I really hope SE does make a FFXI-2 someday, pre abyssea of course (I quit before abysea came out in case you were wondering, but I heard enough about it to make a fairly informed opinion about it). Many people on this forum have claimed in the past that the feelings that many of us felt in FFXI are purely nostalgic, claiming those feelings are just because “it was the first mmo we played" or "we were younger and more easily impressed". Although this might be part of it, I feel that it was only a small part.

I had many similar feelings of accomplishment playing other MMO's, such as when I faced the Lich King or played countless PvP battles to finally get a high enough rank to get my PvP weapon and shoulders in WoW. The excitement and sense of accomplishment that I felt while doing these things was the same as when I was completing CoP missions with my static group, getting my O-hat, finally getting that piece of gear from a HNM, or when I finally got the drops I wanted from killing Gods in Sky or Sea with my LS.

What do these things have in common you may wonder? Well it's fairly simple, these tasks took dedication, skill, practice, and could not be completed by just anyone who bought an account on E-bay or spent hundreds of dollars buying in game currency. When I finally completed these tasks I had a real sense of accomplishment, something in my opinion that is completely lacking from FFXIV.

This type of game is obviously not for everyone, and unfortunately games like FFXI and WoW have slowly been turned into the type of game that FFXIV is currently. Where everyone can get everything in a month or two and end game content difficulty is reduced over and over again. This is done to make sure that every single person playing, no matter how horrible they are or how much time they have to play has a chance to get whatever items they want in a couple months of play time.

What would be better for SE, a FFXI-2 MMO with 500k dedicated subscribers, or a FFXIV MMO that tries to be different just for the sake of being different and has maybe 20-30k subscribers at the most, many of which are just hoping that the game gets turned into something worthy of the Final Fantasy name.