Opinions On FFXI's Life.

In abyssea, casuals could get the best without an issue. Emp weapons were great for the game. Gave almost everyone a nice weapon that was strong and easy to get. In most cases it was the best.

I think SE did too much too quickly. Made it super easy to get relics. All the hard work people put in all wasted. I don't feel comradary amongst LS. Doing Dynamis and Sea. I guess I'm just stuck in my ways :)

Making me feel as though I should move on.

After 11 years i've tried basically all known MMORPGS out there. I always came back to FFXI because it its unique. I bet that the way the MMORPG market is doomed to copy wow till it crashes (see FF14, its new example) FFXI will have its place among players for another decade at least.

Well after FFXI I'm probably never going to play an MMO again. And yes I've tried many others including XIV. I just think it is time to move on from XI the game was fun for a while I've missed out on a lot of other games because I was loyal to XI.

I knew it was time to move on when I would log on and lose interest in things to do within a few hours. Lack of people I know playing also was a big factor.

My only real problem is with people on here that fail to realize that moving on from XI is not a declaration that the games sucks XIV is better etc. People move on from games all the time ***gets old.


Also quitting the game and still talking about XI is not crazy. Most of the people on here played this game for a long time so we have every right to express how we feel about the game whether we still play or not.

Not that it matters but I put in 10 years into the game. When being level 75 was a big deal I've been apart of every aspect of the game.

I'm not clinging to XI. Unlike some people... you know who. I'm just here to talk to random people on here. Plus as much time as I put into the game I'm curious to see how things will go in the future. Put it this way it is more entertaining than facebook.

When I quit not long ago it is for good never coming back.

That I would have to agree with.

FFXI is very unique in the MMO market. There isn't quite another MMO like it that I can see.

It is the only MMO I know of that allows you to change jobs and play different roles in a party. Rift Online is probably the closest I've seen with the Soul system, but you were still linked to a single class-- Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, or Mage. Compared to other MMOs and WoW clones on the market, you had to make a new character and chose a different job/class to play them. World of Warcraft, TERA, RIFT Online, and many others fall in that category. FFXI was a standout in the MMO market by giving players a choice to play whatever they wanted on a single character. FFXIV using a Secret of Mana-style job/class system by simply swapping a weapon continues that trend.

That's one thing I like about FFXI.

Another is its emphasis on group-related activity. It may have made it harder to do things in the game and obtain items without a good group to obtain them, but it indirectly forces you to meet people and get to know them. Linkshells would not have been formed if group activity wasn't emphasized in this game. FFXIV ARR in some ways stepped away from this using the Duty Finder and randomly grouping people from different servers. That is unless you had a Free Company to form your own group to do raids and dungeons with.

So, FFXI has a social factor in it that was emphasized more than any other MMO I have played. EVE Online is probably the closest but even then you could avoid being grouped with others and can go solo in that game.

Another is the difficulty that I like about FFXI, when the game was difficult to do missions and obtain items in this game. In WoW and other MMOs of similar nature, it's rather easy just to burn through content as older content got outdated and outmoded after a new expansion or patch. Leveling to cap level in FFXI took longer than it did in WoW. If you were playing often, you could hit cap level within a week or two in World of Warcraft. And, in FFXI doing missions gave a sense of accomplishment because they were hard to do without a good group. But, the story that tied into them was worth doing it in the end. The same thing with items you got from HNMs, Salvage, and the like. I miss those days.

The rest boils down to the "Final Fantasy" factor-- the story, the music, the characters and settings. These are unique to the Final Fantasy franchise than any other MMO, and it's what draws a lot of devoted Final Fantasy fans to. Closest comparison here will have to be the juggernaut, World of Warcraft. Its lore and story dates as far back as Warcraft I in 1994. Its music, characters and story are as memorable as any Final Fantasy character and is the closest comparison to Final Fantasy's level.

While other MMORPGs try to be the next World of Warcraft or the next Everquest, or try to separate itself from them or outdo them, Square-Enix marches along its own path. It just kind of disappoints me in some parts of FFXIV ARR that it had to mix some elements of World of Warcraft into it to help gain players especially casual players, just as similarly to dumbing down the difficulty and leveling in FFXI in the past couple years to make it easier for a lot of players.

You aren't curious, you just like to troll people that still enjoy playing.

Haha, I'll fix that.

Yoshi-P good at making decisions yes, but listen to everyone probably not. Main reason why Yoshi-P's project is successful(at least for now), is because he has a very clear vision about his game, and what gaming experience he wanted to deliver, and ARR precisely delivered it.

Players: We want F2P MMOs! Monthly fee sucked! Why should we pay monthly fees for a title when many other titles are free?

Yoshi-P: Nope! There gonna be monthly fee!

Casuals: We want easy contents! I don't have enough time to do 1000 endgame and raids for lol items in a video game!

Yoshi-P: Nope! This game gonna have a hard content.../go on and challenges the player base with 100 ppl per server beat binding coil of bahamut before 2.1 claim.

Players: We want more fast paced combat, action oriented battle system where you can jump and roll and dodge while firing 10 ability rotations at once! F*** ATB battle system! That's like a relic of the past!

Yoshi-P: 2.5 sec GCD :)

Players: We want hybrid jobs, talent trees, and room to develop our own play style because we all want to be an unique snow flake!

Anddd obviously ARR is far from "your lancer is different from mine, because my lancer's play style is tank" sort of thing.

The result is, ARR successfully delivered a very precise theme park JRPG FF experience, in an online world. Because all that ATB sytle combat system, lack of talent tree(instead you get abilities from other jobs to supplement your main job), anime style story are exactly what FFs are.

It may not be exactly what players nowadays are expecting, nor it follows current MMO trend, but it worked.

Now look at Matsui and his team:

Players: FFXI getting stagnant, we've been wearing Ebody for like, 5 years now?

Matsui: Ok, lets do a gear reset for everything, including REM, so players can wear new gears!

Casuals: I paid for the game and I can't any content, because delve bosses are too hard.

Matsui: NERRFFFFFFF delve boss difficulty!

Casuals: Can we stop getting hard content only? We want easy content!

Matsui: Skirmish 2! Now you get best armor pieces in 2 days! Don't need to do delve boss for R15s anymore! And all you ever need to do is kill fodders for 40 min while half asleep!

Casuals: We want solo content that drops super awesome gears! So we don't need to join linkshells for event.

Matsui: Colonization reive! A small chance to drop awesome JSE back piece after hitting the tree for 30 min!


Matsui listens to everyone, without having a clear vision of how this game works and keep players around in past 11 years. Even Tanaka is better than him, at least Tanaka's vision worked 6+ years ago on a 11 year old title and he stick with his vision until the end.

Well I am going to stop reading and post for once (Since this is an opinion thread). But life in FFXI for me has declined I have quit this game about 3 times in the past and came back. I am still currently playing IX and trying out XIV (which I am not going to comment about on here sticking to the topic). But each time I came back to the game was not to try this new content or not to obtain newer gear. It was mostly because of my friends I was in the same LS for about 7 years and played with these people ever since. These were the reasons I kept playing FFXI, and I am sure many others feel the same way about it too. I read a post Zubius posted that FFXI was not fun anymore, I could not agree more FFXI became an obligation for many people. ' I got a shell to run' 'I got an event to go to because I am main tank/healer/sacker or what ever.' The thing is when people no longer have those obligations no longer have friends logging on others like me won't either. People are blaming XIV, on school starting, the misalignment of the stars to the population decline of IX. But its IX itself. The game was always at a decline time goes by and more reasons for people to quit. To me the game is boring combat is slow and outdated expansions sucked since ToAU, but I had friends and sometimes obligations that kept me logging on, but as they go so will I. And I am sure I am not the only one who feels that way.

Eh, the game is hardly declining because people saw the game as being a set of obligations. Nearly every MMO whether it be WoW, EQ, EQ2, Rift, Terra, Ogame, or whatever really, ends up having things you can do as a group and that people then assign themselves these obligations to in the game that they didn't need to.

Tons of stuff can be done with just random groups if you want to, but then people in FFXI, but people in FFXI over time grew a raging hard-on of hatred for doing things with random people. The game makes doing that easier than ever! But are you going to find tons of people feeling like that's an option when they could decide to have to be on every night at a set time for their LS event? Hell no! Because that'd mean playing the game as a relaxing diversion rather than as a giant obligation.

Same thing happens in WoW. People play the game all relaxed, then end game comes around into their line of sight and people go "TIME TO GET A GUILD TO DO EVENTS WITH ON A REGULAR BASIS" and then people get burned out and quite WoW for a while before going back. Much the same way as many people have done with FFXI (for those of you unfamiliar with other MMOs, this is pretty damn routine).

Same thing is going to happen with FF14 as well. People are playing the game all pleasantly and enjoying the low level content and the easy to come by pick up groups for little things, but pretty soon people will get to end game, decide to set apart a portion of their lives to it, and then get annoyed with the game for being a soul sucking obligation when it was their own fault for deciding to make it one.

Yep, couldn't of said it better myself.
Course I didn't always keep the same set of friends, got into a lot of disputes, but made a lot more friends. Now I'm down to a good handful, but the best handful I've ever played with in the 10 somethingish years+ I've been playing XI (On and off of course :P).
They've lost interest in the game now, as have I and its a shame.

Life of XI I can't say really, I'll keep it on my PC for another year just to see if it goes free to play, if not I think I'll be removing it to open up some space for work programs + documents lol.

As for as many as these threads exist i'll throw my thoughts in on this one and only. I've played straight for about 10 years, never "quitting" and coming back, and this is one of the few times i've played where i felt like there is just nothing to do, and not just because of the current lack of people, rather content. It's currently very, very, VERY, boring, which is odd considering we just got an expansion. Whether or not this kills it, is arguable, and time sensitive, a change in content can change everything, but for sustaining its own existence it got boring at a bad time (14 came out, and not just some new MMO, but another FF MMO...again). Not to mention this is the same time they killed REM's, something a lot of people came to own, which was just incredibly stupid. I cant think of a better way to target & piss of your hardcore fan base then destroy their hardcore items, did they think nubes were going to take over and provide enough population? Baffles me. But that discussions already had.

Haven't logged in since I got 14 (and this is a week after I got my first REM - Mythic mind you). Although I plan to right now...because of maintenance.

I'm still looking for something to do myself.

I'm back to doing just Salvage again, and I think I've burned myself out on Skirmish already. That and my LS stopped doing Delve boss runs because a lot of us stopped playing FFXI for FFXIV.

It's also why I posted this thread two months ago, hoping I could find something more to do to keep me busy in this game. And, I still haven't. I agree with you on what I marked in bold in your reply above. There is a lack of things to do.

You either have the people and friends, or even the Linkshell to do things with, or you don't.

I'm in the latter, not the former nowadays.

The game seems to be revolving only around Skirmish now and that random once a week or two shout for Wildskeeper Reives. Then there are the random Delve NM shouts with attempts at the Delve boss.

These are the most recent shouts within 15 minutes tonight:A few hours earlier, it was one person shouting for Skirmish runs, and another person shouting for a Delve T1-T5 NM plus boss run.

This is what FFXI, on my server that is, has come to lately. There are probably other players on my server in similar situations and others that are not. The ones that are not are probably lucky enough to have the friends (that are still playing) and/or Linkshell to do alliance-required events.

There has to be more to do than just Skirmish and Delve. And, this game is sorely lacking in variety of content for high level players right now. Given they [SE] made leveling to 99 a lot easier, there is a large population of level 99 players out there looking for something to do like myself. Difficulty and ease of obtaining items has made obtaining those items and burning through those content a lot faster now.

However, when you can get better gear and weapons than older content within a month of dedicated farming, you pretty much have burned through the content already. That is unless you want to attempt farming Delve Boss item drops or Wildskeeper Reive NM drops. There has to be more to do than just these nowadays:

• Delve

• Wildskeeper Reive

• Skirmish I/II

• (Monstrosity)

Yet, if SE wants players to keep playing FFXI, the company has to give us something more to do than Seekers of Adoulin content, and provide additional content on a regular set schedule. I think the biggest mistake Square-Enix has made with Seekers of Adoulin and the rest of FFXI was making items and armor not only obsoleting older ones but making them easier and faster to obtain. And, if you obtain them and burn through the content within a few months of release, you pretty much force the players to find something else to do or just idle around. Make another Relic weapon? Get 5/5 Skirmish II gear? Farm NNI until your eyes bleed? Farm Ampuoles for someone making a Mythic weapon? Get 5/5 Salvage II and +1 gear? Get all your jobs to level 99?

I don't know, and I'm sure other people will argue that there is still something to do in this game. But, what is left to do if the playerbase is just revolving around Skirmish and Delve? I do Salvage with two other people. You can't do a lot of things in this game with three people unless you shout, and hope that the randoms you pick-up are cooperative. And, most of the content nowadays can be done with a group of cooperative six players. That and most of my friends have already quit XI since XIV's release. I came back to this game because of a friend's request, and he quit a few months ago. Like Nivmizet said above, I play for and with my friends, but when your friends aren't there anymore, who do you play with then?

My FFXI account already has Crysta paid up until the end of October, and there is an additional 90 days of Crysta for FFXIV. I have to decide whether to quit FFXI or not for the third time come the end of October and just stick with FFXIV. Why? It looks like Yoshi seems more dedicated than Matsui at providing content and fixes for that MMO than FFXI, and relaying and communicating with the players of XIV. It's wholly lopsided how two MMOs of the same company are treated differently especially when it comes to fixes and updates.

Probably the one disappointing aspect of FFXIV is not the casual feel of the game, or the random people in Duty Finder, or the WoW-like difficulty so far, but the fact you see all these FFXI monsters updated graphically for FFXIV. I ask and tell myself each time I come across a FFXI monster in XIV:
Then, you realize what's planned for FFXIV for the next 6 months to one year for FFXIV v2.1, 2.2 and beyond-- player housing (think of The Sims meets FFXI Mog House meet Mabinogi housing and a dollop of ArcheAge style housing construction, and you will have a good idea of what it'll be); new Primals; new higher level content and activity like Hamlet defense; and possibly a level cap increase.

Then you look back at FFXI and what's planned, and we get Delve II and possibly an REM update in a few months. Of course, there's that storage space update that they're working on. Monstrosity update and additions, perhaps? However, it doesn't feel like any major content update. If going by what's happened with Adoulin so far, I'm sure players will have burned through Delve II about as fast as Skirmish II content. They have to stop making content that can be burned so easily. Sure, it was annoying that it took players a while to get anything in this game years ago, but it kept players in the game playing and obtaining those items. However, no one back then burned through an expansion's content as fast as the content in Seekers of Adoulin has.

It is totally lopsided how two MMORPGs are treated from the same company, and is honestly disappointing.

Well, my hope is that REM update will breathe some life back into the game. Group content is needed of course, more delve etc., but people need something to do in their free time too.

I'm at the point now where I just log on for LS events and call it good. Absolutely nothing else to do. At least, back when REM were relevant, I could hop into dynamis/salvage and work toward something.

Has there been an update on when this is happening I missed? I haven't heard anything beyond the one dimensional fact of "its something that will happen".

No date set in stone.

I have not seen any confirmation as to when that will happen. One player in my Linkshell said the end of the year. Another on the FFXI Official forums thinks maybe next year. Then, another player thinks maybe by November. If going by every three months for major updates in FFXI, my best guess was December or February.

Again, there is nothing officially confirmed as to when that will happen.

I hope FFXI keeps going strong(fairly strong, atleast!) for many years to come, so that when I feel like trying it out again, I can actually do that D:

RME alone isn't going to bring people that are already playing ffxiv... yay stronger weapons to do the same content is what it comes down to... ffxiv is fresh, visually appealing and fun where XI is not winning in any of those aspects.. Though like others said.. it might be nice to keep XI alive a bit longer just in case something amazing happens... though update to RME isn't going to be it.. SE has to f***ing WOW us really hard.

The original thought behind Adoulin, being that you need to have gotten the best gear to be successful here, was a great one, in theory. In practice, for the last few years, there's no need to have explored the ENTIRE game. There's no add-on or expansion that has made the game too easy or killed certain content. The current state of FFXI being that there is a "level up asap only to do current endgame" dominant mentality, is the fault of the developers. They have not released content that came without a good challenge. What has not been done is the scaling and accessibility of existing content once something new came out. If i were to start new right now, I can name several areas and items i could NOT get due to the fact no one would join me to tackle the content. That or I would have to shout for many hours before I found enough individuals who share interest in what i wanted. All the while, in the back of my head, I know that I've shouting for 3 hours, finally gotten people, and the drop rate of the item i want is around 0.3%. With the game being that way, that content is simply wasted hard drive space now. If each expansion REQUIRED a certain key item or such from previous content completions, FFXI may be a completely different place right now.

I can't stand the pace of ffxi anymore. The UI is irritating. The amount of time it takes to do mundane tasks has always been bad and i simply don't have the patience for it anymore as I've paid for this game and they have done little to make improvements compared to a f2p game. To switch jobs, rack your brain about where to put this gear, switching gear on jobs, shouting to get 18 players do something with you, etc, is not something that I want to do everyday. I want to log in, and have fun playing the game. Voidwatch required shouting for 18 people. Legion required shouting for people. Delve required shouting for people. Wildkeepers reive requires shouting for 30+ people... I have a life. I can not promise you every tuesday @ 8:00 every week for a year so everyone can get what they need for voidwatch. Then every wed for legion. then every thurs for neo nyzul. That's what's needed to do if you want to be in a linkshell in this game. So I just shout instead.

FFXIV has given me every convenience I want to demand of FFXI if I were to continue to play. I want a beautiful world. A faster UI/combat experience. Elimination of time needed to do simple things and do more of what I pay for. Play the game. If FFXIV WERE to crash and burn and the game ended now, I couldn't play FFXI again after having experienced playing a game that is truely worthy of a subscription fee in 2013. I can not agree that FFXI deserves to be paid for at this point. Pay for WHAT? There are many f2p mmos that provide a much better gaming experience than ffxi does at this point.

That is not true. Currently I spend 90% of my time playing FFXIV, but not because XIV has zomg amazing graphic(I don't pick what game to play based on graphic), but because current XI suck too bad and I hate current XI direction.

Not saying XIV is not fun, but XIV experience is very different from XI, for me at least. XIV for me is "Just another video game title I've played, out of many". XI for me is part of my life for past 4 years, that I've been making meaningful connection since lv 3. XIV is much more like entertaining video game I play for fun and XI much closer to 2nd life for me. They're just very different, with a very different goal when the game designers created the game. XIV is designed to entertain players so everyone have fun while challenging the content, XI is designed to create a playing experience much closer to rl. And "another video game I play for fun" simply can't satisfy me, I want a 2nd life, out of all the games I've played, only XI successfully delivered it(since I never play other pre-WoW MMO such as UO/EQ etc)

I don't care about good graphic, and willing to go back to XI if they bring old XI back, if not, I may as well quit and save my money, and accept the fact that the game that had made an impact on my life no longer exist. I thought this day would come only when server shut down, but I guess SE f***ed up this time and it came earlier than I expected.

If they fix REM, maybe I'd go back to full timing XI again, if they gonna make REM another subpar weapon, I better save 12$ a month and use it somewhere else.

Every time I see all that anti-REM comment, such as "just go grind relic in XIV" or "Just grind delve boss weapons", can't help but lol. Relic in XIV isn't even legendary weapon, more like endgame item lv 80/90 JSE weapons, with equal item lv alternatives. Delve boss weapons isn't legendary weapon either, just another ex/rare until next update. But for those who don't play XI due to legendary weapon obsession(note: legendary weapon obsession, not being elitist obsession), they'd never understand the emotional attachment behind the item, and would misunderstood REM love as elitism.

I want REM to be fixed, not because I'm a "REM crybaby", but because I love XI(and REM too :)), and I want XI go back to what I once loved so I can keep playing, XIV/other MMORPG/other video games can't replace XI. I tried, tried delve boss weapon, tried other titles, tried XIV, and it doesn't work. Sad part is every time when I mention it, it always turn into "omg you're just an elitist" or "just play other games if you don't like it" ***storm.

I already gave my chance for current XI, and tried my best to voice my opinion, if it doesn't work, guess yeah, move on. Completely not XIV's fault though.

Agreed when most of your time is spent waiting to do something you really aren't playing you are just wasting time.

Other F2P don't have "grind 1 year for super epic weapon", no meaningful, long lasting connection. Also you don't get totally clueless about where to go in new areas, and got lost in zones without map :( which was funnnn :D :O :<. Yeah, FFXI is a pain to play with 99% of time, and it's certainly not for the majority. But for the minority that enjoyed it, this kind of fun doesn't exist anywhere else.

I'd rather pay 12$ a month to grind a legendary weapon that I have emotional attachment on, got lost in zones without map instead of having everything labeled for me, or feel completely worthless and unable to progress without friends.

Then I start talking to ppl, learn their background, because I have to make connections to progress, much like rl, then we may or may not become friends that I can never make in real life. Which is different from go to a dungeon, use pt search tool, get a pt that doesn't even say hello, disband after it's done like 10000 other games.

I know it's not for everyone, but I've played many games, FFXI is the only game that's more than a game for me.

They have instant fun.

If a free game can provide you instant fun, or, in FFXI case, fun at all, why would you pay for a game that cannot?

You can spend 1 year building a weapon with 90% of time wasted actually doing nothing, meanwhile, smart people will spend 1 year playing. You know, the point of a game.

Crazy concept I know. Once you realize that it's not about F2P and just about games, simply games, you realize that you aren't playing, you are literally wasting a good part of your free time between fun moments, while other people have their free time filled 100% with fun.

I think I have something like 40sec-2min between my LoL games, maybe 3min when I duo queue. So out of one hour of play, I lose around 3min to waiting, which is filled up by a WC break or whatever. Beat that with FFXI, it's simply impossible outside of based Monstrosity.

Take a game like Dynasty Warriors. This is instant, infinite fun. You load the game, you play until the end of time, the fun never stops. This is what tired/bored/grown up people want. They don't have time to waste. I'm not even old myself but I'm burned up after 10 years. I want to boot a game and immediately have fun, and have fun for hours with not a single down time.

FFXI was/is more than a game for many people here, there are just people who have woken up/experienced a huge amount of FFXI (meaning: 10 times what you experienced) and some who haven't yet. You'll catch up one day.

FFXI was fun it hasn't got that feeling anymore it has become a job not fun. If I want extra hours of work I will put in overtime. The fun aspect of the game is getting drained out of the game as each day passes.

With regards to taking a year to build that is only case with mythic. Even then the only thing that holds that back is the time restraints on getting stuff set by SE not because its challenging content.

Your describing the game when you actually looked at someone with a relic etc and went OMG I want that those days are past.

I just finished with 11 and sticking with 14 and at least I have the choice if I want to do stuff with my friends I can or I can team up with a load of strangers and get it done fast. Unlike 11 waiting/shouting around for hours/days for nothing.

They will run the game until if cost them $ to run it. Theres probably what 50-60k active accounts? 14 servers & say 3k minimum players on each, not counting mules. That comes to about a rough estimate of at least $800,000 per month SE makes off XI. Would assume XI life is still 2+ years. As for SE they either are lazy or just completely out of ideas as far as content goes so they just try to wow us with over powered gear/weapons.
Seems as they will be needing to do another merge soon as populations have significantly decreased 500-700 online at NA prime time here on fenrir & probably 300 ish are RMT & Afk.
Not only have people been calling it quits since the 1st week of SoA release, more and more keep leaving due to content with no structure, massive leaps in gear/weapons that are easily obtainable & making any past accomplishments irrelevant. Even all the Bayld gear we 1st got is garbage i threw away all 3 sets which was waisted bayld, not that its hard to get but just waist of time to obtain in the 1st place.
Making content so easy you could sleep wile you do it with very few rewards, then making JSE capes a nightmare to get. Spend month+ of solid reives and still not get the cape you want.

No REM updates which pist off a lot of people. Which is a lose lose situation. REM owners are pist new weapon trumped them. Then when they finally do REM updates all the non REM owners will be butt hurt they are 2nd class again & will quit because they rejected for not having one. You cant win.
And on top of all that the population decrease. More than not people will call it quits due to being bored. Lack of people = lack of Events. No /sh to join and no one to join your /sh so everyone just afk and runs from AH to mog in hope something interesting will pop up.

Everything is unbalanced and confusing atm and no one knows where its going or why. Even skirmish2, go ahead blow all you gil & stones for that perfect augment, then be tossing it to the side next update.

I still play, i still love the game & have fun. but it has become rather dull. Do we continue spamming delve just to have a plasm bank to buy future gear? And watch all boss gear hit the Floor since we all have it... Even then we all will have so much plasm by then we will get 1 win buy all the gear and never do it again.

The worst part is SE has killed the market for everything we use to farm for gil. Even look at savory shanks now... 3M each yet i check Behemoth domain everyday & theres 1-2 people there. No one even doing Dring farm anymore.
So much people have listed above is true and should be addressed as well as what iv said has already been said.
Some troll and some give opinions.
Hope we see some kind of change where it really brings a lil life to the game again, its 11 year old game so not expecting much but something.
***as much as i hated VW, it lasted a long time since it was such a low % to obtain items people kept doing it. Sadly Making content suck with almost no reward is what keeps people playing since they want that item or items. As for Abysea, it ruined the game, but it was more fun & motivating than SoA.
If they put some kind of VW Meebles or Dyna type content in SoA it may have a chance. Something like salvage or nyzule where your entry is limited therefore pro-longing the content could help it last longer to.

Lastly SE continues to postpone there words. Things we have heard & got excited for.

Black belt upgrade?
Smn Avatars?
Meeble burrow add ons?
Blue mage spells?
REM updates?
New 2Hr & /ja?
Im sure there is more i cant think of..