If I could interview Yoshida.

[Answa]

I love FFXI. I played it for close to 8 years.

That said, I'm done with it. Everything I wanted to do took a frustratingly long time to achieve. Even moving around took forever (especially in those first couple of months). You could do nothing by yourself until the latter years and it reeked of elitism. I never experienced a great community inside the game, hardly anybody was helpful. It was just overall a giant stress test. I still loved it and strived to do well, and to my knowledge I achieved this, albeit slowly.

This game is so different from FFXI that I have no idea where you got that it was heading in the same direction. I love it and would be very careful about what elements I'd port in from FFXI. I would love a more engaging storyline, replete with actual challenges inherent to it--but I'm sure we're getting this in 2.0 (Yoshi has already said he won't cater to DoL and DoH for main scenario quests). The only thing missing are level caps to give you a good challenge.

That said, remember that CoP didn't come just one year after release. By then there was a giant fount of content, recent overhauls have stunted content growth, but now that the dust is settling expect content to come in larger quantities (like 1.21, with jobs, 2 dungeons, and Hamlet defense, among other things).

[Cichy]

I love FFXI. I played it for close to 8 years.

That said, I'm done with it. Everything I wanted to do took a frustratingly long time to achieve. Even moving around took forever (especially in those first couple of months). You could do nothing by yourself until the latter years and it reeked of elitism. I never experienced a great community inside the game, hardly anybody was helpful. It was just overall a giant stress test. I still loved it and strived to do well, and to my knowledge I achieved this, albeit slowly.

This game is so different from FFXI that I have no idea where you got that it was heading in the same direction. I love it and would be very careful about what elements I'd port in from FFXI. I would love a more engaging storyline, replete with actual challenges inherent to it--but I'm sure we're getting this in 2.0 (Yoshi has already said he won't cater to DoL and DoH for main scenario quests). The only thing missing are level caps to give you a good challenge.

That said, remember that CoP didn't come just one year after release. By then there was a giant fount of content, recentt overhauls have stunted content growth, but now that the dust is settling expect content to come in larger quantities (like 1.21, with jobs, 2 dungeons, and Hamlet defense, among other things).

I think in 1.21 we will finally see more of the big picture Yoshi has planned. I think Darkhold and TotoRak been stuff leftover from previous team they threw together to give us something to do. It's gonna be interesting to see those 2 new dungeons we're getting.