Quote Originally Posted by DoctorMog View Post
I keep telling myself that all these things that they are adding can be simple and easy to accomplish because maybe they are required for the content they PLAN on producing later might be hard?

But they just keep making everything easy and I die a little inside each patch.
This post doesn't make sense. Are you saying that Batraal/Deepvoid are easier than the r50 NM's? Or that you think Beastman strongholds look easier than Darkhold? Granted we don't know how strongholds will play out but the video along with the new linking system looks like we will have no choice but to deal with massive amounts of (hopefully) fairly strong mobs (as Ixali/Kobalds of the same level are usually considerably stronger than Oboron/Imperials/moles/ghosts).

The way I look at it content keeps getting progressively harder, requiring more teamwork, and as long as that continues by the time we get alliance content (along with a fully balanced combat system) I expect some really epic encounters that will hopefully blow all of XI out of the water.

As it is, the content is already better than similar offerings in most new MMO's in my opinion (challenge wise). I mean you can rag on Darkhold all you want but have you done similar dungeons in Rift/Aion/AoC/WAR/WoW/etc? It is definitely more challenging than those.

I like a challenge too but we are just going to have to wait until they finish balancing like Matsui said before he can put in much better encounters, but I still expect Ifrit/the beastman strongholds to one up Darkhold. Unless, and I really hope this isn't the case, these are meant to be more casual content. I really hope they aren't though because it would be such a missed opportunity after watching the beastman stronghold video to not make that thing a challenge with all the possibilities for linking/multi-strong mob encounters. Please don't let them make them just open world versions of Faction Leve-esque difficulty encounters.

Everything they have said (and honestly everything they have done/are doing development wise) still supports the idea that they are trying to give us challenging end game content. The "hardcore" community among the NA population might be a minority these days, but I have faith that the JP's (who they always listen to anyways) are demanding tough/complex content and that will be the salvation of the game in the wake of what is honestly the era of Casual/Easy-mode MMOs.