OP, if you truly believe that XI was a "challenge," then you are misremembering what the game was. XI—like many of its peers in its generation—punished mistakes (XP loss on wipe) and was tedious (the grind is real). Neither of these things are actually "hard." There were some hard bosses, both killable and unkillable, but nothing in XI—and the MMORPG genre in general—screams hard. And while I do not do Savage in XIV, I do have a lot of experience with the hardest of the hardest MMO content. I just don't do it anymore because I don't want to invest the time required; there's too many other great games to play, great books to read, and great content to stream. So I do know what I'm talking about.



You want a challenge in gaming? Go play Dark Souls. Otherwise, please stop. Projecting tedium as "challenge" really doesn't make your case.