10 years from now when most movie theaters are gone, you will get groups of people nostalgic for going to the cinema and they will open these nostalgic movie theaters where people can pay $150 to go see Harry Potter or Star Wars and wave their broom/lightsaber while eating $30 popcorn and $20 coke. These people who hated going to the cinema in 2024 and played their part in their destruction, will yearn for it 10 years from now and have the rose tinted glasses in full effect about how good it used to be and how social an experience it was.
Prviate servers are the same kind of deal.
The great thing about party leveling was it was very social, before social media was a thing and before you had online friends and places to talk to others on. It was a massive novelty to interact with people from all around the world and talk for hours in a video game. You could actually make real friends you cared about, because it was incredible you met someone from America or Canada and you were open to talk with them for hours and get to know them. It's not special anymore when you force people into a party system, people don't want to talk about nonsense for hours with some random person in a party anymore or want to make a friend cause they already have friends on Discord or whatever they can go talk to.
You can't take something that was good because of the time and your/others mindset of the time, and transport it to 2024 and it feel the same. If you try recreate the party based leveling in 2024 you just get a load of sweaties telling you how to play, talking about mechanics from wiki, and droning on about what gear they want next and what they want to farm in sky. You won't get deep and meaningful conversations about transformers or how the things hanging from the ceiling in CN look like balls.
Old FFXI was good because of the time, not the mechanics of the thing. Private servers can be a short lived novelty, but it's ultimately stupid and depressing cause it's just not going to be the same as it was and ultimately it was crap to play and wasted 90% of your time.
to steal the meme posted before here ages ago
this is what it was, and it was ***. ill take how it is now over that anyday.