Quote Originally Posted by Dfess View Post
Except you're wrong. The story isn't the pull for this game. The title is. Also, I accept that FFXIV is what it is but, it needs to change. What they have now is not sustainable in the market we have today. The only people who will continue playing are whales and hardcore fans. No new player is going to drop $60 on a game and then another $60 when they find out the game is locked behind a massive story. My friends quit because they couldn't jump into dungeons right away. Sure they are just a few people but they are the average mmo players. People like that don't stick around if they can't do what they want to do and are told they have to do it this way unless they are a massive fan of the franchise already.
Its might be a bit late to respond to this now, but I just want to point out that the title "Final Fantasy" is one that is associated with story-heavy, story-driven games. So it stands to reason that anyone who has at least a faint idea about what Final Fantasy is and what makes it famous, has to expect that this is going to be a game with a story focus - and I dare say that there are enough people out there who are into that and who are looking for a game thats telling them a story. Since we're throwing ancedotal experience around: Personally I started playing this game because I was intrested in the story. I even started raiding (and kept raiding) because there was story locked behind Coil. And I know the same being true for a couple of my friends - we werent mainly looking for an endgame-MMO-experience, we were looking to play a Final Fantasy with a story-focus.
If your friends arent looking for that, thats fine - they dont have to play this game. There are games out there that cater to their taste - and at the same time, as statistics that other people have posted here already show, there are enough new players coming in who are infact looking not only for the "endgame-MMO-experience" but also for the "story-telling Final Fantasy experience". If WoW offers the "jump straight into dungeons experience" thats great for people who are looking for that! They can play WoW then - and everyone whos looking for a story heavy game can play FFXIV - not everyone needs to like and play every game. For those people who are looking for a story this game wont feel like its "locked" behind the mainstory, the mainstory is going to be their game. For those people it wont be "I need to spent 120$ to play this game" - they'll spent 60$ and are going to be amazed that for that amount (+monthly sub) they get several hundred of hours of story worth to play through. Quite a sweet deal, if you ask me - speaking of sweet: It reminds me a bit about how I buy chocolates. I make very sure that I like most chocolates in the box before spending my money on it - maybe your friends and everyone else should do the same. You dont need to play every game and if you dont like some of the main things a game offers, find another one. There will be people who like this game - until it dies. Which it obviously will do at some point. But at that point that will have other reasons than being to story-heavy.

Speaking of WoW... I'd really like to try it, but that artstyle is just not to my taste - you think they could change that for me?