It seems like the director is scrambling to fix a bunch of imbalances, forgetting that I'm playing a game to grow my character.
If there actually are imbalances in the game, they'd be doing the players a disservice by ignoring them. The problem here is that the things they're trying to fix aren't actually imbalances. Thus, they're wasting development time on something that doesn't need to be done and diverting it from more valuable changes.

This is why I don't like MMOs and will probably never pick up another one unless it's fun as hell.
This isn't an MMO specific issue. You really shouldn't be playing any particular game unless "it's fun as hell." Lots of MMOs can be fun as hell, particularly played in the right spirit. FFXI is simply a very old game and as time goes on, they need to do more to keep people interested.