Originally Posted by
Horadrim
Because no one would play on it. Not nearly enough people who want to play the game the old way are around or else you wouldn't even have to make posts like these -- BECAUSE YOU WOULD HAVE ENOUGH OF EACH OTHER TO DO THINGS THE OLD WAY.
People aren't leveling quickly because they are forced to, people aren't doing missions at level 99 because they have no choice -- if there were people who actually wanted to do things the "hard" way outside of an overly vocal minority there would be no problem. If you want to form an old school part in ToAU zones or in an obscure old school camp, shout the level range and find someone with a job of appropriate level to sync to -- it is as easy as that.
if you can't find people for that, then dare I say you might be a bigger minority than you believe -- and it is not in SE's best interest to cater large amounts of time, energy, and money towards appeasing gross minorities.
This.
I've never been "hardcore" but I do like number crunching and the only way to be a successful, happy number-cruncher is to grind gear. FFXI has always been about end game and the hyper elitist part of the community that demands everything cater to them and keep them entertained -- frankly, every MMO has that set of players and they are perfectly correct in their demands because there needs to be something left to do to keep people playing.
Like it or not, but the evolution of FFXI over the last 10 years has followed that train, and the reason the game is still SE's biggest money maker is because it has worked. People may claim to hate Abyssea and the level 99 increase, but the fact they are still playing is proof that they enjoy it more than they'd like to let on.