To those that say FF14 is not a big dog in MMO's

[Penthea]

Except, Higher keys in M+ actually require meta a lot more often to deal with increasingly more damaging mechanics while maintaining an under-clock timing. The issue with obsession becomes where people try to enforce it below 10+ and think it doesnt make public key running not completely toxic.

I understand that for the purposes of practicality some standards need to be met, however it is known that people often ask for more than is required or absolutely refuse to take anything that is not the best possible choice, even if the difference is small, which automatically leaves out some players. I didn't try Mythic + but I have many friends who have, and even those who had a lot of success with it were often very frustrated with the attitudes of other players. From what they said the Mythic + community is very similar to the raiding community, and I became exasperated with the raiding community in that game a very long time ago. It's not for me.

As much as people want to say that the players ruined Classic, the nostalgia of Classic remains with your own personal journey that you had when you first experience. You will not have that same experience now 16+ years later.

Completely agree with this. You can experience something for the first time only once. I was not expecting to get a first time experience again. I just wanted to play an old game again. It's a shame I encountered enough toxicity that made me want to put it down. Coordinating with people is a must in Classic. There is no DF tool so you have to find groups manually, and you do need to have kill orders and use cc before max lvl. Sure you can just avoid doing dungeons...but experiencing them again is a huge reason why I played Classic, and well seeing quite a lot of unnecessary spite made me lose my taste for the game. That is not to say every single dungeon I did was a bad experience, but enough were that I had to stop playing.

That being said: people who didnt expect that people were going to optimize Classic were going to be in for a rude awakening regardless -- because the private Classic servers had many people doing optimized Classic runs. Classic WoW was also massively easier but more tedious compared to retail. Molten Core being completely finished in HOURS after being open was bound to happen since MC was a rushed raid that barely had mechanics.

Well it wasn't a surprise for me that the old raids were thrashed in a few short hours. The mechanics back then were significantly more simple, people have better internet and pcs now so they don't have connection and fps issues, the engine was modernised so the game runs better, and people know the tactics already. All that combined, of course it was nuked super fast. I completely expected it.

I didn't expect the community to be just as it was before, but I also wasn't expecting a dps priest to get laughed at in Ragefire Chasm, the lowest lvl dungeon in the game, solely because they're not playing holy. The best part was their dps wasn't even the lowest and they still got ridiculed for their choice of spec.

I never played WoW when it was actually in Classic -- but bought into my friends who talked about its fancies and nostalgia. I tried it, and just stopped playing after reaching level 30 -- its boring and tedious as hell. I never had that connection and nostalgia playing it back 16 years ago and to me it felt like a poorly optimized MMO that was moonlighting as an RPG.

The game is a time capsule. Sure the community changed but the core of the game did not. By modern standards Classic is not a very good mmo and I can completely understand why someone would not enjoy it, especially if they did not play it during the time when it was launched. I replay a lot of my old games, so Classic was just another venture into that for me.