Started playing WoW. I've made 4 characters so far just to get a general feel of the game. So far, I can understand why some people would jump ship from ffxi to go to WoW. I was playing, gaining exp&money literally within seconds of logging in. Since starting I've been able to log on for 30min -1hr and actually feel like I've accomplished something, I just can't do that in FFXI. For people who don't have a lot of time to play WoW obviously > FFXI. But other than that, FFXI is still a far superior game. Even ignoring my longtime FF fanaticism, any hardcore gamer(ie the ones that have time to be hardcore) is going to prefer FF to WoW. However, that doesn't mean that WoW isn't incredible, because it is. There are quite a few things I've noticed that I wish FFXI would incorporate into their game, and though I loathe to say it, FFXI developers are either being lazy or very idiotically stubborn about keeping some things in FFXI the way they are when it seems the entire world knows there's a better way to do it.
It's been hard to accomplish anything in FFXI lately b/c of my school/work schedule but I got blm to 61(static pt as BLM RDM BRD COR WAR NIN...refresh please, avg 10mp/tick) and whm to 42 and can finally tele myself around. Dynamis continues to get more and more boring as cities are almost a joke now. I remember my first few times in dynamis-windurst(with a different ls) when we couldn't even make it past the "Death House" without wiping, but now we double clear windy and {Flee} around an empty Dynamis-Windurst. Once the challenge is gone, it's not as fun anymore. I'm kind of hoping they add Dynamis-ToAU zones, even though ToAU already has assault and Salvage 'n' what-not. Or if SE would add new loot to the existing zones that would spice things up a bit. I'm excited to see the Far East atm too, especially seeing the work the developers have been putting into the game lately(finally._.) They kind of proved it to me w/ the Pallas change. I was the final straw ^_^. Popped Pallas with a friend(who's not a good soloer) and a group of ppl killed the bat and waited for Pallas to charm me then beat the crap out of me, then tried to steal Pallas from my friend, who managed to kill it somehow. We called GM merely to ask if it was ok to kill people whom Pallas has charmed and -literally- 30 minutes later SE 'fixed' Pallas. I sympathize with the developers to a certain extent. Really it's not the developers' fault that the game degenerates, it's the players. The majority of gamers are selfish arrogant morons, and they spoil it for everyone else. WoW has those same fools, but fortunately it seems that the way WoW has set up the game, it's harder for those idiots to spoil the game for other people. I don't expect SE to change their game, and I wouldn't want them to. It's a shame, though, that their wonderful game is ruined by idiots.