Is there a compelling purpose to the past, yet?

[Greyfist]

I've been out for the last couple of months, and am curious as to whether any of the recent updates made going back in time a worthwhile venture. I hopped into the maws shortly after the expansion's release, unlocked a few maws, signed up with Windurst, unlocked Scholar, then left and have yet to return.

My beefs at the time:

1. OMG sloooooooooow.
A distinct lack of chocobos left me having to run from zone to zone to get at the maws, which was a royal pain. The inclusion of wandering high-level beastmen in the zones forced me to keep sneak/invis up and made the entire thing an unhappy hassle. Teleports may be purchased, but they can be pricey or unavailable and don't help you cross an area to the maw in any event.

2. Leveling spots ruined by the probability of a horrible death.
Even in Sarutabaruta, populated mostly by nice, safe level 15 crawlers, high-level goblins were wandering all over the place. Anyone trying to use the area as an alternative to the dunes is courting the likelihood of the party being wiped by giant, unkillable goblins. Ditto for the higher-level areas that I passed through.

3. Horribly mediocre campaign rewards.
This is partly the fault of being a Summoner; the bonuses we need for our avatars can't be found on generic gear. But even the people who could conceivably benefit from bonuses to stats, HP, MP, etc. all seem to consider the gear purchased with alliance notes to be unfit even for putting on a mannequin.

Have any of those things been fixed? Or have any amazing awesome things been added to the past to provide us with incentive to go through the maws?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

1. OMG sloooooooooow.
A distinct lack of chocobos left me having to run from zone to zone to get at the maws, which was a royal pain. The inclusion of wandering high-level beastmen in the zones forced me to keep sneak/invis up and made the entire thing an unhappy hassle. Teleports may be purchased, but they can be pricey or unavailable and don't help you cross an area to the maw in any event.

Cry me a river, seriously, its not even that hard to get around in the past. You're just lazy and inexperienced with the zones.

Campaign battles and Campaign Ops give you plenty of Allied Notes for doing them. Only way campaign teleports become expensive is through poor management of your AN. Teleports aren't meant to take you to the maws and maws are not that hard to get to.

SE couldn't have made it easier to navigate these zones, you'd have to be completely braindead to get killed in them and, most of all, /NIN is now anyone's best option for exploring these zones and navigating solo. Monomi: Ichi + Tonko: Ni ftw.

Seriously, each time I hear someone complain about travel in this game I can only assume they haven't gotten most of the regional outposts, they're too scared to get all the staging points, don't have sea, don't raise a chocobo and so on. IF you're new to the game, the sooner you learn that superior travel options are earned, the better.

Also, the sprinter's shoes are available to everyone at the lowest rank, its very easy to get around quickly.

2. Leveling spots ruined by the probability of a horrible death.
Even in Sarutabaruta, populated mostly by nice, safe level 15 crawlers, high-level goblins were wandering all over the place. Anyone trying to use the area as an alternative to the dunes is courting the likelihood of the party being wiped by giant, unkillable goblins. Ditto for the higher-level areas that I passed through.

The #1 key to all solo is to be aware of your surroundings and #2 is not fight anything you know you can't take down. If you're getting owned by high level goblins you've no one to blame but yourself for not paying attention. But then, you probably can't navigate the dunes without goblin aggro at level 15, either. Maybe you just stink at soloing, I've soloed many, many levels in the WotG zones.

3. Horribly mediocre campaign rewards.
This is partly the fault of being a Summoner; the bonuses we need for our avatars can't be found on generic gear. But even the people who could conceivably benefit from bonuses to stats, HP, MP, etc. all seem to consider the gear purchased with alliance notes to be unfit even for putting on a mannequin.

"Its not good for my job, therefore, it sucks" is extremely poor reasoning, try to look beyond your one-and-only favorite job, please. I've looked over some of the Sandorian and Windust Emblem rank armor and I have to say tank and ToA/WotG jobs got some real treats. Its not going to wow the FFXI/RoZ jobs for the most part, but that doesn't mean its all a complete wash. Those Cobra Unit mittens and Cap are very nice for a COR, BLU, PUP or DNC's TP builds.

[IfritnoItazura]

If you don't want any of the Allied Notes items, you can always buy some resellable ones with your AN and put them on the auction house.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Also gotta say that for the level it can be used, the level 45 Iron Ram set is a great option. The game had been lacking some good level capped gear for 50s, but the Iron Ram set has replaced my old 50 cap armor entirely.

the Level 55 Cobra set isn't mind-blowing, but it is a smidge better than the Tactician Magician's and the head does have +hMP.

[Feenicks]

Even if you're too low level to get some reasonable points out of Campaign Battles, you can earn at least several hundred Allied Noted just by doing Campaign Ops, some of which don't even require you to leave town. Using all your Op Credits should at least net you 3000AN which is more than enough to teleport to your hearts content until you get more Op Credits.

And it's never a long walk to where you need to go from the teleports - the only places that take a while getting to are Eldieme, Garlaige and Crawler's Nest. Beastman strongholds are now very quickly accessed thanks to the new WHM Recall spells.

Yes there are high level Goblin freelance monsters wandering around in the zones but there are areas where they don't go. And there are millions of options for alternatives to the dunes that aren't in past areas - there have been for eons.

And who could possibly want to complain about Campaign rewards? It's really easy EXP for christ's sake. Did you want a 5000AN shrub that dispenses Yin Yang Robes and Bahamut Poles or something?

[Coinspinner]

Campaign Teleport is pricey?

7 Op credits of Crystal Fist or Crimson Domino will get you a pair of sprint shoes and a bunch of teleports. When is it not available, anyway?

Anyway, seems like you're after concrete reasons, eg items and leveling spots.
There's good, even great, equipment to be found in WotG for other jobs. You shouldn't be surprised there's none for SMN, there usually isn't. Dunno what to tell ya about leveling spots really. Most spots will have the threat of aggro, and with most jobs a tough will kill you just as dead as an IT. The goblin you saw was probably the pioneer; he wanders the whole zone so even if he's in the camp for a while he'll leave soon enough.

[tuggler]

1. OMG sloooooooooow.
A distinct lack of chocobos left me having to run from zone to zone to get at the maws, which was a royal pain. The inclusion of wandering high-level beastmen in the zones forced me to keep sneak/invis up and made the entire thing an unhappy hassle. Teleports may be purchased, but they can be pricey or unavailable and don't help you cross an area to the maw in any event.

As with everything in this game you have to put the work in up front to get the benefits later. Once you have visited a map you can teleport to it from your past home nation for absolutely no gil whatsoever, just a few Allied Notes. Getting around in the past is even easier than getting around in any of the other areas of the present. Not to mention the fact that the past is also a shortcut for getting to some places in the present. For example, without WoTG, say you wanted to go from Bastok to Sandy, you could run there in about an hour, choco in 20-30, get airships for anywhere between 20-40 minutes. Using the past it takes all of 5-10 minutes using the Maws in Gustaberg and Ronfaure and the teleport facility from your Home Nation (S).

[Alinys]

I just started approaching three months ago. My first character was in Windy, and I found Sarutabaruta fine. I only got to level 11 with her and was slowly making my way to the Dunes in a very confused manner, before eventually quitting and starting again as an Elvaan in Sandy, and found it much easier, particularly since I had a partner.

I haven't found it slow or anything. I have my Chocobo license and am in the process of raising a chick, it's due to hatch tomorrow, and I'm not overly worried. I find the game much more casual and enjoyable than, say, WoW.

I just think you're being a tad closed-minded and stubborn...

[Kitalrez]

Well, my advice to you would be to jump in again and try the battles now. One of the first things they addressed in WoTG patches was making it so pet damage added to the main character's total. Also, when they gave Scholar AE buffs, they also gave SMN the ability to stick an AE bloodpact on anyone with their tags up. This makes it pretty darn easy to get to your 30 other players/npcs buffed for that cap. I start every battle by taking an avatar into the biggest group of tagged NPCs/players I can find and earthen warding or shining ruby. Once I think I'm at 30, I stop doing this, use the bar spells to get myself up to 15 self buffs. Elemental Siphon to get mp back, and heal mp up while I wait on the mobs to reach us. As soon as I see them I stand back up, get out of the direct path to the fort if I'm in it, and summon carby. Straight melee from there, maybe use poison nails or meteorite if I feel like I can spare the mp. Odd shining ruby or two to make sure I didn't miscount my buffing totals, and I'm set. I'll usually try to do Retribution or Full Swing on staff to open/close skillchains with other players for that skillchain cap, and Spirit taker to keep my mp high and get to the WS cap. Also, try not to jump on a NM until the end, and make sure other players are on whatever you're targetting so you don't get to tank.

If I stick to that strategy, I'm rarely seeing less than 1,300 exp per battle. If I get less than that, I'm either not trying, or there's 4 squads of NPCs and 40 other players in the zone, like Fort Karugo-Narugo [s] last night. Most of the time I get higher... gotten 2k+ on a few battles. It's fun, it's fast paced, and it sure beats main healing. If you need summoning magic skillups, just go solo sea or sky for a quick 5k exp, usually you can get all 5 points you need in that time if you pick a good moonphase.

Doing OPs directly influences how well you do in campaign battles, resupplying temp items, garrisoning OPs, etc. Also easy notes... yeah, campaign is great now, you should get into it.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

SMN can AoE buff players, SCHs have to AoE buffs via the NPCs in Campaign, SCH's Accession will not work on non-PT player targets. And oddly, I can Cure and Cast Protect on Fortifications as SCH o.O;

[Lunaryn]

I have to agree with much of the general thrust of the responses so far. Particularly with point number 2, yes there are goblins that wander around that will aggro a 75. They even drop mines randomly. However, for the North Gustaberg [s], East Ronfaure [s], and West Sarutabaruta [s] zones, they're basically the only beastmen in the zone, and there just aren't that many of them; usually there's just one wandering around that causes trouble to most xp areas, and he's not that hard to avoid. You could easily go a whole xp session not even seeing him, at least in North Gustaberg [s].

That said, campaign is designed in a way that doesn't work well for certain jobs, particularly with regard to support. My THF gets a lot of milage out of campaign while my WHM can't really use it at all at her level. This is pretty much the opposite of Besieged where I was able to participate effectively even around WHM40 and still have an easier time with it on WHM46 than THF70, though THF70 is still a big improvement over THF60. I think once I have WHM high enough to survive mobs' attention I can probably get some decent returns by behaving like a tank (even though I don't really want to keep hate, being as close to getting it as often as I dare should help, since campaign rewards seem to be mostly enmity-based).

Finally, transportation is a huge feature in WotG. It is now trivially easy to get from one city to another for those without the coveted foreign-newbie OPs (Ronfaure/Saruta for Bastok, Saruta/Gustaberg for Sandy, Ronfaure/Gustaberg for Windy); the ladybugs and skeletons in East Ronfaure are an annoyance, but not a serious problem in this regard, and very little aggros on the way for the other two (watch for the wandering goblin in NG[s] and avoid the Rafflessia/Dog spawn area north of the stronghold in WS[s]). Getting to Jeuno is as simple as getting past one Goobbue Farmer in Rolanberry Fields [s] and possibly a couple gobs or quadav in the present zone; sneak/invis not necessary, they're easy to dodge. Garliage Citadel [s] and the Sauromugue maw gives you easy access to the area behind Banishing Gate #3, and the Lycoportal even lets you get behind Banishing Gate #2 without a gate breach party. The Lycoportal in Batallia now means that you can go directly from Upper Jeuno through Batallia Downs into Beaucedine Glacier; we started out this way a few minutes later than a fellow party member using the OP in Beaucedine and still got to Fei'Yin before him.