Woke up on a Saturday morning, wanting to play something, have some some fun. So I open FFXIV, because... hey, why not?

So I get on and open the Party Finder™, hoping to jump on some raids. Having cleared O8S and gotten my axe by this point, I was really down to just doing whatever. Maybe even help some people clear. Except... what's this? Only 6 parties? And what's THIS?! "2 chests."

...

Welp! I guess that's out of the question, then. Let's just do the new alliance raid and chop up some things.

So I queue up for Ridorana, and when I still hadn't found a party in over 30 minutes, that's when it happened. It's like a piece fell into place inside my head, and I was suddenly able to see clearly.

This game is dead. There is like a tiny margin of time where it is active. Except, even during that window, the game punishes you for wanting to play it more than once a week (2 chests). And the thing is... there isn't a single piece of single-player content that you can do during the dead times. There is no open-world content, no fun events and mini-games, no real jumping puzzles. Once you get your best gear, what do you do? Gear up another character? By what, raiding once a week (lol) and/or grinding tomestones? Oh wait, I forgot... you can PvP! Oh wait, that's dead too. Or how about everyone's faaavorite thing to do EVER - Eureka?!

...

It's pathetic. And this is on top of the fact that the game is charging us over 10 bucks a month, too.

So I guess I'm done. This is my good-bye thread. I don't know why it took my so long to get to this realization, but looking back I can kinda see I was already on the way, here. I guess I just didn't want to admit it.

I really hope this game ends up changing its ways. It's got a lot of potential, with its current raids and the whole Final Fantasy theme. But punishing players who want to raid more than once a week, or who want to play the game more often by gatekeeping gear progression, will ultimately be its downfall.

PS: I logged back into GW2 and got PoF (50% was almost as much as a FFXIV sub). Pretty much proceeded to have more fun this weekend than I can ever remember having in FFXIV (except maybe when I cleared Savage). And the best parts were... I didn't have to rely on parties to do it, AND there was nothing in the game that was like: "OK, you got too many items right now - come back next week."

But I guess the best part is I will no longer have to wake up on every Tuesday and wait out the maintenance they keep on (disrespectfully) putting on top of the weekly reset, just to make sure I do my mandatory raids, and farm dungeons to cap my tomes. I'm finally free, to play a game as often as I want, and whenever I want, without it billing me every month.