3.0 player here. I'm just taking my time with FFXIV. While I miss the hustle and bustle (bustle?) of busying towns like in the days of 2.0, I also enjoy the benefit of content that has been shifted to boost people right through it including cheap prices for higher-end mats and gear that is more or less ignorable now.

I said this a while ago... or maybe in another game. The core zones in FFXIV are very much ignored and ghost-towny. Like... I've been the only person in... most of Heavensward maps... (I'm leveling my DoH/DoL jobs... so I'm flying all over). The only life I really see is when I.... well DF isn't much life as people are autopiloting their alternative jobs. The main cities has a few people afk/emoting which is nice. I think the MB is the only place that proves people even care or persist in pre 4.0 content.

My point, SE don't forget that you have 2 other versions of your game that people now only have an option to go through. If I were a new player (on Gilgamesh which is very populated) and ran around looking for life, I'd better trying to find some sort of beastmaster or BLU job because there just aren't players in the wild. Yes this is a heavily instanced-based game and of course power creep voids old content. But how about a introducing a persistent means to bring players together that's not meaningless events and outside of pvp (which still divides the community)? A system that is rewarding for all players and relates to the story of the game rather than some segmented add-on that impacts nothing larger than that space?

FFXI had a number of systems/dynamic events that played into a larger system (though they died out when the focus shifted to the segmented end-game players). Conquest, Campaign, a few other modes that seemed to pop up like FATES and actively effected the larger game.

I thoroughly enjoy this game, but I know that I'm existed in a largely ignored content space. I just want to see a mutually beneficial reason for players to populate the old territories rather than this game fall victim as others to marching players down a procession of new to void and back to new content. I want to see "jump" items disincentive. I don't have the answer but am one that struggles within the problem.

Or perhaps it's not a problem. Perhaps this will be a larger move to make zones offline. Without undersized (and I don't think you can do FATES unsynced), most old content is impossible to complete on your own nor would I recommend doing so. From the point of an old gamer that has been to endgame in other MMOs, it's very hard to motivate new players to keep playing if they essentially have a completely different gaming experience as the older community. The old content has moved from enjoyable to a choir serving as a gate for non-jumpers to hop through. DF is another subject, I just wanted to focus on the actual world that exists before the next "point 0" drops and again abandons voided territories.

~Concerned but hopeful