The future of the game

[Kajidourden]

As someone who never got into WoW, I'm curious about something. Where do you see this game heading given what we've seen so far in the way of progression/endgame?
The comparison i hear regularly is that this game is going EXACTLY the way of WoW. New patch, few new dungeons, some fixes, so on and so forth.
As someone who played FFXI for years I have to say that having been doing endgame related things for a while now....I'm pretty darn bored. I log in, do my duty roulette and maybe run some Crystal tower, and then i'm out. After all, what else is there for me to do (PvE) if I don't plan on getting into PvP? Right now endgame boils down to grinding dungeons for no reason other than to get tokens for new gear.

[Deifact]

I think the first expansion will make or break this game for a lot of people. I don't want this game to be a constant instanced dungeon grind. I'm hoping an expansion will drastically increase the over world (new continent?) And provide alternative content to dungeons.

At the moment I'm pretty bored!

[Kajidourden]

I seriously think the game in it's current state should be called "Dungeon spam: the game"

[Cons]

I like the game, Im at end content but still find certain aspects challenging

[i2agnarok]

Serious question here, as a person not normally doesn't play an MMO long enough to see the expansions or the interest to go back once I've quit:

Just what is it that other games add so much per expansion that makes them so "omg, I can't wait for this!"? Across the board, it always seems like:

-Cosmetic stuff.
-New dungeons.
-Maybe a new map to do the exact same stuff with a new background.
-New classes/races.
-Rebalance to existing content.
-PvP-related stuff.

I'd really like a specific story of something an expansion did that dramatically increased your interest in a game that you were previously bored with. I've always sorta viewed Endgame expansions in MMOs as sinkholes; it just gives you an "updated" version of all the stuff that people called boring before, until you've beaten the content and the cycle continues anew.

[Blitzace]

Something i really miss from XI are notorious monsters, this was one of the reasons for me to explore alot of areas, just go out and find some NMs even though the drops were crap i had a blast. i miss alot of things from XI especially my summons rawr.

[Cons]

Something i really miss from XI are notorious monsters

+1 for Elite random spawning (hard) mobs that have a very small chance to drop something interesting

[Kajidourden]

Something i really miss from XI are notorious monsters, this was one of the reasons for me to explore alot of areas, just go out and find some NMs even though the drops were crap i had a blast. i miss alot of things from XI especially my summons rawr.

Well, the wings of the goddess expansion for ffxi is a pretty good example for me. This added a whole new PvE element called Beseiged where an entire city-state would be overrun with enemies and the goal was to beat back the oncoming horde. There were several other elements to it such as certain NPCs missing if you lost, etc. There were also the same scale of battles that took place out in the open world. Dynamic things such as this are what im talking about.

Also, outside of the expansion discussion, I miss NMs as well. Both open world and burning circle. THOSE were true tests of your abilities and the rewards were very much worthwhile (assuming you got a drop)

[buritoslicer]

it would be interesting to see hamlet defense brought back

[Farryn]

I'd like to see more overworld areas added as well. I hope at a certain point the game will start to expand its geography on the scale of FFXI, which was huge. Really one of the first things that drew me into FFXI was how big it was. You had to run everywhere instead of teleporting, so that certainly contributed to how expansive the world felt, but I remember that feeling of exploring this vast land, a plateau with dandelions as tall as trees, a desolate desert with deadly creatures, things like that. I haven't gotten this feeling in FFXIV yet, and while I do really enjoy the game, I am hopeful for where it is going to head in the future, and hope there is a bigger focus on things other than instanced content.