Forgive me if I'm speaking out of line here -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- but my impressions after jumping back in a year or so ago were that the group dynamics of simply XP-grouping from Lv10 to end-game were vastly different. Much, much faster but, on the other side of that coin, astonishingly less fun. You enter an alliance in Gusgen Mines at Lv 14 or so and spam skeletons endlessly until you're level 33-ish, then you move to Crawler's Nest and do the same for twenty more levels, then you spam skill-up parties because your weapon is 200 points below your cap.
I don't want to paint an overly negative picture, but I felt that the current early and middle game of FFXI was a shadow of its earlier days. Sure, regular party EXP took an excessive amount of time. But it was social, fun, engaging, varied. Gear mattered (in a good way). It was a co-operative setting, rather than a free-for-all setting.
I hope I'm wrong and I just had a poor returning experience. This game has a very special place in my heart.
