Island Sanctuaries - End Game Only

[Anura]

The only thing silly is comments like that. Having content released during an expansion being tied to that expansion is normal, in FFXIV and practically every MMO in existence. FFXIV has the advantage of having a veritable mountain of other side content available to people along the journey. Crafting and gathering, the gold saucer (which itself includes games, Triple Triad, chocobo racing, Vermilion, mahjong, etc.), sightseeing, class/role quests, optional raid storylines, optional dungeon storylines...and those are just the ones I can think of because I enjoy them. There's probably even more things I'm not even including there. Island Sanctuary isn't intended in any way, shape, or form to be the "pinnacle" game experience that would be the reason someone buys the game.

What's silly is claiming there's any mental gymnastics involved in defending such a sensible decision. It's not even a warm-up. And I think you might want to re-visit the meaning of the word "gatekeeping"; this isn't it.

Can you read? There's a difference between tying something to the expansion and locking it behind THE END of the base expansion, when the same expansion is LOCKED behind THREE EXPANSIONS worth of story. FFXIV is the ONLY MMORPG I've ever played that lock things behind fucking hundreds of hours of storyline. Got overleveled and want to do a dungeon near your level? YOU'RE FUCK OUT OF LUCK. Do these hundreds of quests here before you can unlock the next expansion, then do MORE quests to unlock a fucking dungeon. Let's see how they'll keep doing this shit when new players get tired of this crap and just drop the snoozefest because it'll hit their patience limit. I'd sooner recommend EVE to someone new to MMORPG than a game that simply locks you at fucking lv50 for more than 50 hours and forces you to use a rotation so boring it melts your brain. Probably the time needed to unlock Heavensward. GREAT design, isn't it?