FFXI dying or in a dry spell?

[Rambus]

I recently came back. SoA was too much temptation and things went really good for awhile. Now it seems you can hear the crickets chirp most days.

Lvling is done mostly solo as book burns are few, even the FC pts have come to virtually a stop. VW /sh have become few and far between (took me 2 months to get the 3 cities and Im still stuck on Jeuno 1 for progression, the other paths I have no hope for). Havent heard 1 /sh for meeble burrows yet or any other form of endgame. Nearly impossible to get ppl for CoP, ToAU, WotG missions and so on. Even empy item and seal pts are nearly impossible to fill. I have tried setting up pts for all the above and after at least an hr I give up.

Where the heck is everyone?

I think FFXI is dieing, here is my experience when i came back.

*put flag up for an exp pt and nothing happens*
I shout why this is
The reply was people are too lazy to search or make part's anymore, they just wait for shouts.
*Goes afk and out for a few hours*
No tell, no shouts no nothing. One day i even searched every abyssea zone and it was like 10 or less people in each.

Then I see a strange shout something about 300k/3 hour, 800k/10 hour, looking for keyer pst

whatever i forget the line but i was like ooh exp maybe i can get 99 now!
(I have all jobs 90+ so keying is not appealing)
So I sent a tell to them saying "I can key but I can do good damage so I can be replaced by someone who really wants to key.
The reply was > "Keying does not cost money"
I thought a while if i really wanted to join this because I hate the "Pretend to understand you"

so after a while they asked me will you join? I said ok

So i ran to this party and saw a ton of nakked people, anon people , etc.. I was like no way.. So i asked the person that went to pull "RMT?" The reply was "RMT not rude." I said > "I did not say anything about RMT being rude" they said> "I know"

Then after they pulled the person was no doing nothing but getting beaten on by like 30 mobs. They had to use hp items, a rdm chainspell cures them and finally they start wsing the mobs. The war died and went after the rdm so i tried to kill a few and a few more linked but most depopped. I was not prepared for any of this so i end up dieing with the war and rdm.

Then I found out it was common for RMT to make parties -.-

sad day when RMT are more active then players, regretting banning people for stupid things yet? like the unfair savage bans or banning people for making too meany trades between two accounts?

Since then I had a LS member make a pt by shouting so now i have 3-99s now.

Maybe it is because of old me but i hate starting parties off shouting. I mean a year go it was not an issue to see 10-80 people looking for party and asking people to party.

Once I saw 900 people on worldwide....

Hard to find people farming seals or +2s unless it has to do with an emp path.

Sure getting DNC,PLD,BLM, and w/e the 4th job was, was nice getting them with no effort but getting that last blue body seal is sure a pain. (I/E NMs that drop KIs for emp weapon drop nms are easier then random nms that does not drop them)
(YAY for having 19 balance jewels on mule but no jewels of voage -.-)

It feels like no one exps because everyone has all the exp they need, in the old days everyone exped because you had to make up for the lost exp doing events -.-

Now said endgame events gives you exp too, so annoying no one wants to do anything, or does less.

Even if there isn't a GoV party/alliance going on somewhere every time you're logged in, you can actually levelup reasonably fast with two people, targeting the right mobs while doing pages, for so to join bigger GoV parties when they show up. Of course, you might not reach level 75+ in a day, but I would say if it takes more than a week, you're doing something wrong. Even if a week might sound like a long time for a single job to 75, I seriously don't think it is a severe issue to have a job abyssea-ready just a week after you decided you wanted it.

My pre ATU (art urtgan (I can't spell this)) self wanted to die reading this. back in my day you where happy if you got 75 in 6 months.

I have no idea what these pages are since all my jobs where 75 when abyssea came out XD