what makes an MMO fell dead

[magitekLuna]

No open world content.

My main beef with FFXIV is that it is built upon repeatable content: dungeons and all combat content, fates, hunts, grinds of any kind...
MSQ is good but finite until next patch / expansion, and side quests are essentially fetch quests until you've done them all and then you're out of things to interact with in a given zone (except crafting, but to me that's a grind of it's own).

I'd like to see Runescape style quests: which can take you a couple of hours to complete, maybe even a couple of days, with puzzle and enigmas to solve on the way, without the game showing you exactly where to go and where to click.

Sometimes I find there's very little to explore in the game and I tend to log in just to the daily stuff.

I've started island sanctuary and maybe this will feel a bit more immersive?

Runescape style quests?? at the top of their game SE never made any thing even close to Runescape style quests. show me one game were it was not some linear questing

[Barwara]

Runescape style quests?? at the top of their game SE never made any thing even close to Runescape style quests. show me one game were it was not some linear questing

That's what made Runescape quests unique; the fact they weren't linear. It's a weird game to reference because it's so graphically unappealing (RIP avatar rework), but as the only game I played extensively as a kid, what struck me was how amazing the quests were. There was no Main Story, you were still the hero adventurer everyone knew about, but every quest was self-standing, and as a whole, all the quests told the story of that world and of its different eras.

I remember some pretty epic quests, and usually you were asked to solve puzzle, craft items during the quests, look for things without the game telling you exactly where to go, even successfully do parkour across all the roofs of a city. The easiest and dumber quests were fetch quests, but medium to hard level ones were pretty immersive.

Another thing that I liked about Runescape is that crafting, gathering and cooking made sense, because the game actually require you to use food, potions, and what not. Your inventory can only hold about 25 items, so you have to be well equipped, well stocked, and overall resourceful with what you got in your inventory, depending on what you're doing. I remember that if you were ill equipped in combat, you risked dying and losing all of your items and armor.

In FFXIV I never consume food, because I guess I don't need to. Therefore I also don't craft it. You also don't need to interact with items in quests, or use items in quests. To me FFXIV crafting is solely for gil making purposes, glamour, and housing.

I mean I'm well aware FFXIV follows a formula and SE might never implement these aspects to the game. I'm just describing what I find the most interesting in an MMO. It's less about the social aspect to me, and more about how you interact with the game.