Jon, the early sixties were hell, regardless of grouping issues, although I managed to find a lovely spot which made them, I promise, much better than almost anyone elses experiences. Faster to boot.
Sticking around to the mid sixties was mucho worth it though, picked up so well after due to the battle evolutions.
The typical comminity I hung around with, until the past few months, was pretty decent for me. Granted, the HNM shells were always filled with total fucking idiots and crybabies. (although I was able to dequip and leech most of the time, due to being a somewhat rare, always needed BLM), but it was pretty easy to avoid drama.
I think if anything would rank up on my list of reasons I likely won't return though, it'd be the Japanese. Honestly, I could write a book. The blubbering, boorish idiots from the western front had nothing on the pure "shithead" factor of the average JP FFXI player. I hate to generalize, especially with my friends list being half full of super nice Japanese folk (that and I had a static from 60-68 that was half Japanese), but man, I really wish us Westerners would've gotten seperate servers at times.
Oh well. I miss the group centric play, as well as a lot of the flavor of mechaincs and content, and of course the lovely visuals and lore. But I don't regret dropping to WoW, it's general accessibility, even in it's semi-broken state really does wonders, even if it is a little TOO friendly at times.
I guess in the end though, I had a good server, I now sit, mocking from a distance at the shit Shouta goes through on his borderline LJ server. Bwahaha. Oh... and I'll post my characters later, sorry.