Unsubbing from games I played for years (Ultima Online, XI) was bittersweet but it was usually because i didnt enjoy the direction the game was headed. Unsubbing from XIV was easy though. I still have an extremely vague hope that the DEV team will turn things around down the road but $12 remaining in my wallet every month is worth far more than any experience such an easy game has to offer me personally.

Thats generally where games lose me, when they become too easy. Ultima Online became too easy when they split the world in 2 and everyone just moved to the safe new world where there were no dangers, thieves, or PKs. Not to mention GM's were no longer allowed to interact with the player-base as characters or just have a few good laughs. I remember being in a role playing guild of "Orcs" who made their home near the Orc Fort and a GM used to stop by once in a while and spawn a bunch of Ord type monsters on us repeatedly to simulate a rival Orc clan trying to take our home over. It's the little things like that that games dont do anymore that create lasting memories.

UO also had a couple events where a GM controlled a monster king or whatnot that would interact with the community and spawn a bunch of minions to attack and things unfolded more realistically as the human controlled monster interacted directly the actual players. It wasn't just an automated script. Almost 20 years later and I can still vividly remember those days/nights.

XI became too easy when they introduced Wings of the Goddess and most people abandoned the party system to go solo which basically saw an immediate decline in fighting skills as people stopped learning how to function as a unit in a PT. Then they started nerfing all of the older content for being "too difficult" and all of the new content introduced was insanely easy. Next thing you know new events made it possible to go from level 1 to cap in a matter of days instead of months and it lead to a ton of people not even knowing how the jobs even functioned.

Which is basically where XIV picks up. Individual jobs are vanilla and interchangeable and require little skill. You hit level cap in a matter of days/weeks instead of months. Content is designed around people with ADD. Short bursts of simple, scripted battles that are most importantly easy to complete.

So maybe one day they'll add harder, more in depth content for gamers like myself. If so, I'll pop back on and give them a try. If not, I'll hope one day a game will come along that will. For now, I'll happily save my $12 a month.