Starting to see some truths in what these people are crying about on the forums.
The light burns
Well there is the fact everyone will have to level all their jobs, and you only have 3 regions to quest to level in. After that it's the same ol same ol.
"Have to" in quotation marks. Cross-class skills are all learned at midlevel. Players will not need everything at 50 to have a good tool set to do events with.
MMO are all about end games now. It doesn't have to be, but it is. Mid levels are no longer about anything but teach you some basics of how to play the class/job you play.
Well, the thing is... First, yeah, unfortunately most MMOs focus heavily on endgame. This shouldn't be the case, but it is.
But secondly, here is the real question that I have, and I think is one question that lots of that crying on the forums is really getting at (just not expressing in a very good way): if low-mid levels are just to teach you how to play, why make it take so long to get to endgame, when you can't even practice a lot of the things relevant to playing that part of the game until you are there?
Why design a new game from the ground up with so much padding if the ultimate focus is endgame (in general)? Why have 50 levels of fluff before the game demands anything of you (in 1.x)? Why spend all that development time on it (in general)? If leveling is "content," then why does it feel vapid like so much like cotton candy? If leveling is a way to tell the game's story, why is there so much irrelevant "kill 6 x because I'm too lazy to" and "pick up these flowers I dropped" bullshit in the mix (hi2u WoW, TERA questing)? If leveling is just a tutorial for levelcap content, then why is the level cap 50 instead of like... 5? Does it take 50 levels to learn how to cast a cure or use a weaponskill combo? Didn't take me that long in 1.x. And at the same time, does the leveling experience in an MMO ever really prepare you (the player, not your character) for levelcap content?
In a case like WoW, it is unfair to complain about the leveling speed being so short now because that game is so old; the leveling speed now is an evolution of the game and its content over the years. Even XI now with abyssea is in the same boat kind of.
That's well and good. But these are old games. ARR is not an old game so since levels aren't going anywhere from what has been said, I hope the leveling experience is more substantial, especially for newcomers.
Edit:
The best enmity-generating move so far seems to be Fast Blade > Savage Blade, so every bit of damage helps, I think. I pretty much focused on STR only since I have a crapton of HP with gear as a GLA.
Considering tanking in 1.x as PLD was heavily reliant on being able to land your melee combos for consistent damage, this is no surprise to hear. I was STR/MND PLD in 1.x (the two stats that were mods for PLD WS) and it worked well.