This isn't an MMO

[Ruri]

I would say 50/50...I dunno, maybe I got lucky with the server, but FFXIV has among the friendliest, most polite players I've come across in a long time. Wish I can say the same about the forums.

My server is friendly also. Join a few linkshells and a FC and get to know them. I always have people to talk to no matter what hour I'm on.

[Arkghyom]

OP needs to play a MMO ASAP!

[Pyreflye]

Did I seriously just read someone compare FF XIV to Battlefield 4?

[Noshpan]

Did I seriously just read someone compare FF XIV to Battlefield 4?

Yes. Yes you did.

[Aegis]

I understand where the Op is coming from. At some point MMORPGs became MMOs, it seemed around that time that a lot of what the OP and others like him enjoyed were dropped from the genre.

/adjusts belt onion

It used to be that the development of your character was the focus of the game. Actually hitting max level was a feat and a goal in itself. By the time you hit max level you knew your job inside and out. You'd been playing it for months with different party setups that required group co-ordination to be effective.
Now, hitting 50 is just a hurdle. It's gear development from here on out. You spend months aiming to get an extra 2 ilevel.

With a cross-server Duty Finder there isn't much community development. Being a d1ck on duty finder? Who cares? you won't see these people again and even if you do they can't avoid having you in their group again anyway. In older MMOs, people knew who the leeches were, who made no effort to gear sensibly while levelling, who the PKs were. Conversely, people knew who was helpful, who was knowledgable about their jobs etc.

The community is... not good. It's better than it was in that godawful first month but still. PF is full of primal ex parties that will kick if you die more than a certain number of times or coil groups that 'reserve' gear. CT is full of trolls. The queues for dungeons themselves often pop and drop repeatedly because of those looking for in progress runs. They had to add incentivise main story line dungeons through roulette because new players couldn't get anyone to help with instances that are 5-10 minutes long.

Remember linkshells spending hours helping with LB1? Spending 30 mins to trek to Castle Zvahl to help with 5-1 or 5-2 fight? Heck remember randoms spending hours getting that damn magicked skull for you? Now SE had to take steps because people in your own linkshell/FC couldn't set aside 5-10 minutes of their time without having to actually go anywhere to help you kill storyline Ifrit.

I understand that the community is not the responsibility of SE, but the game design itself, from making levelling practically obsolete to the throw-away, repercussionless parties to the lockouts that keep linkshell members from helping each other and instead encourage cliques do engender this kind of behaviour.

Of course there were bad community aspects of XI too, most notably the awful bot-claiming, 3am wakeup, bad-mouthing mess that was HNMs and Kings. That was, happily enough, restricted to a couple of dozen players per server and didn't involve the rest of us at all.

*onion adjusted*