I would like to propose an idea to rid the servers of so called "Mercenaries". Essentially someone/a group of people charging huge amounts of gil to gain weapons for someone whom would normally create a group and essentially 'play the game'.
They do this by fighting high level monsters, in a group of characters. A treasure piece would drop, and then they would use another character (in town) to 'yell' for someone to join the party and lot the treasure from the treasure pool for an amount of gil.
We have a situation where people are simply standing there to gain weapons, experience/cp. This completely condracticts the whole concept of FFXI and its fundamental principles. Generally the entire yell screen is buy this or buy that. It's out of control.
What are these people doing with all this gil?
Here is my suggestion:
Alter the treasure pool. Make it so new people can't join the party while there is treasure within the pool. Maybe this will start enticing people to play together once again, face a challenge, and win that piece of weaponary or armor they have been after.
Or I would hate to thing what kind of path this is going to lead us to, if its not nipped in the bud soon.