Hey, I see huge potential in FF14, but I think they're trying too hard to make everything different from FFXI, WoW, and all other MMOs.

Some things seem to be the way they are simply because nobody has done it yet, and a lot of those things are a bit silly.

Is there any simple quests yet? Like quests in XI? How in Windurst, you could trade in a few Mandragora Buds for like 200g? THOSE are the kinds of quests I want, not ones that show in the quest logs, just simple quests where you can load off some rarer items you found while adventuring, or making it so theres a few super rare drops like Carby's ruby, or even rarer, with a quest where you can turn it in for a little gil bonus or something, this is the stuff that makes games fun, it gets you excited about the little stuff.

Also, the zones are way too big, there needs to be more variety, I almost wish they'd delete the zones and start from scratch. FFXI sized zones were just fine. If you didn't like one, it was okay, there were other ones with totally different environments to go to, and you werent in one for more than 5-10 levels anyways.

A huge part I think that made people feel a connection with FFXI was the fact that it was hard, but not so hard you didn't want to play. You felt a sense of satisfaction when you even got the simplest things, like a pair of boots with a +1 stat on it with you were a noob. You made money and spent it all on one crappy pair of boots, and you loved those boots to death. :P Along the same lines, there were adventures, you felt character progress, and environmental progress. Your character got stronger, and you acually moved through different areas. In 14 it seems could be comparable to being in a gigantic Sarutabaruta for 30 levels, visiting the ruins once or twice.

Huge levels also bring up the fact that they're just not unique. 3/4 of the zone looks the exact same, they have to copy/paste stuff because it's simply too big to do detail on all that stuff. Once it gets that big, I think it's time to end the zone and start a new one.

Either way, those seem to be my main concerns that don't seem to be being worked on, and I honestly can't see them reducing zone size and adding more variety, cause that'd be a huuuuge step backwards, but I just love how there was literally hundreds of environments in XI. I played XIV for over a month, and only saw the 3 starter area environments and a few dungeon looking areas. And I covered a whole lot of ground.