Quote Originally Posted by strallaalaa View Post
this is very true, http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/17...rep-will-fail/

....(edited to save space only)

and for those who say stop comparing mmo's or ffxi to ffxiv. maybe we are not comparing mmo's we are comparing ourselves and our enjoyment and entertainment value. what games did that just comes along with it at times. any who since i always sound like i'm complaining lmao, i have to always repeat. i still am here, i'm still on forums and still excited to play ffxiv. it still looks like a funner mmo then any that has come out since ffxi ...but i'm not so blind and wishful for it to work that i'm going to ignore all the issues they are pumping into it. first was how to make it not ffxi and stuff like yoshi has stated, now it's more how to kiss butt and make at the least our money back. any one think diff is just nutty.
I agree that end game and the Hardcore players need to have lots of challenging content to keep them long term, this give an MMO sustainability. Appealing to casual alone is a nail in the coffin for an MMO, once they move on as casuals do then those subs disappear. How much time did you spend at the lower levels in FFXI (just being curious not trying to needle) VS how much time you spent at end game? How memorable was the early stuff? I do hope for a decent end game to keep players busy for more than a month (look how fast the Primals were beaten and that was supposed to be the hardest content.)

By the same token I think the early to mid levels should be about learning how to play, how the game functions, and how to work well in party play. This is aimed at the casual or beginner player and it should be this way. If it is hardcore through and through then you will never get a new audience or build a more steady player base. To date they have shown us one starting area, a 5 min demo of two (out of 300+ quests), all at level 5-12. So far everything seems quite good and paced well for beginners and newcomers. For the hardcore, you will fly through this on your way to end game and will probably forget all about it anyway, so why the worry?

If the team does not try to include the new/casual as well as generate epic end game content then the game will probably die off like so many before. I'm not to worried about that honestly. I have not seen a Dev team so devoted to listening to their players and dedicated to making a game succeed as this one in all my years of gaming. It looks like they have a solid core system down now that has much more room for development than the previous one. Watching 1.0 evolve into what it was in the end given what they had to work with, I can't see this team stopping after launch. This is the nature of an MMO, it is constantly evolving.

I too have my concerns but I'm not the type of person that only focuses on the negative. The world is too diverse to focus all the devs resources on trying to appeal to one particular niche group, remember that at one point you were a "noob" too. we all were. I seriously doubt at 5 years old when you picked up your first game that you aced that in a day. I only wish people were more considerate about new players and wanted to include them too. We all have to start somewhere and if someone chooses to start am MMO with FFXIV, I want them to enjoy it and continue to play until they are a hardcore too. don't you?