Ebands are free now, you just talk to the npc near the signet guard and do easy tasks (use a ws, get lvl 5) and she gives you Eband, meat jerky strips and a reraise "raising earring". All part of the /easymode stuff after 2010.
I personally liked the pre 2010 game better because I liked long-term goals, grind and sense of accomplishment. I actually preferred the pre-patch skill-up rates, they were medieval and grim but you really felt you had achieved something when you cleared 250~ skill and also they were a symbol of your proficiency in playing that job. If you had capped skills it meant you had played the job for a long long time, and so you were reliable in event parties.
I would sooner have mythic gaxe than delve gaxe, so I dont really see the 'obtain a delve weap' as a meaningful end goal in this test. But people can get new char 1-99 in 2-3 days, some have built Maat's cap on a new char in a few weeks. I'm sure you can get delve on new char easy enough too.
I think rieves are very fail indeed, they are unfit to walk in the footsteps of 'campaign battles'. I still do WOTG area battlefields today, because imo wotg was the last real ffxi expansion we had.