It's your server

[Afania]

Transferring my characters to Asura was by far one of the best decisions I've made in FFXI. I wish I had done it years ago, I'd have probably quit the game a lot less. My old server took a deep nosedive in population around WOTG and it only got worse over time. During the Abyssea/Voidwatch era I basically no longer knew anyone who still played, and my server was small so meeting other players and getting content done was nearly impossible at times. One of the prime issues with playing on a small server I've noticed is that it's very segregated - the communities are already formed and are generally unwelcoming to new or returning players. They have their cliques, and to be fair to them despite my belief that cliquey style of play is detrimental to the game, they probably don't need new players in their LS anyway.
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Just to chime in and offer some opinion about the above statement. This kind of small groups exist everywhere, not just smaller servers. You may feel bigger server are more welcoming because there are more new groups forming and recruiting, that doesn't mean you can just join any established groups on bigger server as a new/returning player.

There are people prefer to play with close friends, and people who don't mind playing with new people. It's not "wrong" to only play with close friends which has much higher degree of trust and comfort level.

The thing is that with how FFXI works, everyone has different progress in terms of gear and raid progression. Since they need different tiers of content.
Thus isn't not possible for a character with full escha clear + gears from every single tier go back to A.skirimish to pt with a returning player. Same for ambuscade, a character with full escha level of gears that pt with another character wearing same level of gears, will clear the content much faster than someone still progressing. Also it takes time to gear up a new or returning player to catch up on progression, which is often a risky investment because they may quit or join another LS.

I believe those are the primary reason why some groups don't recruit or party with new/returning players.

Your opinion about bigger server is just....opinion based on your preference. There are no "best" server that's suitable for every single player. Asura just happened to work for you. Some people on their server has long, long history, reputation, established connections and trust that they spent years to built. By moving to another server that trust and reputation built over the years are gone and its actually harder to get things done. It's not that much of an impact for new/returning player or if player enjoys shout groups, but it may not work for everyone.

For example if I want to make a pt with multiple AG DD, Idris GEO x2, REM BRD to experiment a new setup or strategy on a T4 NM, my friend with the above job and gear requirement will come and help at least 90% of time as long as they're not busy, that's because those friends know me and play with me for many, many years and we know each other very well, they know that if I theorycraft a setup on an NM it will have a good chance to work. If I move to another server there's no way a random Idris GEO would help a stranger like me for zero benefit. There's no way anyone would reply to my shout if I yell "Melee T4 do you need it, team up? Idris GEO x2, Afterglow BLU x2 can I have it". They'd just laugh, thinking I'm a clueless party organizer and walk away.

And that's the difference between having established group and close friend with high degree of trust, and none close friend people.

I'm not saying bigger server is good or bad, I'm just saying there are pros and cons and it's more important to find a server that works for you, instead of just claiming there's one single server that's without doubt better than every other servers. What works for you may not work for others, it's all subjective anyways.