jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Horizon does have several "custom changes" they made (for some reason or another) and starting the WAR with a great axe is certainly a choice
. Sometimes it's for the better though, for example chest / coffer key drop rates have been adjusted to a flat 10%. They've also adjusted the rewards on the "weekly" eco warrior quests so you get two exp scrolls and 10,000g. Once you unlock the airship you can do the weekly "highwind" monster fight that gives you 3,000 exp and gil.Category:Horizon Changes - HorizonXI Wiki
horizonffxi.wiki
The auction house is super active in Horizon, in fact sometimes when I'm selling things there I get the notification that they've sold as I'm walking back to my mog house. In general, things you need for quests that can be bought at the auction house and are decently / competitively priced. In a lot of cases, especially if you farm your own crystals, crafting is a viable way to make money in most cases. I made about 100k just fishing up moat carp in the starting zone and selling them on the auction house for startup cash.
A few weeks ago I tried retail (I had a key from Steam from back when the game was still sold) and I had a similar situation to what you described on Eden, it felt like late stage capitalism had taken over - there were people everywhere, but they were all level 99 and nobody was buying / selling on the auction house except for end-game stuff. I made it to level 50 in an afternoon, as monsters were giving me thousands of EXP each, but then hit a roadblock trying to get the materials for the LB1 quest as it was being camped by max level black mages who would target the enemy as they spawned and one-shot them for the item. Asked several in-game if I could get a drop, and got no response, so I assume they were bots. Logged off, then back into Horizon where I could actually progress, though much slower.
It's true though that Horizon only has the Rise of Zilart and Chains of Promathia expansions available right now. Treasures of Aht Urghan has been in the works for like a year and has been teased by the devs heavily (for example, the BLU, PUP, and COR jobs now show on the user panel) and should be released in the next few months is my guess. Speaking as someone who's put about 300 hours into the game in the last 5 months, there's plenty of content here to get lost in.