Early Heavensward areas on Behemoth were...empty?!

[DragonSlayer45]

Uhm you can't go to northern thanalan til 43-45.. So if you'renot doing western highlands..you're running dungeons.

What are you talking about? I see people in NT as low as Level 35 and as high as 54. You're free to go to NT as soon as you start the game...

[Pluvia]

There's been a mass exodus of raiders to gilg so no real surprise the PF are mostly empty on a lot of servers

[Lemuria]

Uhm you can't go to northern thanalan til 43-45.. So if you'renot doing western highlands..you're running dungeons.

There's not a lot of logic in that statement. For starters, there's nothing physically stopping you from entering the area (unlike the Western Highlands, which requires MSQ completion), and secondly there's nothing stopping you from STAYING in Northern Thanalan after you hit 50 or beyond.

Level sync means that it's still decent for XP no matter how high level you get.

[Colorful]

On one of the most populated servers and the areas are just about empty, but this applies to just about every zone that isn't a hotspot. You'll see the occasional passerby but that's it, and to be expected when there's close to zero reason for going back to the old areas.

[CrimsonThunder]

If it's people you're looking for, find your servers hang out spot. For us on Odin it's Limsa. Hell, even Ishgard is dead now.

[Roegadyn_Bear]

I don't feel as if though Behemoth is dead... but then again, I dance around on my rock in Idyllshire and blow kisses at random Roegadyn men... so what do I know?

[Gunspec]

Players complained about enemies not being "dangerous" enough, so SE boosted enemy HP and damage considerably. Now it's extremely difficult and fairly unrewarding to do fates if you aren't in a sizable group, and fates quickly scale to those large groups. You'd need at least 16-24 people running fates in a HW zone to make them equal in difficulty to the fates in 2.0 zones. And since its unlikely to find groups like that, no one even bothers with fates anymore.

Combine this with dungeons now giving enormous amounts of xp, to the extent that 3 enemies in Gubal Library are worth more xp than a 7 minute fate in Azys Lla. Of the past 4 classes I've leveled to 60, I've only participated in perhaps 2 or 3 fates in Heavensward zones.

You can't even reasonably farm 3.0 open world mobs for materials, since it takes 3-4 rotations to kill the average mob, and low drop rates can mean that you will kill 5 or 6 enemies before seeing a single item. It's much smarter to just send combat retainers for materials while you run dungeons.

I know I've been playing FFXIV just as much as before, but my gaming habits never send me out into 3.0 zones due to these "dangerous" enemies. The latest 3.1 boost to dungeon XP was the final shot in the head, because they didn't buff the xp rewards from open world content a single bit. Hopefully they'll be smart enough to utilize the open world with relic quest on Tuesday, and not just give players one more reason to queue for dungeons and diadem.

[UnstablePersonality]

Siren's spots are Idyllshire and Ishgard anymore...lol

[Laerune]

Aside from FATES (which is pointless if there arent other players around) there isnt anything else to do. I am leveling some of my classes and the only thing that I do in the open-world is the rank 1 and 2 hunts, the rest of the time, I am in the city waiting for a queue to pop. Maybe if Leves were not so boring, I might have done some of them.

I know people are going to hate me for saying this, but maybe they should add castles or hubs where FC can compete against each other in the open-world, this should bring life to the zones.

[Warlyx]

the new leves introduced in HW are bad....why? i still dont know, becase HW was a good time to introduce a way to level alts....the whole 2.0 leveling was fate spam until your eyes bleed.....3.0? the same fate spam in the same spots

i was leveling my drk some days ago in N.Thanalan and some leveled to 59 there....the new zones are a ghost town ...and its a shame that its that way....because N.Thanalan is boring we have been there for 2 years....and i guess we will be there 2 years more. Thats why im lvling Drk because i do dungeons spam after DR.