Quote Originally Posted by Abriael View Post
You're again confusing correlation with causation. FFXI players didn't quit because the game wasn't FFXI-2. Or because it didn't feature massive timesinks (which very few enjoyed even in FFXI, I remember very well the groans and gripes heard in linkshell again and again every time we were subject to some massive grind/timesink in order to progress)
They quit because the game launched incomplete, unpolished, with very little to do content-wise, and even more because some convenience elements that people have grown to take for granted in MMORPGs were completely absent (because inconvenience is, by itself, a timesink. Why do you think people cry for an Auction House so much? Why do they want a consignment merchant? Why do they want chocobos and airships? Because they want to use their playtime *actively* without *wasting* it).

Square Enix will bring population back by solving those problems, not by further *inconveniencing* their playerbase. I find it massively funy that some would believe that by making the game less active fun and more of a timewaste, any degree of success could be achieved.

Considering how much you seem to appreciate wasting your time, you were probably delighted by having to check every single bazar in the game to find stuff to buy in the market wards. That's SO hardcore, isn't it?
Did you feel let down when they implemented the search function?
Uhh, the reason why there is no AH/wasn't even a search function at first, was to promote needing crafters in pretty much every linkshell. Hence why being in a linkshell is a good thing. No, I wasn't disappointed when they implemented a search function, because I don't use the market wards. My linkshell and myself farm all our materials, make all our own stuff. That's how the game SHOULD be played.

In response to the OP, FFXI is thataway Sir. Enjoy your "hard-core" server(s). FFXI wasn't like it was now at launch or even in the first year either. Funny how people forget what games are really like at beta/launch. Come 5 years from now, when this has been out a while and the complainers get bored and move onto some other game, no one will even remember what this was like in beta/launch. Have a little faith.