I would. Regardless of how it turned out. But ideally it would be a return to a more harsh and unforgiving exploration style open world like XI was. And they could keep the immediate gratification theme park MMO in XIV. That way, both player bases win. Honestly I long for some adventure and danger in an open world MMO that I just don’t get in XIV. Like I have never felt I need to watch out or be on guard while traveling in XIV. Not once. And the teleportation stuff makes it so I never have to touch most zones either. Everything is instanced… which would be okay if the groups at least had to be together and travel to the instance entrance zone.

But nope, as it is I never even see my static or my friends in the world because we just queue for the raid together, and as soon as it’s over we don’t travel back together or see each other. We just apear back in our house or Limsa or whatever.

And sure it’s convenient, or we could “force” a social gathering outside or make them up because we can. But it’s weird because we have no reason to… like sometimes the best friendships or experiences come from doing something out of necessity.

Take Sea of Thieves for example, like wow… I mean the journey is more than half the experience and it is gorgeous to look at the scenery. But that’s not why we do it, we don’t just go out and look at stuff, we’re on our way to dig something up or complete a quest… and if we could teleport to islands we’ve visited before we would just do that instead. And quit shortly after cuz it gets boring.

Making places dangerous/long to get to is not a disrespect of a players time. Not if the world is carefully and beautifully crafted so it’s meant to be appreciated.

I like XIV, and love SE, but i hope the next MMO doesn’t feel as claustrophobic as XIV does.