What to do with EXP now..?

[Alhanelem]

3) Because XP was one of the core elements around which old FFXI was based.

That's only because old FFXI had nothing else to do but level up and do the missions. There was no real endgame when the game was new other than dynamis, which drained a lot of most ppl's exp so they always needed more.

There is so many options for what to do now that I don't EXP unless I really want to because it just means less opportunities to get into groups for other content.

[Zhronne]

That's only because old FFXI had nothing else to do but level up and do the missions.

If you ask me I think that's quite a wrong statement.
You talk about dynamis but before they finished adding all Dyna areas there were many other things to do other than XP. Ground kings, many other NMs, Sky nms, gathering, crafting, Expeditionary Force, Garrison, Ballista, BC battles etc etc.
Now we could argue the utility of some of these content, but nonetheless you had a lot of stuff to do other than XP.
Any way that's not the whole point of the issue, let's leave this aside for a moment.

People weren't doing XP because it was the only thing they could do, people were doing XP for other reasons:

• Game was still new, very few people had capped levels and subjobs, majority of people had only one job at 75, also when they added merits that put another big chunk of xp to gather for all players. XP was slow and it took a lot to level up. Basically people kept doing XP because they *needed* it.
• People died, and dying back then mattered, and sometimes you really died a lot and also if I recall the penalties were bigger and you recovered less XP with Raise 1. People used to delevel to 74 all the time
• Can already guess from the earlier point, but one of the big reasons of why people kept XP, it's because SE designed a game where they imagined XP as a constant and never ending cycle. You capped a job? Ok no problem, you will want to xp another job. A patch changing something with lv 1-37 abilities and spells will make you want to level a new subjob, and so on. Why? It's simple. Back then to make XP you *needed* a party, to make so people could always assemble pts, they arranged game balance so that people would always want to keep doing xp. As long as people have reasons to keep doing XP there will be people looking for pt. As long as there is people looking for a pt, there will be people who won't get frustrated and will be able to do xp. It was an "endless cycle" of new jobs, new subjobs and new/returning players. It worked for quite a few years, of course with time it started to slow down, and Abyssea's >300k/hr afk XP alliances destroyed it all of course

These are the main reasons.
I'm not fool enough to ask for the current situation to go back to how it was @75 lol, I'd be crazy.
But at the same time I don't want to see XP completely gone from the game. Make it have a smaller place, make it so people will have less reasons to do it, but please give us a reason!
If they don't want to remove merit caps, then adding something to convert excess merits/XP could give people who still want to do xp from time to time a small motivation to keep doin it, while also keeping the "legacy" of FFXI alive at the same time.

Doesn't seem too bad to me, and doesn't seem a "small" thing like some of those suggested in this thread would make everybody else (those who don't want to XP ever ever ever again) feel "forced" to do XP.