Absence of end-game content : the downfall of every MMO.

[Tiggy]

This happens because of a lot of people play this game like a race. Without FATEs grind and play doing a bit of everything, this game takes 3 or 4 months at least to reach lvl cap.

Ive been playing since early access, right now Im lvl 36. I do FATEs only if one appears near to me, I run dungeons, farm items, gather, craft...

Not true. Simply via questing and running dungeons as intended you can easily do it in under a month. I did. If leveling is your focus you can do it very quickly without fate grinding. I'll admit I did fate grinding from about 46-49 since the quests clear out, but I could just as easily have done dungeons instead leading to a few more days of leveling at a maximum. Only reason I did that to begin with was to be ready to join my FC's endgame group. If not for that I would never have done it at all. As of today I've been 50 for over a month now so those few levels of fate grinding didn't make a significant difference at all. In no way would it have taken another 1-3 months of dungeons to get those 4 levels. This game has extremely fast leveling.

[rkpost]

Not true.

If you add DoL and DoH, it take more time. For example, some days ago I spent one day farming items that I needed to craft (and I didn't earn xp because were low mobs). Sometimes I don't use my main class for days, because I'm busy with gathering, craft, helping another users or just talking wit other players.

But I hate this game speed, it's not funny burn a game like this in that way.

[Bizniztyme]

End game is not the same for everyone.

[Darkillumina]

This is the paradigm of the modern theme-park MMO. By blasting everyone to end-game where they are forced into a tiered progression system of gear and content, they create the problem where there is no possible way they can create content as fast as the player-base can consume it. Every single theme-park since 2004 has had people complaining about the same thing, but this is the nature of MMO's in 2013 as sad as it sounds. 2.0 tries to bridge the gap with copious amounts of fan-service and cosmetic things such as houses, but in the end it is all a distraction.

Until there is a shift among developers to try something different, or expand the sandbox offerings like EVE (pretty much the only sandbox) this is how MMO's will continue to look. Frankly, I for one am tired of it and have pretty much given up on the genre. Which is odd because when you look back, it had so much promise and instead, developers have worked themselves into a tiny corner with a concept that is as far away from massive as any I can describe.

[Welsper59]

I understand what you mean and I'm not that hardcore neither was I expecting TONS of stuff to do. Still, compare this game to the gold standard : WoW.

Dungeons.
Farming AK or CM VS UBRD/LBRD, Scholo, Stratholme.

Raiding.
Coil : 4 pretty short turns with a 5th broken one.
MC : Over 10 bosses (with much more interesting mechanics let's be honest).

What came in the first serious content patch.
Crystal Tower : can't speak too fast from what we haven't experienced, but from what they've said, it's gonna be welfare gear for those who can't handle Coil.
BWL : how awesome was this place seriously?

My main point isn't really that RIGHT AWAY there wasn't a lot of stuff to do, but mainly that was is in the pipeline for further content patches is futile (housing, dailies) or isn't going to last more than a week (CT). I LOVED that game going from 1 to 50, I'm just disapointed the fun didn't last past that.

There's so much to point out about this. I'll just start with how you're comparing the two games while PURPOSELY looking at FFXIV in a negative light and ONLY looking at WoW in a positive one. Based on that I'm willing to bet that you weren't really there for WoW launch, or perhaps weren't there for the early stages of those raids. I'll just say, it wasn't as smooth as you think it was.

You might be pointing out that you "can't speak too fast from what we haven't experienced" but you're stating your point as though it were facts anyway. Doomsday talk and all that lol.

[Gucci_Charms]

Community attitude is another big drawback which leads to the downfall of an mmorpg.

[Bearssi]

Designing a mmo game and single player game only differs in what tools the developers give to the players when dealing with other players. There should be not much difference in content quantity on launch and both genres have possibilities to evolve by dlcs and patches. Only the commitment on making the evolution happen matters.

[TheMoonflow]

This game has extremely fast leveling.

The game is easy and fast to level, I agree.
But one of the main selling points that they plugged a lot, was the job system, and the fact that if you level up more than one job you can change on the fly, so if your party needs a healer, just go whm or sch, or if they need a dps or tank, you can just change with a click of a button.
I think that's a fantastic system, but to fully utilize it you need to get all those jobs to max level.
If leveling was too slow no one would get to experience playing the game and using the job system the way it was intended to be.
As such I think fast leveling is a good thing.

What they need to focus on is adding more ways to level and balancing the options so one way is not more optimal than the others (currently fates)
Because that deters people from leveling other jobs and benifitng from one of the most unique things the game has to offer.

[Welsper59]

If you add DoL and DoH, it take more time. For example, some days ago I spent one day farming items that I needed to craft (and I didn't earn xp because were low mobs). Sometimes I don't use my main class for days, because I'm busy with gathering, craft, helping another users or just talking wit other players.

But I hate this game speed, it's not funny burn a game like this in that way.

It's actually quite normal for people to focus on one and only one class/job. That's behavior that has been around since the beginning. Like that other person said, leveling is quick if people choose to do one thing at a time. That's not really speeding through the game, that's... just playing it. In many ways, it's actually correct to say they're doing it efficiently too. Just like it's correct to say it's efficient to level crafts alongside your class/job, so that you can make your own gear at the same time.

It's speeding through things if you skip and ignore everything just for the purpose of hitting that max level cap. It's speeding through things if you don't give yourself a breather that you would have otherwise done (changed normal behavior/routine for the purpose of finishing something). But just the base concept of doing one thing at a time (or only one thing entirely) is not speeding through stuff.

[Nica]

You cannot be seriously comparing food to a game can you?

One is something you must do or DIE and the other is for entertainment.

Way to miss the point, which is to illustrate why using the size of the user base as an indicator of quality is generally a terrible idea, regardless of whether it’s a MMO, food, or any consumer goods.

But I guess you already knew that, which I presume is the reason you conveniently skirted the part where I noted that by your logic, Candy Crush would be the best game ever.

Let's get to the point, there is a reason why that other game got so big and still has at least 6x the subs than here (or any MMO) and one of them is not the lack of end game content; even at LAUNCH.

There seems to be plenty of former WoW players here who disagree with your assertion that there was no lack of endgame content at launch in WoW.

Also, you seem to be implying that WoW’s success was due to the abundance of end-game content at launch (a matter which seems to be rather disputed), when it was in fact due to a much more diverse combination of factors such as well-recognized IP, much higher accessibility for casual players compared to its contemporaries, both in game design and hardware requirements. If end-game content is what determines the success and longevity of a MMO, then EQ would still be king.

but I think to myself…why does it have to be this way? I for one am tired of that excuse, it’s used far to often (every MMO now it seems) and there is no reason other than monetary ones why that cannot change

I hate to break it to you, but that little reason that noted there? That’s a big one – in fact, it’s the only thing that matters. Game companies aren’t in the business to entertain you for free, they’re here to make money, nothing more, and nothing less. You can go ahead and spent $50 million and 5 years to develop your super content-rich MMO if you have the money, but good luck if you’re expecting someone else to pick up the tabs for a project like that, especially for something as risky as MMOs.