Player's Poll: FFXIV or FFXI-2?

[Tibian]

Yes that is what I'm saying. FFXI was the last "old school" MMO to retain a high then average difficulty and was very unforgiving when it came to its day to day play experiences.

That's because it is poor business to have such a crappy game like XI. Even proclaimed "WoW clones" do better business than XI and XIV.

WoW came out near the same time and we've seen how it has impacted the MMO world. Everyone strives to copy their success which was largely in part to easier content and fast rewards. It has contaminated developers mindset and instead of making their platforms geared towards to older MMO generations they have adopted a more casual friendly archetype.

WoW is still the most hardcore MMO to date, XI has nothing on heroic raiding. The only thing XI fanatics latch onto is simply the fact that everything in XI took an obscene and ridiculous amount of time to accomplish. Time =/= difficulty. Yes WoW may have made everything accessible and in the more recent expansion packs things may have deteriorated into a repetitious formula, but it still has the hardest fights of any MMO on the market. WoW didn't contaminate developers minds, it simply showed developers what good system polish can do to a game.

I would happily still be in FFXI if Abbysea had not ruined it.

Still stuck in the past right? That expansion was completely necessary from what I have heard from non deluded people on the forums. It may have altered the game in some unfortunate ways, but you're completely ignorant of the longevity of the game if you think new players were going to jump into XI and deal with the insane time sinks and gross barriers that it presented.

That single expansion undid 7 years of the delicate balancing act SE had preformed to keep new gear attractive while not antiquating old pieces of lewt.

Loooooooool "delicate balancing." Ninja anyone? Whenever I think of SE and game balance I usually think of the word "broken" before anything else comes to mind.

FFXIV failed as hard as it did because it was rushed. Adding to its unfinished woes however was the ever present casual mode leveling outline. It was clear they were trying to make it so people with less time could keep pace with those who could dedicate more to their character.

FFXIV did not fail because it tried to accommodate "casual" players. It failed because it had the worst UI in history, did not launch with a hardware mouse, you cannot alt tab, does not have a delivery/mailbox system, worst server lag in any game history, worst leveling system of any MMO, terrible grinds, terrible "hot and cold" mini games, awful loot distribution, too high of computer requirements, awful billing services, terrible customer service, etc. Shall I continue? None of these reasons have anything to do with "CASUALIZING" the game like you claim.

I want FFXIV to become more like it predecessor. Less like every other MMO on the market today. I just found it funny you told me that if I didn't like FFXIV to go play a WoW clone which is the exact thing I am trying to avoid.

I want FFXIV to become FFXIV. I don't want it to become WoW, I don't want it to become XI, I don't want it to become Lineage, or Ragnarok, or Star Wars, or Hello Kitty Island Adventure MMO. I want it to be its OWN UNIQUE ENTITY, supported by countless years of Final Fantasy lore and cannon that people are drawn to in the first place.