How much time to you spend playing & what can you get done?Follow

I played FFXI about 2-4 times a week for a few hours at a time. Sometimes I was able to accomplish things and other times I had to scratch my head and ask how I wasted that much time doing just about nothing at all.

I'm one of the PS3 hopefuls. I haven't touched FFXIV at all, and won't until it's on PS3. I'm not (that) naive either. I know that people who have more time to play are going to get more things done. I also have a full time job, go to college, have a beautiful wife and four kids. I'm not going to be able to devote as much time as I'd like to the game. But I'll still be able to play about the same as I did for FFXI.
I'm going to have RL friends playing and hopefully meet people in game doing the same things as I am. Are they going to be so far out of sight after a month that I'm alone?

tl;dr
I guess my real question is. How much time have you devoted to the game in order to get what you wanted done?

I play on average 4-6 hours a week, usually 30 min - 1 hour stints during the week with the occasional long run on a weekend. You can easily see in my sig where I'm at level wise.

Content wise, I haven't jumped into the Caravan quests or Hamlet Defense yet. I've done all the primals at least once, but have 0 Ifrit weapons and 3 Moogle weapons (I haven't defeated Garuda yet). I've done all the Grand Company Quests, most of which I did with pick up groups (sometimes very frustrating and very time consuming). In the end I think I've experienced quite a bit. I don't have a major bankroll underneath me like some players, and I don't have uber leet gear, but I have good friends and I've had a good time so far.

I've been playing since release, and the above number is realistic in my average playtime. I have leveled most of my classes solo with leves or in parties, though I have jumped on a PL for certain jobs but no more than 20 levels total of all my classes. I personally don't like the whole PL thing, but I also didn't actually want to play the classes I PLd on either. I have less than 2 million gil currently, I've never taken advantage of any loopholes in the game for gear, gil, or xp... I don't feel like I'm too far behind other players.

You should be fine ^.^

I spent enough time to make and spend a few million gil.
I have all my combat jobs to 50.
I am just finishing up my third crafting class to 50.
I plan on having all my gathering classes at 50.
And I am hoping to go out with 10 million gil on my character.

I have been averaging 2-4 hours a day 2-4 days a week to get there.
I haven't fought garuda once, and am still undecided if I am going to.
And I don't even have 1/2 my seals yet for my Relic, but I am debating making one last push for them before the end...

Thanks everyone. That's all really encouraging. I guess that I've just got to make sure I find people who play around the same times as I do. Or that my RL friends and I can meet up in game. It seems that I won't spend more time LFP than actually doing something.

On a small side note... While I don't "hate" to solo, it's not my favorite thing to do. I feel like it defeats the purpose of an MMO. Are there specific jobs that are more group friendly? My favorite FFXI job was Dragoon, and I grew so tired of hearing "Oh you don't have _______ yet? You could solo that with no problem"
Don't get me wrong. I'm not the type who wants to be hand-held through everything. I just feel that if I wanted to explore and fight alone I would have picked up a single player RPG instead.

I think my next move should really be to read up on some basic started info. I know the PS3 release is still months away at best, but in my own head I keep thinking of this as a newer, shinier, advanced FFXI. And because of that I'm already pre-judging jobs that I do and don't want to try.
For instance, you said WAR and I instantly thought "Oh no, I never liked playing as a WAR! Not again!" But in this game it may turn out to be one of my favorite jobs. So many questions, so many possibilities. I just can not wait!

I believe that too, but for another reason. During the past months spent waiting, I suddenly realized: it's not worth it. No matter how much the game is revamped, at it's core it is still one of those ever-same grinders. Unless you pour half your life into it, you will never advance to a stage where you feel "meaningful" for the bigger picture. You defeat boss A, but he miraculously repops so everybody can defeat boss A. No matter what you do, you are just yet another generic copy of a "gamer". Unless, well, unless you pour half your life into it. Which I'm not going to do.

Have fun with the relaunch, guys; I think I'm gonna wait another few years until the whole concept of online games has advanced from repetition and arbitraryness to something where I can feel like the protagonist and not just like a random character model in a cutscene.