Originally Posted by gobsied

Contentwise FFXI still offers more.
The shift to PC wasn't a bad one, very many players enjoyed the pc version
The interface is made quite well.
And the servers aren't underpopulated.

The major problem for new players coming in not that no one is looking for a party because there are still oppertunities.

The thing is most people have multiple level jobs they train simultaneously, when they are looking to see if a party can be made with any of the job levels they have they are on their main job level.
Eg. I want to train my Taru I have lvl 9, 18, 27, 36 and 60 jobs I want to train, while I'm looking for a party I would be on my lvl 75 job.
The best way to circumvent that is posting on the killingifrit forums, joining linkshells, questing and leveling multiple jobs. If your a new player and all you want is to mad rush one job to 75 you will run into difficulties, unless you level BRD, then it's kinda easy.

I still don't understand what concepts FFXI failed at.

I do know that WoW would succeed more than FFXI simply because it's an easier game. Also WC3 was at the height of it's popularity and many people liked playing custom ORPG type maps.
The LAN party feel that you get from WC3 and the type of casual play helped WC3 take off. After they established their pie of the market share they were able to invest more in advertising and upgrading.

A harder game where value is achieved through skill, technique and teamplay like FFXI and most other mmorpgs could never catch on like the popular LAN party faced paced low strategy WoW could.

WoW was also not without fault at launch, I remember the myriad of class balancing issues, and glitches that had to be overcome.

When I say this I know that WoW does take some strategy but when compared to the techniques required by FFXI it fails in comparisson.

Also at the time WoW was released it was the leader in MMORPGs, and the most innovate systems were put in place.
However FFXI was still much more time consuming (although now there is more casual gamer content) when WoW was released. WoW also offered an innovative pvp system that FFXI lacked.

While both are still very interesting games. I find FFXI to have more content and be much better for the core gamer, as the casual gaming experience in FFXI really only takes off after cap which can generally take one person 3-6 months to reach.

The fact that a new player would find it impossible to just grind whore to 75 in FFXI is probably the greatest threat to the community.
Experienced players would generally reach the cap in 1-2 months.

I am not a fanboy. I bullshi you not, I have more gameplay experience in both games. If your friends play WoW, or if you loved WC3 then give a free server a shot, It's probably the best mmorpg for lan parties. but know that right now FFXI does provide the most complete RPG experience.

Also as if your a new gamer, I wouldn't subscribe to WoW untill we see what WARHAMMER has to offer.