Quote Originally Posted by Lantesh View Post
Guivre was Kuftal, not Gustav.

I actually don't remember many parties in Gustav, but I had tons of them in Kuftal on those crabs.
Gustav was a great place to level from 50-60, off the goblins.

As far as the topic goes, I definitely wish this game had as much of a journey as XI had. It wasn't so much about getting to the max level as it was appreciating the experiences to the max level. The fondest of my XI memories consists of my experiences before I had even hit 75 or experienced the endgame content. I'm probably going to get criticized for saying this, but I feel Abyssea ruined the game completely on this front. The game had started to go downhill once ToAU came out though. Up until ToAU, the expansions for XI had been about expanding the content, not replacing it. Sea didn't replace Sky for the endgame content, just like Bibiki Bay didn't replace Ru'Avitau or Ro'Maeve for the leveling grounds. They worked in cohesion to make a better, more expansive game. But ToAU wasn't so much about expanding content as it was about replacing content and just generally making the game worse and more shallow than it was. Then Abyssea comes along and continues the vicious cycle by one-upping ToAU. They had the right idea with WotG, offering alternatives to partying and leveling areas for the lower/middle levels. They should've just skipped ToAU for that and then ditched Abyssea completely.

Getting back to the topic, I highly doubt 2.0 is going to be able to recreate the same kind of experience, or if it's even going to try. It seems like Yoshida is taking more of a standardized/mainstream approach to the game as opposed to the niche experience XI went for. Not a whole lot of people want a steep grind, even if it is peppered with deep, meaningful content.