Quote Originally Posted by Raven2014 View Post
you know ... the more I keep hearing people saying Eureka is like FFXI, it kinda makes me glad I was playing WoW/GW2 during that time and missed the boat.
I don't like when people compare Eureka to XI. They really don't feel the same to me. There are similarities in how dangerous the world feels, but that's where things end.

Yes, XI had grinding, but it was a lot more laid back than how it's presented in Eureka. XIV's combat system is much more involved and requires you to be pressing buttons all the time for maximum contribution, whereas XI only had you using abilities and hitting macros at a much decreased rate compared to XIV.

Beyond that, XI's worlds felt much more alive. There were always far more things to actually see and do in the areas. Eureka is very pretty, but that's simply the aesthetic- aside from killing monsters, there's nothing to actually do in the place. There are no quests aside from the mandatory fetch quests Krile gives, there's nothing of substance.

If I had to compare Eureka to anything from XI, it would be like Abyssea, but again, Abyssea was more engaging. Abyssea had tons of quests found at each of the zone's base camps where you could get a myriad of rewards. Monsters actually dropped stuff in Abyssea. Sometimes you'd have NMs like an Amphiptere that would randomly encircle the zone and decide to land on unsuspecting players, so that added an interesting element of surprise and caution. That may sound annoying (and it was), but it added a sense of adventure that Eureka doesn't have. And ultimately, if you died, the penalty was much lower than how it's presented in XIV. The rewards outweighed the risk, which is something that doesn't match here.

As Eureka exists right now, it's a half-realized thought. Despite the fact they had additional time to perfect it before its release, the zones feel devoid of life and do not live up to their full potential. They could have been so much more.