Hmm. Maybe I didn't word what I was thinking very well.
I was thinking more along the lines of a hypothetical question. What if FFXI was never released as an online game? What if it was originally made similarly to its single-player predecessors?
Obviously, it would be missing the online interactions and team-building because it would be offline. And also obviously enough, the story and the little intricacies that make it what it is would be moved closer together to pre-empt boredom between the gaps in plot points.
Roto, I was thinking about that when I was typing the initial post, too. But the big differences are that there aren't set player characters in FFXI and that you have the option of multiple possible starting points.
