
Originally Posted by
Tsuga
People should learn to read the OP. He isn't complaining about the game, saying he doesn't want to pay, or saying that it sucks. He's saying that he fears for what will happen to the population of the game once P2P starts, since XIV relies primarily on group oriented content for any kind of progress (raids, exp parties, strongholds, Ifrit, etc.). He's also stating that starting P2P in the midst of a re-balancing patch (1.20), and not a content heavy patch (1.21) seems like a bad move for retaining the current players.
This is one case where I definitely agree with you, picard. I'm part of two 100+ person LSs that averaged 15-40 online members prior to the last couple of weeks (once SW beta started, and Skyrim and Skyward Sword dropped), and now I don't see more than 8-10 people on each shell at a time, and most of them are afk. P2P isn't going to draw any new people in to the game, and if these other games are pulling people away from XIV, then you can bet that TOR and D3 will once they launch.
Hopefully the player search function coming 1.20 should help with forming pick-up groups. It just appears that the life is being drained from this game with the lack of content, and that starting P2P with very little content to back it up could easily speed up the process.
I have no problem paying for XIV myself, but if there is nobody to play with then there is no point in playing the game at all.