Allow me to shed some light. While things have been pointing in the right direction, I'd like to give more details on the matter.
Penta-spam was not a bug, it was a design flaw. FFXI's gone through a magnitude of changes over the years, and this was one of the earlier ones. Each hit in a multi-hit weapon skill would give normal TP, so provided all hits landed, 13 TP * 5 hits would yield about 65 TP return from Penta. The same can be used to explain Asuran: 8 hits * 20 TP/hit = 160 TP if all 8 connected. Add to that, you had jumps & meditate, and could get around long delay weapons by disengaging then re-engaging the mob, prompting a hit before it should be ready. There was no re-engage delay back in those days, so all the DDs would be constantly flipping in & out of battle mode to get around their delays.
The call wyvern 2-hour was later deemed a mistake by SE, tho I never considered it to be one, having developed a great respect for my wyvern. Dragoon has never relied on its wyvern for damage output. It's an added bonus, but nothing to rely on. The wyvern's value comes /mage, which wasn't mainstream until later, but that's a story for another time.
Dragoon was the first Bandwagon DD job, leveled by the masses that go from job to job, based on which has the mechanics advantage. This group has traveled through most jobs over the course of vana'diel's history, instead of devoting itself to specific jobs they enjoy. Dragoon was also the first job to fall from grace when SE decided to change the TP returns.
What brought about the 'loldrg' title is the common view that when we lost the power of penta-spam, it made us inferior to the other jobs. A number of the early dragoons quit at this time, selling their accounts to RMTs, which contributed to why a fair amount of the early gilsellers were dragoons.
Just a few other examples of jobs that've gone through this phase of being popular: Rng, Blm, Nin, Mnk, War, Sam, along with the support jobs like Brd, Rdm, Whm, & Pld.
Now some might say that Dragoon was "gimp" after the TP-nerf, but really, I prefer to think that it made the job mortal. You had to put the work into it for it to be good. I personally leveled Dragoon at this time, and had to grow up with the loldrg mantra everywhere I went. I worked hard at being good though, and did my best to prove that it was still a worthwhile job to have around.
And while I'm on the topic of loldrg history, let's not forget loldrg², lolmelano. Loldrg is a tease, lolmelano is an insult. Melano was an Asuran, incredibly loud and boisterous. He was such a noise-maker, especially on forums (such as KillingIfrit), that every server knew of him, and thus the title was born. Among these posts & 'debates', for an example, was his argument that Orichalcum Lance was better than Mezraq.
Loldrg is typically used to tease someone about playing Drg. Lolmelano is used to say that someone is terrible at the job, typically guilty of subbing nin or dnc, wearing completely inappropriate gear in battle (outside of the newbie levels), or suggesting completely absurd ideas.
/nin & /dnc are worthless in the face of /mage. If the situation is ever so bad that you HAVE to /nin on Drg to survive meleeing, then you should be on another job, or at the very least /sam & standing outside of AoE, running in to WS. Standing back & playing support drg/whm is also a valid option.
This concludes your Dragoon-history lesson, brought to you by Ryx.