Seriously 3-5 minute repop on NMs?

[Kaedan]

I was a hardcore FFXI player for 6 years and I can tell you I did not enjoy staring at my screen waiting for NMs to spawn, not in the slightest. Engaging time-consuming activities for hardcore players is all well and good. Waste of time, boring, uneventful activities is just bad design and masochistic, not hardcore.

There are two ways they can keep items that are meant to be rare, rare:

1) Have long spawn times or pop NMs that require a rare item to pop them.
2) Have shorter spawn times but lower drop rate.

There will be people who argue for both options. Both are viable. It doesn't change the fact that both require time to be invested. So they are both "wastes of time" as the uneducated like to refer to them.