FFXI was never about shouting for content really, it was always exclusive to linkshells.

Wanted to do sky? Get a sky ls, sea, dynamis, limbus? all the same, you had to get a guild to do almost anything. The only shouts you heard really before Abyssea were for XP groups.

Then they released Abyssea and the entire game changed in a short amount of time, everyone got used to this new way of playing. You could shout for people and do content that was genuinly fun instead of punbishing and you didn't get left out if you weren't in the specific linkshells. You didn't have to get DKP and you didn't have to keep doing the content for years after getting your gear to get the rest of your group theirs, guilt trips were a thing of the past.

They saw people liked it but they saw that people ate through that content a lot faster, so they decided to go back to the old ways and ignore what people found enjoyable.

The player numbers are around half what they were from Abyssea times and this is just after a new expansion. Biggest problem with SE is simply that they don't ever learn from their mistakes and they will stubbornly stick with what isn't working, even if it kills the game. I guess they don't really mind that anyway anymore because they want us all to move to the horror of WoWish XIV anyway.