The entry requirements for the AA and DM fights seem a bit overboard. 20 merits and 30 merits. This is such a radical change from previous SoA content.
The single AA fight lets compare that to skirmish where 1 person just needs to get a KI by buying trading 3 statue pieces which can be obtained from many sources and bought on the AH. Now you need everyone in the group to have 20 merits. Merits take time. Your asking everyone in the group to get all these merits for 1 fight.
DM you need all 5 previous single fights cleared along with 18 people all of which need 30 merits to enter to do the fight once. Compare that to Delve bosses where 1 person needed a ki that you got for trading a rock that was a common drop from any mob in the zone.
In the days of doing delve bosses it took quite some time still to build a party of 18 but do able in like 20 min to an hour. Now for DM there is the insane requirement of having to find people with 5 clears (100 merits), and then having 30 merits read to go to enter the fight. Finding people to do this content will be very hard a lot harder then delve which anyone could of joined without these requirements.
FFXI has a declining population and I just don't know too many people willing to devote this much time to doing stuff like DM 2.
Bottom line is Ease of access to the new AA and DM event needs to be easier.