...redoing ARR. A Realm Reborn: Reborn, as it were. A Realm...Reforged? Remade? Retempered? No...no, that...that would be bad. Well, whatever it'd be called it needs to happen. I've talked 9 friends over the last 10 years into trying FFXIV, and, aside from 2 of them, each one them quit during ARR. And despite my attempts to get them to try again, promising it gets better starting with Heavensward, even with what little improvements they've done, they have no interest, even on the free trial.

ARR is the biggest deterrent to getting new blood in the game, which every MMO needs to survive (despite what gatekeeping jagoffs would have you believe). They need to just go from top to bottom. Rewrite the whole thing to be much more streamlined, make at least the MSQs more interesting, and redo cutscenes to take advantage of the better cutscene tech they've got now.

Also can take the opportunity to get the writing to line up better with the lore that happens later in the game they just didn't have planned out at the time. Maybe re-write characters so they're more likable. (LOOKING AT YOU MINFILLIA. She's supposed to be our friend, and hard-working. Could do little things like instead of just standing by her desk when you come back to talk to her, she could be at her desk signing off on 2 foot high piles of paperwork...SOMETHING. And maybe at the part where Alphi says he'll sic "his" WoL on anybody that causes trouble, she can like, at least give him a dirty look or maybe even admonish him for it instead of just standing there smiling like an idiot. Some friend she is. Just like "They're not a weapon or some even some member of your Braves you know...that's our friend." Something!)

Condense and get rid of entire patches if you have to. Hell, take the opportunity to redo the voices with the current VAs for consistency. (One of my friends that made it asked why all the voices changed, and why are they so Bri-ish) I would stuff the originals in the inn book, for archival sake.

They can also make Story version of Coils. Yes, yes. I know people can just do it unsynch'd eventually, but you damn well know, or should know, it's really meant to be done at least before "that" scene in post-HW patches. I know that raise some gatekeepers hackles. Good.

I'm sure there's tons of mechanics and systems that could be redone as well. Main thing is, it really must be improved if they want to be able to keep bringing people into the game.

And yes, I know the current state of the game is...decisive...at best, that's why I said "side project". They can improve the current game and work on this in stages. There's about a half dozen threads on the first page of the forum alone that "talk" about the state of the current game. I wanna know what people think about this idea.