Island Sanctuary is so bare bones the praise it receives by some genuinely makes me question how many of those satisfied with it have actually played other MMO's in the first place. In its current form, it's a lesser version of the garrisons in WoW - which whilst not perfect, at least fed into the gameplay loop in a much more meaningful way. I believe they were added to WoW in...2014? So almost a decade ago.

Usually when a feature is carried over from another game there is innovation involved. FFXIV has very little of that and it's probably the only MMO I've seen where a vocal portion of the community praise new content that can be finished up extremely quickly and then never touched again or just used as a place to idle in and take screenshots.

I was playing through an event in The Elder Scrolls Online the other week and opened up a reward box only to find a furnishing plan that sold for millions of gold. A nice surprise, especially since I got a second similarly profitable plan the following day as well.

Meanwhile, FFXIV's tomestone event just offers up a bunch of rewards that players who are 'all caught up' have likely already obtained years ago.

I'd very much like this game to be so much more than it is. There's a lot of missed potential across the board and it's sad but hilarious that so many players seem to expect to be catered to with their 'fluff and easy going content' but rarely, if ever concede anything for those of us who want something different.