SO Square Enix (who have a fairly good record, i’d say) have made a pretty bold and interesting decision with the new FF XIV MMORPG (heavens thats a lot of capital letters). 

In order to try and maintain a certain level of balance in gameplay between those with (no lives) all the time in the world to spend online and those with (a life) fewer free gameplay hours they have introduced a capping system so that the ability to gain experience has to ‘recharge’ during player downtime. If they wish they can continue to gain experience with that character, but only in another profession. 

Heres a little video that can explain it much better than I : 

This on the face of seems like a disaster for those of us who like to settle in for marathon gaming sessions at a time but actually I think it might make such behaviour easier…

In WoW at the moment unless you are dual specced it is tricky sometimes to find a group to get involved with. Even with the new dungeon finder the DPS classes still vastly outnumber the healers and tanks and there is no way in end game that a DPS class stands a chance ‘off healing’ or ‘off tanking’. With the FFXIV system it allows, nay insists, that those players who wish to while away huge percentages of their life time playing the game to spread their characters skills across a number of ‘professions’. This makes for much more versatility in really dedicated players leading to better grouping potential. All in all, I think its a winner.