FFXI was always know to be an extremely punishing game towards players since its start. Abyssea was the epitome of evil. Procs that excluded many jobs from being useful and their players, 30minute stones that would require you to farm time before hand for hours to just start your damn event, bad drop rates...

FFXI devs always created content with this sort of punishment toward drops but Abyssea brought the punishment to a whole new level. So many years after its release for a group of players that got married, jobs and families to take care of. This is one of the reasons that FFXI didn't refresh its playerbase. Too much time required for too much punishment.

Of course someone will come here and say everything in abyssea is easy when he/she/it had a full linkshell working towards the same objective, but today its basically a dead zone that small groups do it for this or that specific content.


But the level of punishment is the same. So you can pretty much admit that doing Abyssea content from the perspective of a new player is impossible nowadays unless he forms a successful linkshell dedicated to this purpose. Considering the low amount of new players, the fact that many are casual to the point of hindering progression through Abyssea this just won't happen.