Like some, I play World of Warcraft, And I had quit FFXI for WoW, And I've jumped back and forth for awhile, Then just stuck to WoW.

What I've judged for both are as follows:

Classes:

I've found that WoW Has more usefull classes(Each as a whole) then FFXI. For tanking, Warriors take less damage then any other class per hit, Druids are harder to hit, And have more health then any other class, And paladins are AoE tanks.

As for damage, Each class seems to have differant ways of DPS, Warlocks for DoTs and Debuffs, Hunters for ranged physical DPS, Rogues for malee DPS, Mages and druids for elemental DPS, And healers, Priests for low mana healing, Druids for HoTs(Heal over time)

FFXI seems to have the same class with differant names... The main tanking classes are(As far as I know) Warriors for pre 30 tanking, Paladin for stronger tanking post 30, And Ninja for low healing tanking.

From what I know... they all tank the same way, Using Provoke. Sure, Ninja uses spells to do the shadow double thingy. But other then that, It's all the same... From what I know.

DD classes, Dark Knight, Dragoon, Warrior(Did I forget any ?) Are all the same I think... Like, Drk does have some skills to up the damage, and Dragoon has it's jumps and dragon. But the main thing for any Damage dealer is the Weapon skills, But they all basicly play the same way because of the weapon skill system....

The last DD class, Theif. The most fun I had personal, For the SATA set up. Fun stuff.

Lastly for damage, Mage, Elemental damage, And Magic Burst, Again, Differant them most other classes, And again, More fun I think.

Healing: White mage/summoner, The only healers in the game. Yes ? No ?

And then other classes: Bard, Fun... Party buffs, always wanted, Good stuff. And the Beast Master Solo Class.

Debuffer : Red mage ?

Now, Battle system: Final Fantasy had a fun Weapon Chain system, But as I said, All the DD classes seemed to play the same....

WoW: Same thing over and over... Cast the same spells in the same order each time. More so for end-game then soloing. But still...

Gear/armor/weapons...

In WoW, The gear didn't seem to matter AS much then in FFXI, In FFXI, It seemed people would only want you to join them if you had THE BEST gear for your level. Which wasn't easy to get for a noobie.

And last : Grouping vs soloing...

Group for WoW was easy to get going, Seemed the same each group/dungeon you did... And soloing was easy, fast way to level via question...

FFXI: Groups took awhile to get... Last in my gaming I would wait for neat 5 hours to get a group as a white mage or bard. Which was insane... Soloing if FFXI also took forever and was rather hard depending on the class...

My main question is that are the groups still the same ? Taking forever to get one, And freaking out over your gear ?

I've just been thinking of playing again... But I'm still not so sure if I'd even have fun anymore.

Oh, And if I did, Would I need the Wings of a Goddess just to play ? Like... Would I be missing out on anything if I didn't have it ?

Don't leave WoW, you'll regret it. Consistantly updated with new material, balances and other things gathered by user input and a much larger future at this point with way more people to play with than FFXI.

It's just a bad move. WoW is the ultimate MMO for the time being.

World of Warcraft will just plain be more satisfying overall, I'd predict, based on that post of yours.

If you try a new MMO any time soon, I'd recommend possibly investigating Age of Conan, once that releases.

That game is going to be garbage man come on.

I've had mixed feelings about both games... My main problem with WoW is, As I said, Once you get to high-end, You spend way too much time running the same dungeons over and over... Unless you have a decent guild to run more dungeons. But...

Then again, FFXI isn't much better, As you basicly fight the same monsters over and over again to get to high end. Then you go fight the same monsters again, Just buffed up... Hm.

As for Conan... No, Just ... no.

Yeah but that's a really minor fault. There are plenty of end game dungeon's, raids, and other things to do to keep your level 70 busy. Usually if I get bored with my 70 I work on an alt or something, and don't forget the new expansion will be out soon. ( well... soon as in... Forever from now. )

Can't wait for that.

You are doing yourself good justice by leaving FFXI for something else. FFXI was a great MMO when it came out but with every year, it got worse and worse and the expansions only introduced more and more stress. FFXI is like "work" and you have to give up ENORMOUS amounts of your time for end game activities, plus put up with all the insane drama that occurs of gear and other things.

I normaly would agree, But ... I've done that so often, that I now have a 70 Warlock(Main) 70 Hunter(alt) and a 64 Shaman(alt)

And the expansion scares me... I'm not sure if I'll be able to do the grind from 70-80 for 3(maybe 4) 70s. It might very well be the end of me.

lol yeah... It'd definitely end up resulting in being locked away on the computer for a good long time.

You got me beat. I just have one 70, and an alt at 51 now... I keep becoming lazy and not playing.