Quote Originally Posted by Rosy View Post
I also remember the corpse runs in EQ....going to bed when the birds were up and singing because it had taken me two hours to drag all the corpses to the entrance for guildies to recover theirs the next day PLANE OF FEAR!! It was teamwork at its very best, where you could actually play with guildies (instead of this stupid "static" idea), where players who weren't good at dodging...not that there was much dodging back then, still had skills to assist their team.

Where we had to actually beat other guilds to even get a boss! and hope we didn't see them rushing past us as we were clearing...but of course that was in the days before "instances" and the sterile atmosphere that brings with it.
I want to hug you right now.

Fear and Hate break-ins are some of my most enduring memories from EQ. Entering in to those zones the player actually felt a sense of nervous dread and exhilaration. It's been a long time since I've felt that in an MMO and certainly at no point in FFXIV have I felt anything approaching the level of excitement I experienced even just exploring zones like Chardok with friends. The dungeons in FFXIV are instanced and bland, they may look pretty but we're on rails... there's no way to explore like you could in FFXI. I remember wandering around Sea Serpent Grotto for hours learning the lay of the land so I could get to Charybdis with my eyes closed or take newbies on their ninja scroll runs.

This game lacks any real sense of wonder or danger for me sadly and judging by people's responses across a number of forums many people feel the same. Can an expansion fix the inherent design ethos with this game? I personally don't think it can.