in 10-20mins，
if we can't find enough people, we will disband & do other things, or you can solo the weaker mobs, just fewer exp
and I met new friends almost every time, had many memorable memories.

Same here. In 1.2 it felt surprisingly quick to create camp or primal parties (though I only formed a few of the latter). Maybe it was just because there were more people leveling out in the zones and listening in on general chat or otherwise showing off their gear or loitering around the main cities (especially Ul'duh) such that shout was far more lucrative than now, but it typically felt like were spending almost as much time riding out to the camp as gathering a group for it. At worst, one of the original 4-5 people would stay behind to keep shouting and themselves and the remaining 2-3 players to the nearest aether once done (this being back when it cost anima, which was generated freely, but slowly). LSs did quite a bit of cross-chatting, too, one member spreading the message on to their other LSs and so forth.

That said, it could have also "helped" that the only content were NMs, which were killed just for fun more often than for significant loot, totem camps (dropping items necessary to summon primals), exp camps, Darkhold, Aurum Vale, and Cutter's Cry, Garuda and Ifrit, and the 4- and 8-man job quests (45 and 50).

[ShanXiv]

Or having a non-optimal race-job combination and getting overlooked for hours while waiting for a party. Only to join, get trained and die then have the blm warp out leaving the rest of the party to beg for raises or lose MORE XP.
I stopped before the current systems for solo-ing were in place. XI had it's fun points sure, but the bad certainly outweighed the good for me in the end. My life no longer allows me 4 hours at a time to possibly accomplish nothing, or worse yet, LOSE progress. Leveling wasn't FUN in XI for me, it was a chore. Sneak in with items or someone casting spells that randomly wore off for no reason, eat food, kill as many things as you could as fast as you could in sequence for the bonus, make sure you had your weapon skills macro'd to heck so people would know when to skillchain, constant terror that someone would train mobs on you or someone in your party would walk just a little too close to something while you were killing things, kill the SAME things over.. and over.. and over.

.. please don't put that in XIV or I'll have to find a new game.

Also the amount of hand holding in wow now is insane. There used to be add-ons to do what the game just DOES now. Point you at the quest objective, DRAW LINES TO IT. The only thing left to do is pushing the actual buttons, there's no thinking there just doing. I really liked secret world because I had to research things to figure out quests. My friends and I learned ancient Sumerian to figure out a particular quest and when we finished it we were SO PROUD. Sure we could have looked up the walkthrough but we weren't forced to or led by the nose. There were maybe 2 quests in FFXIV that did require you to think and I enjoyed the crud out of them, however since we've not seen more of them I'm thinking the playerbase did NOT like them, and never finished them so the devs stopped making them.

Leveling in XIV 1.1x-1.2x was easier, I play 1-2 hours a day, had 2 jobs lv capped,
you can solo or join an exp party,. the job quests were fun & challenging, my fc was doing them everyday,
You can hunt some NMs whenever you want, they drop some unique looking gears (now they just drop some boring seals). not very powerful ,but useful for your lving
We didn't had the "Run to Jeuno!" thing, but we had the "Run or sneak to that Aetheryte!" ,it was super fun, like playing a Metal Gear game.

Same here. In 1.2 it felt surprisingly quick to create camp or primal parties (though I only formed a few of the latter). Maybe it was just because there were more people leveling out in the zones and listening in on general chat or otherwise showing off their gear or loitering around the main cities (especially Ul'duh) such that shout was far more lucrative than now, but it typically felt like were spending almost as much time riding out to the camp as gathering a group for it. At worst, one of the original 4-5 people would stay behind to keep shouting and themselves and the remaining 2-3 players to the nearest aether once done (this being back when it cost anima, which was generated freely, but slowly). LSs did quite a bit of cross-chatting, too, one member spreading the message on to their other LSs and so forth.

That said, it could have also "helped" that the only content were NMs, which were killed just for fun more often than for significant loot, totem camps (dropping items necessary to summon primals), exp camps, Darkhold, Aurum Vale, and Cutter's Cry, Garuda and Ifrit, and the 4- and 8-man job quests (45 and 50).

The XIV 1.2x development team had really limited resource,
but every new content they added, was fun,
But now, the FATEs, Diadem, Airship exploration, the new Hildibrand quest, the old old formula, the Lord of Vermnion, Fashion report, and what, all are boring & disappointing...

[akaneakki]

Does that make what I consider "work" clearer to you?

Oh right my bad. I was thinking more about effort than anything really. But yah I do agree with some of the things you said.

[Shurrikhan]

The XIV 1.2x development team had really limited resource,
but every new content they added, was fun,
But now, the FATEs, Diadem, Airship exploration, the new Hildibrand quest, the old old formula, are boring & disappointing...

Ehhhh. I don't know if they were necessarily on the mark with every bit of content added (NMs were appreciated by pretty much anyone and everyone, but the Imperial Invasion was left so unfinished it hardly seemed worth the effort to many, and Hamlet Defense was fairly hit or miss). None of them showed especially intelligent or comprehensive care to design, either. They simply each filled a particular opportunity in a fairly sufficient manner.

I'll agree though that most leveling difficulties in XIV were hugely overstated. I had no problems getting 5 classes capped within a few months of highly casual play. Camp farming and solo mob-chaining were actually far more efficient than now, or FATE-zerging. Overall it just felt like a greater portion of all options held noticeable benefits. Camp farms and shared leves were best, of course, but just going out and killing random mobs wasn't bad exp.

[Cakekizyy]

So weird that people criticize "modern" questing design then go on to praise games like FFXI or EQ, where leveling basically consisted of semi-afking endless mob train grinds using minimal abilities because resource regeneration in those games was very poor (playing a mage in most of them was bloody MISERABLE). Sure, you were required to group up, but no one was actually required to talk any more than you're required to make conversation in Duty Finder now, and sometimes people did and sometimes they didn't (and if they did it was to convey utilitarian stuff like "Feign Death on CD need a few seconds before pull").

Mana recovery was quite nice if you used a mount.

[Remedi]

I think there is a misconception, something beign outdated doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable anymore, FFXI and FFXIV 1.0-1.2 are idd an outdated format but that doesn't mean that you have to stop enjoying them, heck I think that some forms of WOW vanilla were enjoyable over current gen MMO, I also believe that vanilla FF6 graphic was so much better than what came after though it is outdated for today standard but that doesn't mean it's shit either.

[loreleidiangelo]

Well said， the theme park formula may be more profitable at the beginning,
but it will cause some kind of permanent damage to the FF MMO title.

I respectfully disagree. I think that players who want more "old-school" type games will continue to be disappointed that FFXIV doesn't fit their mold, but players who like ease of access, catch-up mechanics, and MMO gameplay without the older associated attached strings of no-lifing/serious time commitment will be satisfied and continue to play. Basically the exact same status quo we have now.

I really can't stress this enough - no MMO game style is BETTER than the other; they're literally just different. I say this as someone who has played and tried nearly all of them. Could XIV work on improving when it comes to long-term goals/longevity? Sure, but it's never going to BE a game where you have to sink hours a day into it to remain relevant. The developers absolutely want people to be able to pick it up and play without a ton of time or stress involved. They don't want gear that you have to grind 3 months for in order for people to let you into a party, even if that gear will theoretically last you for six more months. Barriers of entry for this game are meant to be minimal, and tbh there's nothing wrong with that, even if it's not what some people enjoy.

[Coombah]

I have played WoW briefly. I played XI from the NA release to about 2004 and I’ve played XIV since beta and I can say I took away more from XI and XIV during 1.0. I liked the sense of adventure /danger and the closer community they provided. Don’t get me wrong I still play XIV and enjoy it but I miss a lot about XI and 1.0