Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Chocoquest was around level 20 and was pretty hard coming from EQ1, AF quests no rep grind, just tokens you had to get one of, pretty easy if you had gotten past the limit breaks and to that stage of the game. AF2/3 were in dynamis. The rep grind I was talking about were so you could battle the summons at the time, and they were good money makers. Eventually they added in solo quests to battle them so you may have gotten around it somehow.

But all I know is if you started with NA launch this was the only way. Just saying they aren't unknown to faction/keys/farming etc. All of sky was one giant key farm for raids.

Year 1-3 FFXI raid scene was as bad as if not worse in some ways that EQ1 as far as camping, I know people that would do that stuff for months at a time with rotating spawn timers.

Eventually they got better as the market changed when WoW came about. The current expac - Abyssea is very easy to level in and raid in.

By easy I mean - they learned their lessons, and kept up with current times. You can get in and get out with a small number of people quickly. No assembling 64 people (early dynamis) or camping or contested if you don't want to. There are some really hard things left to do to challenge those who want it, but its not blocking progression at all.

Grizzlebeard_sl said:

Abyssea and level-cap raises pretty much destroyed the legacy of the good old days of camping the kings for years on end in the hopes of seeing a Defending Ring let alone acquiring one. I feel S-E have learned a great deal since those days even if they acknowledge they went too far with easy-mode Abyssea.

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Did they though? NIN was their little baby. Devs pretty much giggled at sweet PLD tears as soon as evade tanking went in place, and all the way through Einherjar and beyond through Pandemonium Warden, SEA and Abyssea. They make their mistakes (though different ones granted) as any other dev team. I agree that Abyssea went way too far to the land of Milk and Honey from the nail in the balls needing 3 guilds to camp Old gods stuff of FFXI.

I know folks that waited *years* and had to have several guilds' help to get one freaking BP. Let's not even discuss Relic weapons for the classes they were good for (BRD, PLD, ETC) and they were so difficult to get requiring months if not years of farming and currency (both token and gil), and then to add insult to injury certain classes they were just vanity weapons for. They were like EQ1 epics but way way way worse. At least the water sprinkler was useful.

I enjoyed my poopsock time in FFXI cause I was in one of the better FFXI end game guilds including asians that could speak chinese, japanese and a few other languages, and we were able to ally ourselves and with some JP guilds, and get access to all that content and even swap spawns on Old gods.

Regarding all the worries, I keep telling folks - you are right it won't take long to get 50, (or a few 50s). There is definite concern, that there won't be enough endgame content.

That's how come some of these legacy players have them. It's not cause all of them are insane. At least the ones in my guild or the ones I know, played the exact same MMOs the rest of us did, Rift, SWTOR, Tera, GW2, just in between they may have gone back to FFXIV to see how things are and gotten caught up in killing primals for a few months, it wasn't hard to group up with people in companies and level back then. I don't personally have a 50, but it sure didn't take mountains of time. I know because those same folks were often too busy playing other MMOs with me. They usually don't play console games though or MOBAs so not much else for them to do.

The insane crew of FF14 legacy is the same band of idiots that move from MMO to MMO (much like some hardcore PvP FFA loot addicts), that are a vocal minority - they miss the days of yore, whether that is from UO, or EQ1 or DAOC or whatever old school mmo burst their cherry they look on fondly that they want to go back and put the genie back in the bottle with no DPS meters (though I had those in EQ1). We heard them all over the VG forums and they are here too, but I can guarantee those folks were not the elite in endgame FFXI, just like they weren't the elite in EQ1 or whatever game they hail from.

Pyros_sl said:

Even if it's faceroll it's likely the TP regen will be essential to faceroll shit faster anyway, plus BRD does fairly decent dmg and also provide that +10%dmg taken debuff so that's even more dmg. In 4man groups(leveling content) it won't be that needed, but you can just not cast songs and do pretty good dmg anyway, and in 8man I'm fairly sure you'll want one bard regardless of content/other people.

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What Pyros said. Bard was essential to most successful raids and parties and sometimes was preferred over WHM (since they can heal/cure too at a basal level) because of TP Regen/MP Regen in FF11. If anything, why fill the slot with a healer, if you can bring more DPS and have that slot filled elsewhere? At least thats how things played out before.

This is especially true when they put in experience bonus for chaining fast kills.

tower_sl said:

A shame developers never let us do this anymore. Even if a non-tank could handle that job they'd never be allowed to with the dungeon finder's hardcoded PLD/WAR = TANK everyone else = NOT TANK

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You are correct it was a community initiated change, but as expansions went on they unabashedly didn't help the PLDs out at all and it was a running joke. You can find plenty of webcomics and lulzrage about it. NIN definitely turned into their baby.

Rezz_sl said:

In that example, actually, you had to subclass Warrior for Provoke, which would effectively put you into the tank category. It would be fairly easy to code in subclass combinations that result in specific outcomes, so that a Ninja with War subbed would show up as a tank, whereas a thief with War subbed wouldn't be. Well, every 2 hours they tank pretty well for a few seconds!

Also, you don't have to use dungeon finders to make groups, so you could very easily have your non-traditional "tank" grouping up regularly. You would just have to do something like talk to people and stuff vs. just popping into easy mode.

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Right that is another concern. The subjob system from FFXI did bring some of that meat/complexity I think people are jonesing for. We'll have to see if what they have done with classes, jobs and abilities is gonna be even have as enthralling, fun or challenging to learn. All those little rules are what made the game fun or what people would do with gear, and certain job/subjob combos to solo things.