The direction XIV is heading

[Kirith]

I love the irony of so many FFXI players wishing for FFXI-2 (god knows why, that game was horrid for the first 4 years - I was there for at least half of that and pretty much play because friends were) and yet moaning that things like an aggression icon removes the sense of adventure.
If you're asking for the same game, there is no sense of adventure, you're too set in your ways.

Maybe it was horrible *for you*, i'm pretty sure many thousands of others enjoyed it, like myself. And yes, aggression icons remove the chill of hugging a cliff slope hoping that giant gobbue isn't aggressive...

No one is asking for the "same game", but for a game with a similar atmosphere and features. To at least start with conserving the features that we liked in FFXI before making arbitrary choices everywhere, which is what they are continuing to do almost blindly.