Afania is 100% right on this whole subject.
Many gamers enjoy challenging games, with long term punishment/reward systems. Many gamers enjoy easy games. The beauty of FFXI in 2013 is that it offers BOTH challenging and easy. In the older FFXI (imho) it was challenging all the way, just getting a dunes party at lvl 16 could take you forever. If you wanted to lvl BST to 75 in 2004, it meant soloing the whole lvl 1-75 without books, empress bands, or anything, plus it was pre-xp patch so easy-prey mobs gave you like 15xp. The jobs were harder back then too, before the various patches. Especially BST and PUP which I solod back then and de-lvelled every day lol, solo because you never got invites on those in the 2004-2006 era. So even levelling your job was a huge big fat challenge.
Now it is much more easy to level, skill-up, obtain very powerful gear. Which means that people who want quick and easy have that option across the board. But there are still challenging aspects which are what keep a lot of more hard-headed gamers playing FFXI. I spent like 3 years killing MM before Spurrer Beret dropped, another six months getting two -6 PDT rings and Wivre Pin / Refresh+1. These are self-imposed challenges, which I chose to do because they were incredibly low % drops.. If they had been super easy drops I would not have got the same adrenaline rush I got when the rare item finally popped up in the box. Achievement is a thrill, especially after working on something for years. Also if you like challenging, you can still do old content in old gear, I sometimes go fight Lillith Ascendant with my turbo animator and lvl 75 gear, its a buzz fight and you might clear the battle at 25-29 mins and on like 15hp lol. Using the new iLvl gear its a 3-4 minute fight btw.
So re; Mythic w/e, its good that people who want longterm challenges have that option. Theres no shortages of easy options people can take instead, and get perfectly serviceable gear from. I think SE has made a lot of good decisions this year, to balance the game out and make it enjoyable for BOTH groups of players, those who like long-term grind and those who like microwave-dinner gaming.
