To those who played FF11...

[Seig345]

I'm actually not so sure I agree with this. Because progress was slower, and itemization was horizontal, it was quite difficult to actually be truly left behind. I know I took regular breaks from my end-game LS for months at a time, but when I popped back in, guess what? They were doing the same runs as before - just with different people needing the loot. I always found it quite easy to slip back into things, particularly since FFXI offered far more flexible group sizes.

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I emphasized you mentioning your "end-game LS" because my own post was referencing my experience from level 1 to about 35 before I ultimately fell off the game, far from end-game. Naturally, no one can leave you behind at <insert level cap here> because, well, it was the level cap. Sure, people could acquire better gear than you, but and as you said, people would still naturally be going after different things the game had to offer, but you were at the end of the level progression. You never lost your gear from dying in FFXI, only XP. Given FFXI's horizontal progression, that end-game pool of players probably had a much lower drop-off rate due to people having much more to do at level cap compared to FFXIV.

It's entirely possible my experience was totally anecdotal and I was in the minority, I didn't mean for my post to come across as painting a universal experience for everyone who played, only that the game inevitably left some people sitting around for hours from time to time.

I'm not trying to put FFXI down, I believe I pointed out that FFXI had much more depth, meaningful progression, etc, because of how making progress was an actual struggle, and if you were the type of player who had the time and enjoyed putting that time into the kind of game FFXI was, it was very enjoyable. I was just always doomed to be a low level plebe because I did not have the determination and the will power to sit around either LFG or sitting in one spot killing the same group of mobs over and over until I leveled up enough to move to the next spot and the next group of mobs. There was certainly great content you were rewarded with for making it through that struggle, I just had too many other games I preferred to play to put up with it.

On the flipside, while I've easily put more time into FFXIV in any given year than I put into FFXI overall, I'm painfully aware how the world is so much more shallow compared to Vana'diel. The easy teleports make the world feel smaller, you don't truly feel like you've entered another country with its own culture because we simply zip here and there without a second thought and it's more like you've stepped from Wild West World into Tomorrow Land in a theme park. But I enjoy the MSQ thread enough to stick with it, and the game elements enough to hang around, admittedly with breaks in between (because I still like to play other games from time to time).

Both games have their pros and cons, but ultimately I feel like they are two completely different sub-genres of MMORPG that cater in large part to two different demographics.