Seeing this thread pop up just made me all nostalgic for this game. I haven't played in years, since a lot of the solo content came out for it. I miss it so much, but I mostly played on consoles, and those versions are gone now. I've tried logging in on FFXIV so many times hoping to recapture my joy that FFXI gave me, but FFXIV just doesn't do it for me. FFXI will always be the best game in the genre for me, but I don't know if I could ever go back.
I always had a hard enough time making friends in FFXI, but joining up with parties still let me be social. When the game made it more soloable, it hurt part of what made it so endearing for me. I'm sure there's end game content that still requires big alliances, but I barely ever touched end game stuff in the game. Grinding parties, and main missions were most of what I ever touched in the game. I only got 1 job above lv75 when they started raising the cap beyond that.