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What does an MMORPG offer over a single player game if not it's ability to connect people to a consistent world of adventure and fun? See, I believe what today's MMORPG market lacks is connectivity. You have things like duty finder to find yourself a party in all hours of the day and that's good, it stops people having to spend hours looking for a group, but where is the social connectivity?

Please correct me if I'm wrong OP but that is one of the major issues you see with the current game is it not? The in inability to stay connected with those you come in contact with?

Duty finder is something that didn't exist in XI and everyone you met you knew were part of that world, you knew you could befriend them if you wanted and engage in other activities with them. You meet someone in a dungeon and want to befriend them in this game? Hopefully they are on the same server.

Why can't they introduce cross server friend lists and linkshells? Why can't they focus on making more instanced events for endgame that allow you to pick and choose players from other servers?

As for the level curve, I'm inclined to agree with the OP, it should take longer. This, however, I realize is only an opinion because I believe the fun is in the journey. The loss in experience points however I believe should never be introduced again. Please, just no..

Edited, Aug 21st 2013 4:03am by CupDeNoodles

Getting 5 other people to show up for exp or missions is fairly easy. Organizing scores of people to come together for dynamis or splitting your LS up into several groups to farm sky triggers... completely different story.
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this is how easy that is. (week in advance)
/lsmes Time: (set time) Meet up (set meet up) Sky run/dynamis run /tell (leader) for invite/questions

I knew leaders in ffxi who only played 3hrs a day and still ran Endgame LS's.
MMO very much was a "press start and play" if you allowed it with sceduals and the like. It never was met for the lazy player who wanted everything set up for them.

I personally feel a certain game open the genre too much to a crowd who shouldn't play mmo. As this crowd is infact changing MMORPG into something that they shouldn't be. Which is mainly solo'ed games with little to no grouping or stuff that you may need/want to group for.
I enjoyed and miss that aspect of ffxi. I play single player rpg to solo.
Its hard to group not cuz how many solo only

most stuff in ffxi took roughly 3 hours to do if not less. ffxi had no "raids" and some of the bigger content had save points (nyzul isle) Dynamis was a 3 hour event. sky as much time you would like. You had farm days then run days. Ypu cpuld even buy the pop items if u so choose. I never farmed for gil personally yet still had gear just fine.

Also playing 3 hrs a day didn't take years to hit cap. My brother played 2 hrs and got to 38 drg rank 5 fairly quickly. (less then a year)

Its all about setting up a plan with ur friends, logging off in said locations then going to do the content. People generaly over exaggerate when it comes to mmo "waiting" cuz they are idiots about it and do the afk wait for a party. They don;t actively ask leaders or form a party or use that time waiting to do other things.

But you lost exp when you were doing Dynamis right.

Your example does not support your statement. TNLs drastically shot up once you hit level 50. It took 149,750 exp total to get from 1 to 38. You needed over 800k exp total hit 75. That means 1 to 38 is only one-fifth of the way to the old cap of 75, not one-half. Unless your brother got to lvl 38 in less then 3 months, maintaining that rate would have meant taking years to hit cap.

Granted, once ToAU came out, the exp rate for really shot up if you could get certain camps and do TP burns. But not every job fit well into a TP burn party. Which brings us back to waiting for a group. If you were a DD that could deal piercing damage effectively in a TP burn setup or a BRD, you could probably get into a group easily and get up to cap fairly quickly. But if you were one of a dozen jobs that didn't fit well into a TP burn pt, it was going to be a slow journey. Contacting party leaders would probably mean just getting turned down because you weren't the right job. And even if you decided to form your own group, you probably weren't going to maintain the mythical ultimate uber exp rate people tossed around because all it took was one other party to roll into the camp to bring the exp chain to a halt.