FFXIV – Teetering On The Edge Of Burnout

I feel like I’m at a crossroads with FFXIV. I’m teetering on that line between “it’s fun to play” and “it’s work to play.” If I try to push myself much more I’m almost certainly going to burn out.

Right now, when I log in each night after work, I have a to-do list of things I want to accomplish: I want to level at least one gathering class. I want to level one crafting class (I often skip that in favor of gathering right now). I want to do a Low-Level Duty Roulette for my Dragoon class. And then I want to do one or more instances of Crystal Tower with my White Mage class to collect WHM gear and mythology tokens. (I know it’s not the most efficient way to get myth tokens, but it’s the easiest if you are lazy like I am.) If I don’t accomplish all of those things, I feel like I’m “falling behind.”

Sadly many of those things are getting pretty tedious. Crystal Tower is either super easy or super frustrating, depending entirely on the skill level of the rest of the raid. Neither of those situations is particularly fun. Gathering is obviously not all that immersive, and neither is crafting. The Low-Level Duty Roulette can be fun, but often you end up in a low-level group where the tank hasn’t learned how to tank yet, which is decidedly not fun.

All of which leads me to think I might need to move FFXIV off of the play-every-day list. But then, new things are coming soon in 2.2. And I have no other compelling MMOs to replace it with at the moment (with the possible exception of ArcheAge RU, hehe). Rift 2.7 isn’t out yet, and ESO won’t be out until April 4.