Highly Notorious Monsters

[Alhanelem]

^This is taken out of context, games can be taken over by casuals and I was obv not talking about this game

Games don't get 'taken over by casuals.' They only get made for them. And so what if any particular game gets "taken over by casuals?" What's wrong with casuals? Why do you hate them? They have every right to enjoy a game that you do.

Hnms were the filler content around that.

No. All other content was filler for HNMs, if you wanted to do HNMs. You couldn't do other stuff on your own terms because out of all the HNMs, there was always at least one due to pop at any given time, and if your LS leader wanted to do it, you had to go to it. I had plans to do many of the contents you listed ruined/abandoned by an HNM being about to pop. HNM is not filler content. If you did HNMs to a dedicated level, you had little time for other content. But what did you do most of the time you were doing HNM? Wait.

This game has the potential to be great, really great. Potentially the best mmo in the genre.

I agree. And it will still be great even if it doesn't have HNMs that use a spawn window system.

HNMs do not have a broad appeal. They are only appealing to to the hardest of the hardcore, and people that feel like they have no choice but to do it because it's where the best gear is. The percentage of players that ever fight an HNM in FFXI was always and will always be very low. Something like 70% of people who play WoW don't make it to level 10. You don't seem to realize what a small minority people who crave this content are.

I love fighting HNMs. I don't love waiting for them. I don't want spawn windows to own my time spent playing FFXIV. And I played it many hours a day. I'd call myself moderately hardcore. Just because I play the game a lot doesn't mean I like an NM's pop timer controlling when I can do the other 99% of the content in the game.