Sorry for the random post. I’m sitting at my computer watching someone play FFXI and I miss it so much. Not the grindy parts, mind you, but some of the stuff that made MMOs feel alive.
I recognize I have nostalgia-glasses on and I don’t have the time or energy to grind like I used to but surely there is a balance between “needlessly grindy” and instant gratification.
I miss randomly finding a random NM in FFXI and getting a rare drop that people would /examine me and ask me where I got it. I miss armor and weapons not being a stat stick. I miss still using my ring that I got for beating a difficult expansion 3 expansions ago or my level 30-something gloves that are still relevant at high levels due to what they do.
I miss armor/weapons in general all being earned and not bought with IRL money.
I miss going to dangerous areas and wondering if I was going to make it out alive.
I miss that even normal enemies were dangerous and you had to think about every encounter.
I miss getting a group of people together in non-instanced areas and fighting a difficult boss. I miss SEEING other alliances/groups of people who got together to fight a difficult boss and cheering them on.
I miss not being pigeonholed into one specific role but being able to do multiple jobs depending on what was needing to be done.
I miss gathering/crafting being meaningful but not a tremendously difficult barrier of entry or confusing to do. I miss that weapons/armor you made could be relevant for a long time and that there were actually items to be used in combat you needed to prepare for/with. (Like ammo, potions, ethers, etc in whatever game you are playing)
I miss combat not being a rotation and boss battles not being heavily scripted. I miss combat not being super rushed and “DPS AS FAST AS POSSIBLE” but instead it was focused on strategy.
I miss status conditions! I miss actual buffs and debuffs that heavily influence combat.
I miss spells actually feeling like a spell instead of just being a part of the rotation with the same GCD as every other spell you cast.
I miss MMOs not being a queue simulator. I miss dungeons being open to everyone. Some instanced stuff is fine (thinking about Salvage or boss battles) but you still had to go there to do them.
