Just how bad is it out there, and a small additional update...

• Just finished the OA2-4 Dagger, the Praxidiai.
• Just picked up my L3 Dynamis Dagger.  Next is 61 Jadeshells.
• About 82/100 Jadeshells on the Gungnir -- meaning 12/61 on the L4 dagger.

And then this from the Official Forums:  A player (the former Danita from Siren) who is quitting the game because of the state of end-game.

Let's take a look at his look at end-game right now in FFXI.

• "For casual players (me), here's what end-game looks like:"

Let's stop right there for starters.  If you are a casual player, you have no place in this game in the minds of the game's main remaining communities.  That's Problem #1. 

• "Einherjar - Inaccessable. Requires too many people. Unlike Japan, the US has to deal with 3hr time zone differences between friends, so getting 18 people together just isn't viable for casuals, especially on some kind of regular schedule. I have all feathers up to tier three from doing this with a handful of people, but it gets too hard to low-man after that."

I know this problem from Dynamis Tonight.  One of the people I'm trying to help out is 3 hours ahead of me and now works volunteer three days a week.  One of the reasons I did start out with very late start times is because of my own schedule, and now I'm trying to accomodate hers.

As for Einherjar, I think it's pretty clear that this is one of those events that Square-Enix has designed to be non-soloable.  Again, as a casual, that pretty much locks you out.  It's one of the reasons I have no desire to be involved with Einherjar, then or now.

• "Legion - Inaccessable. Not only does this take a lot of people, but they need to be elite. I may never know what the inside of a legion zone looks like."

Nor do those who designed and aided in beta-ing the system intend for the casual players to play.  That's another thing they might as well park GMs inside to watch any time a group comes in.  You can't play nor clear Legion under the Terms of Service.  Forget it, move on.

• "Abyssea - Perfect. Can show up with any group size, accomplish minor goals, make progress on major goals, get exp/gil. This is literally the only reason I have been playing; there is always something to do and it's always interesting."

And this is another reason that the BluGartrs and cheating shits of the world of Vana'diel are very glad to see you gone.  To them, Abyssea is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO 2010.

Abyssea, especially for someone who's put together a ton of stones, is actually very decent.  You need amorphs for your Trials?  Conflux 6 in Konschtat.  You need quick XP?  Bastion or Dominion...

But the fact is that Abyssea, largely, is archaic content used for abuse against the Terms of Service (Fell Cleave payments/Absentee Play).  It holds little to no other use in current Vana'diel.

• "Dynamis - Very good. The mandatory JA procs and reliance on TH makes this boring since only a tiny selection of jobs meet both requirements, but the event scales nicely with small groups and the reward system is acceptable. Magic procs should happen at the same rate as JA procs, and WS procs should have the highest rate (10% chance per time stat). The Arch NM's are all impossible for casuals, but there is enough reward available without doing those."

And hence one of the main reasons that the elite bullshitters want BST/DNC to be nerfed.  It is almost too easy.  Even I, as a solo BST/DNC, can go over 160 on a good night.  Dynamis can be a bit grindy and boring, but there are ways to help deal with all that, especially if you (as I) have a nice goal in mind (one, if not two, relics by Seekers).

• "Magian Weapon Trials - Good. It's nice that you can do this at your own pace, but some trials are needlessly boring. Weather trials were reduced drastically to combat this, which was good, but the same treatment needs to happen for "Killing Blow" trials and other similar things. For example, I can't bring myself to keep working on my 100TP Great Katana because I have already finished three trials by doing six hundred weaponskills (bored to death while doing it), yet I am left with a requirement for two thousand more. Without this weapon I'm unable to play my SAM in events. The result is I don't play my SAM any more, and it's depressing."

The killshot trials are designed to group up.  That said, all of them can be rather quite grindy.

But you touched on another big problem:  Without Empyrean weapons or a well-advanced relic or mythic, you're locked out of a lot of people's even shout groups these days.  It's almost as if YOU should be GM'ed because your presence lags the server unnecessarily and denies the enjoyment of the other players who are elitist fucks because, as a casual, you will never amount to anything in FFXI (in their opinion).

The fact is that even shout groups are now openly demanding relics, mythics, and empyreans to even PLAY certain events (just got nailed on an Ig-Alima shout last night in that regard -- one of the few VW clears I do not have, nor expect to get at this rate!).

I'll get to the reason why at the back end of this entire list.  There is one, and I've mentioned it here before.

• "Limbus - Mediocre. If I could do Limbus daily, I would farm my own coins and get AF+1 things in the process, plus get chips for the original U/O fights. But I can only do this two times per week, and that means I can't afford to waste an opportunity to do the new Arch-U/O content requirements. The result is that I farm Dynamis for money to buy 75 or 150 Ancient Beastcoins from other people. The time restriction has turned a once fun and rewarding event into a money-sink that I want to put behind me as soon as we finish getting gear form the bosses."

If Original-Limbus is soloable, then the only question about the situation about twice-a-week comes down to the instance server congestion, and why they don't make Assaults soloable or the like as a result.  It's one of the main reasons I don't do it.  Otherwise, I probably break out the good ol' BST and off we go.

• "VoidWatch - Mediocre. The event is generally well designed and fun. The ability to teleport around Vanadiel is great! The reward system, however, is infuriating.  [Long anecdotal snipped.]"

For the reasons of BARANCE, 0/700 is Working As Intended.  End of story. Reason why is something I've stated and will, again, reiterate when I'm done with your list.

• "Meeble Burrows - Poor. This is another interesting and fun event at first glance. The time on it is perfect, the activities are interesting, and the rewards are exciting. If entry were restricted like Assault tags OR boss fight entry were restricted like Einherjar chambers are, then this event would be fine. You combined both restrictions in one event though, so now the time it will take to earn this gear stretches off so far into the future that I can't visualize success. Add to that the fact some items clearly won't be 100% drops, and this requires efforts of such great duration that by the time all of the gear can be obtained, it will be obsolete."

I tried it once, and haven't gotten a group together to do it again.  Real nice and fun event, but  -- again -- the instance server limitations bite this entire mess in the ass.  The facts are, with all the instanced events on the same server for all worlds, there's only so much room for Burrows, Maze Mongers, Assaults, some of the BCNM's, etc. and so forth!  And that's part of why you get BOTH limitations you speak of.

• "NeoNyzul - Terrible. Too difficult. Casuals can actually do everything in Nyzul; we are able to beat all bosses and many of us have captain rank and floor 100 tags from 75-era; we loved that event. What we can't do is finish this event before timing out. As a result of NN, the best geared people in the game get even better while the casual crowd is locked out of any hope for success, and that's totally unlike the old Nyzul."

To answer the question from BluCheater:  NeoNyzul CANNOT be legally cleared by a party, all of whom are abiding by the Terms of Service.  It -- cannot -- be -- done.  Period.

And was never designed to be.  If NeoNyzul were ever designed to be defeatable, they would probably drop the limit on regular Nyzul to clear 20 floors to 20 minutes, perhaps even 15, to help deal with server congestion!

• "You guys are so afraid that we will beat all your content and quit, that you make it so only a tiny handful of people can actually beat it. The result is that I can't stand any of it any more. If I were winning most things, I'd play more, not less. You have it backwards."

I think you might actually have it a bit wrong here, but not in the way you think -- and this is the point that I said before and will reiterate now.

I go back to what Rosina said in the Official Forums a number of weeks ago:

"Lastly, as for job balance, the fault lies with you guys. You guys pretty much fk'ed with the system. Now SE has to scramble to pretty much balance the game around you guys."

That explains 0/700 in Voidwatch.

That explains this whole farce of Legion, NeoNyzul, etc.

The fact of the matter is:  As long as Square-Enix accepts BluGartr and their cheating little pieces of shit as the sole relevant player-base in North America, none of this is going to change until Seekers of Adoulin release.

NONE OF IT.

This is what really is depressing a lot of people about the complete lack of Seekers information in the last three months.  The longer you leave this game to the sole relevant NA community in a bunch of cheating little shits to need to get their heads bashed in, the more people like Danita who will (and, in the minds of the relevant community, SHOULD) quit.

I mean, to me, if I were BG right now, I would openly GM every "gimp" in the game.

Why?

Under the rule of "denial of enjoyment of the game".

If I were BG, and my sole enjoyment would be to degrade any players not using my illegal third-party tools and methods ("The Azure Underwear School of Secret Ninja Techniques", I think it was once put as on the Official Forums), I would openly be telling Square-Enix that there are more of us than there are of them, and continuing to take money from them is lagging OUR servers, taking up OUR instance-server space, and, hence, denying OUR enjoyment of the game because only WE matter.

You already know how I feel about that.

------

Couple of side comments further down the thread:

Ophannus from Odin is absolutely delusional:

"Voidwatch drops are 100% fair. Sure the drop rate on body pieces and weapons are 2-3%"

BULLSHIT.  I've seen 0/700+ (Some guy was literally doing Kaggen shouts for a fucking month, at least.  Multiple ones a night!).  Don't even go there, moron.

Who paid you to spew that shit?

Zerichtwo from Siren says they're all quitting for Mists of Pandaria.  This would make sense.

There was a person (Saricks of Fenrir) who claimed his server ranking on FFXIAH went up significantly, well outside of normal parameters -- meaning either a lot of players are quitting or getting banned.  I agree with the respondents that say that the ratings are a bit of a LOLfest, but the problem is that what Saricks is talking about here is a matter of a benchmark.  That kind of ranking change doesn't happen without a number of the measured players leaving.

I do think it's quitting or pre-Seekers hiatus, though -- if it were a ban, it'd probably be Salvage 2.0 .

But one thing is for sure:  If Seekers isn't out in early 2013, there may not be enough players to justify a fifth expansion.