It's funny.

[AryaUnderfoot]

I'm sorry but this doesn't even compare to how much Aby fucked leveling in XI. At least in this game people are learning how to handle their role in a party through dungeons and guildhests. In XI Aby all you do is take your level 30 character back and forth between the page and the group until you hit 99.

EDIT: And to the person above; yeah, no. Abyssea is bad, because it's existence invalidated the entire mid level game. You hit 30 then fly to 70-99. The worst part is, there's almost nothing involved in doing such. Running back and forth is without ever having to hit attack or open your spells is not even gameplay. You can call it mechanic abuse, but it's been going on years now unfixed.

I was there for the start of Abyssea. Stopped playing like a month in. Not because I didn't like it but personal reasons. I guess I stopped before the mechanic abuse kicked in so, sorry, no I'm not defending that.

But in the end, from what I hear from you, There was no effort in leveling there (not even attacking). It is unfair to say that such is the case in XIV as you deffinately need to put in some effort to level, even if it's in relatively short time period. (Also, no I'm not saying you Taru are saying this)

[Krisan]

You realize.. You could literally idle in Abyssea and get to cap level before the end of a day, yeah? The majority of people who got to cap via Abyssea on all their jobs just ran around with some keys and opened treasure chests. Literally, that's it. Easy or not, you actually have to PLAY this game to hit 50.. so you need at least SOME semblance of an idea as to how your class works to get there, unlike post-abyssea XI where you quite literally didn't need to know jack-shit about your job to get it to 99.

Don't go barking about 1-30 either, since Grounds of Valor let you get to 30 retardedly fast too.. undergeared too. Hell I'd usually see people doing this naked. Plus Abyssea gave you cruor, in insane bulk, which meant you could buy your starter gear for endgame right off.. Likewise some of your final AF could actually be quest-farmed if you could be arsed to do that. And none of those quests had required battles, unless you counted Bastion which you just needed to whack a mob in and not die for 30 seconds while they broke the nexus and you got half or all of the points you needed and could leave.. didn't even need to KILL anything there.. tedious to do it that way, sure, but people did it anyway. You literally could be setup for the end in most every way without even killing a single mob yourself.. lol..

This game isn't comparable to THAT.

[Tareel]

Discussions about leveling speed are pointless as there was a decent percentage of the population who already had one or more classes at max level.

[Roin]

The only plus to the way Abyssea worked is that the person who just "key"ed their way to 99 still needs to level their skills the old fashioned way. Even with their level 99 job, they have the Accuracy and Attack of a level 30. Not as hard as leveling, sure, but still something.

Personally, I don't really care for comparing the two games. They are different, and that's okay. I'll still enjoy playin' 'em both.