FFXIV to suffer from same problems FFXI did?

Massively.com have recently added a new post telling of the current beta testers who are complaining about problems in the Final Fantasy XIV which are very familiar to a lot of problems that FFXI suffered from too. It's also disappointing that the producer of the game Hiromichi Tanaka has gone on the record to say that these complained about features are actually intended.

Players are complaining that the cooldown on Guildleves (quests) is way too long, it takes 48 hours for a quest to reappear after you've completed it which is about double the amount of time that you see in other MMO's like World of Warcraft and Star Trek Online. Tanaka says that this is the case because they don't want players to rush through the quests solo, it's expected to be a team effort. This coincides with the next problem the majority of players are upset about. The regeneration of Mana in the game is slooow. This is a problem that I felt bordered on ruining FFXI for me and it seems that XIV won't be any different. Anything that breaks up the momentum of gameplay for me is a huge no-no. Again Tanaka explains that this is intended because the player is expected to tactically use points and work as a team.

Unfortunately the more I read about the game the more I'm starting to feel that they really should have just called it FFXI-2 instead of making it another numbered entry in the franchise because it really doesn't seem to be much different from it except maybe the class system and the quest system, otherwise it really is starting to look like an graphically updated XI.

As I've said before and will most likely say again, I can't really make any lasting judgements until I've actually played the game for myself. As much as I might complain about features and decisions, I'll still be picking it up at launch and playing through the first 30 days to see how things go.

Not long now!