Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
There's ways for FFXIV to be improved without losing its core appeal - there's no need for the MSQ to lose its relevance. It's not a coincidence that World of Warcraft began to decline in relevance and popularity around the same time that it began to put less and less effort into telling a consistent and interesting story. I don't want FFXIV to go down the same path - and if it ever did, then I'd take my leave of it.
When did WoW ever tell a consistent and interesting story? All it did was ride the coattails of the RTS game stories and it's when they had to come up with new stories that things started going bad. But that's a topic for WoW's own forums, not these.

Relevance is subjective in the long run, changing for each person based on their personal desires and goals. The MSQ will remain relevant to the game. even if some players would prefer to skip it. No one is going to have a different experience in their weekly Eden kill just because someone else in the group didn't play through the MSQ.

But it's a RPG. Role playing game. You need some story to give meaning to the role, why it exists and why what you do in that role is important. I can't think any of RPG I've played over the years that didn't have some basic underlying story you were following as you progressed through the game. Even ARPGs like Diablo have their story that is told as you run around killing mobs and picking up loot. You can ignore those stories as they happen but you don't get to skip them. You don't get to play through the end game zones unless you have completed the preceding zones first.

That's what we're being asked to do here. Play through the zones to unlock the content in later zones. If someone really can't stand doing that but insist on playing the game, they can pay to skip the first 85% so they can be in the later zones faster.

People really should play games as they're designed to be played. Trying to play any role playing game as if it's nothing more than a loot pinata is never going to be satisfying in the long run because the game isn't about the loot, it's about playing a role in a story.