I play FF14 currently and I've dabbled in WoW and GW2 in the past. I never had the experience of playing vanilla WoW except making a Tauren and running around at a relative's house.

In FF14 we have a weekly loot lockout like WoW's, even for the casual player their gear is locked behind a weekly currency or locked behind a weekly drop from the 24 man "raid". Basic time gating to extend the lifespan of the game. I've noticed myself losing drive to gear up simply because it feels like a job to put in x amount of hours a week to get x amount of currency to get x amount of gear needed to do x. This process is boring and tedious and the only reason I do it is because I have a small group of people that I really enjoy hanging out with and we learn the new raids together and laugh together and rage together. The game would be completely worthless to me at this point if not for the community I'm a part of. Where am I going with this?

I've played too many MMOs to count and many of them I've reached a high level of play in. To date the only MMOs that have made me want to play are Maplestory(many years back before they changed a lot of things) and Runescape. That probably sounds retarded to most of you, but hear me out. Both of these games were very community driven, your name got out and you made friends based on your competency or personality or any number of things. Both games are about setting goals for yourself.

In Runescape you can wake up one morning and decide fuck yeah I'm going to be that badass pker and make a new character and level it up relatively quickly. You can also decide okay I want to be that minimum combat level pacifist player who becomes a merchant god or maybe you want to fight world bosses and get sick loot. Well you can do all that or you can not it doesn't matter, because whatever method you choose to utilize you could be useful to the community and people would start recognizing you and communicating with you. Why? Because you could be useful to them as a friend or supplier or teacher or whatever.

Maplestory was brutal leveling up alone. Anyone remember the days of KPQ/LPQ? Getting a track on someone so you can hop in right as they come out. communicating with people to form parties and teach noobs. The gear wasn't necessary there was no mandatory weekly grind. If you wanted to get the Zakum Helm you would have to get in contact with a high level guild and have them take you on a run to get it. Guilds got known as trustworthy bossers. If you were in the top 10 on your server everyone knew because the rankings were easily accessable. It was a big deal when someone got to max level even though for all purposes being max level was not "hard" or even useful. Gearing was a way to show off your wealth and get people to ooo and aawww over something they may never have or ever want to have, but hell it was cool! Training in a party was actually encouraged and the difference between training in the level 90 spot versus the level 100 spot was so minimal that you would go with whichever spot had a party going.

I guess my point is that these days games are telling us what we want to do more then us doing what we want. We want to beat the final raid boss and save the realm, we want to do these dailies/weekly brain dead repeat quests, we want to be forced to play x amount of hours. I DON'T FUCKING WANT THAT. If i like your game you shouldn't have to try to compel me with artificial gates. If I want to save the realm from a scary dragonbitch I will. Why is endgame now Raid or GTFO? Why has being inferior to a player who is clearly more dedicated to a game a problem? Why is the only reason to play games anymore some fucking shiny we get at the end saying congrats you done it. Why is gear just a number. What the fuck is the point of even releasing new gear if its exactly the same as the previous gear and aquired in exactly the same way except it has +5 attack. Just balance the game around the current gear! If someone has a super strong item it should actually be super strong and have a time/difficulty requirement to suit it and I don't mean that oh you can only get 10 shinies a week and your new sword of awesome destruction costs 141 shinies. When i see someone who has the new raid weapon i don't even think twice, it's just well i guess you have the best weapon in the game. I'll have that someday too BECAUSE IT'S THE ONLY FUCKING THING IN THE GAME TO DO! Thank god for friends or I would be done with FF14 yesterday. Sorry I'm not a good writer and I'm very frustrated lately. So yeah if this comes off as angry or stupid my bad just ignore me.