Issue With End Game Raiding

[Klamor]

> Quoted just for reference <

I feel ya on basically all of that.

I've played several MMOs in the last 10 years, and raided endgame pretty regularly in all of them. With that said, I think some of the issue I'm having with finding groups for raiding here in FFXIV is a mix of what you said, and a few other things. First, I'm getting old. I work and have a family. I mention this, because I think a lot of the players of FFXIV have grown up with the series or were already partially grown when they started playing FFI back in the day. Compared to the players I was around in World of Warcraft, Aion, RIFT, and Rising Force, I think the players in FFXIV are generally older. By about 10 years on average, I would guess. Whereas in WoW and RIFT I would be consistently surrounded by players ranging from 15-25, here i'm surrounded by players aged 25-50. That's a larger gap, and along with that, higher responsibilities. More responsibilities outside the game tend to diminish the amount of time a person is able to spend inside the game. That means each hour a person plays is precious. They have daily quests to complete, relics to work on, tomestones to cap. Everything takes longer in this game as well. Daily quests in WoW would take 10 minutes tops in some cases, and that was all of the dailies (Sunwell Isle). Here, because you have to run long distances for most of them, or wait an hour for a FATE, even the easy stuff just takes so much time.

I know I'm a special case on this point, though. I'm in Hawaii. It's almost impossible to find a group that doesn't start raiding before I even get off work on a normal day. Part of what drove me away from trying to raid in 3.X was the time zone difference mixed with not being able to join a group as my main job, Paladin. Lots of people would love to have a BRD/MCH, or AST/SCH, but I didn't spend my Lore on those jobs. I didn't gear those up, and it would takes months to gear them up to what my PLD is. It's not their fault; it's nobody's fault.

I pretty much stick around now just because this is what I've been doing (also from 1.0, and ARR Beta, as PLD) for a few years now, and there's really nothing that catches my eye on the market today. I want this game to thrive. I'll just leave it at that for now.