Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player

[Melithea]

As for taking advice, FFXI was so heavily influenced by EQ it's hilarious to feel S-E have nothing to learn from SoE.

And in terms of playerbase XIV is more successful than XI ever was.

I never said that!!

Then I wasn't quoting you? Consider it a paraphrase of the combined positions of "Everyone is getting bored and leaving" and "This is why the original MMOs were more fun/better than ARR".

When EQ: Next launches we'll see a more realistic indication of what EQ subscription numbers would have been in the current marketplace.

Yes, but at the moment this is pure speculation.

Honestly, I thought leveling in ARR should have taken longer than it did, for example. Not as long as it did in FFXI though, which I started playing when Rise of the Zilart was released and a year later my highest job was only level ~55 (IIRC). And I was an avid player. Can you imagine ARR right now if the average player today was under level 36?

Let's be really, really careful with the nostalgia goggles and stay focused on ways to add depth to the battle system. Your masochistic romanticism over corpse runs and leveling down would drive off more players than Titan EX ever could. Yes, the community left might be a little closer, and that would be a natural result of having a much smaller community. But at what cost?