End game, why?

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

short: It's like getting off the bus at the corner with the cracked sidewalk and the spray paint on the buildings, walking up the decrepit stairwell in your apartment, and getting to your unit. And your unit is absofanfreakin'tastic, because you're spending the most time there, so you want to focus the most energy into fixing it up.

original message: With today's MMOs and the people who play them, the leveling seems to happen much faster. Information about efficient exp methods, guides to dungeons and fights, searchable item databases, all of this happens much faster now. And then a game that doesn't have the same slow movement, slow combat, long respawn times, death penalties (deleveling and corpse runs), hell levels, plus learning curve for playing fairly "new" genre.
(mostly referring to Everquest I)

Mid-level content back then was a zone, mobs, a handful of rare spawns, and some drops that made said-spawns get camped to death.

In FFXIV though, players that end up in an XP party end up leveling at such a frequency, that they don't even update their equipment. With many of the parties still succeeding with a mish-mash of old equipment AND the rate that they level, it wanes at the desire for gear acquisition. They don't stick around these levels long enough to make the dungeon a challenge. And with the rate they're leveling, the dungeon won't be a challenge. If dungeons were the best way to obtain EXP, we might have more focus on that content.

Incoherent post, returning to message after a while, hitting post.

[BrusselSprout]

short: It's like getting off the bus at the corner with the cracked sidewalk and the spray paint on the buildings, walking up the decrepit stairwell in your apartment, and getting to your unit. And your unit is absofanfreakin'tastic, because you're spending the most time there, so you want to focus the most energy into fixing it up.

original message: With today's MMOs and the people who play them, the leveling seems to happen much faster. Information about efficient exp methods, guides to dungeons and fights, searchable item databases, all of this happens much faster now. And then a game that doesn't have the same slow movement, slow combat, long respawn times, death penalties (deleveling and corpse runs), hell levels, plus learning curve for playing fairly "new" genre.
(mostly referring to Everquest I)

Mid-level content back then was a zone, mobs, a handful of rare spawns, and some drops that made said-spawns get camped to death.

In FFXIV though, players that end up in an XP party end up leveling at such a frequency, that they don't even update their equipment. With many of the parties still succeeding with a mish-mash of old equipment AND the rate that they level, it wanes at the desire for gear acquisition. They don't stick around these levels long enough to make the dungeon a challenge. And with the rate they're leveling, the dungeon won't be a challenge. If dungeons were the best way to obtain EXP, we might have more focus on that content.

Incoherent post, returning to message after a while, hitting post.

I think the problem with a lot of people here is that they don't think you can have fun unless you're leveling. Maybe I'm wrong but it sure seems that way to me. I spent about 4 months at level 30ish on my CNJ because the only thing I did was help people fight the mid level wandering NMs for gear drops. That's a heck of a lot of playing without gaining levels, and I wasn't even close to being maxed at 50. Things do happen faster for all of the reasons you listed, but I think if people stopped looking at it all as a negative, and instead found their own way to enjoy things then this problem wouldn't even exist.