My fondest memory in FFXI was doing the CoP missions with a static party back when it was really REALLY hard. We learned the fights together, and got through it with teamwork. What an incredible feeling to finally beat Promathia and collect our rings. A new player just wouldn't have that same experience now. People need to understand that ripping your hair out trying to find the way to the top of that dumbass mountain in Attohwa (if you can even get to the entrance past all those idiotic miasma gates) is just not appealing anymore (it never was, but in the past we had a team to do it with, for the lolz). Waiting until "japanese midnight" to continue a mission where you are trying to finish it as quick as possible to complete the storyline for access to HM battlefields is not cool. It's bad enough that the story content needs to be done in the first place since it's all so irrelevant, but to have roadblocks along the way is just frustrating and unneccessary.

I put many hundreds of hours doing various story related content in FFXI. I enjoyed most of it, and despised some of it, but I would never wish that experience on a new player with no one to help them. If ever there was a time to implement an "I win" button, it's now. The game is rapidly going downhill despite unprecedented amounts of updates and TLC being given to it (and as a veteran player, I cannot express enough thanks to the devs). But to new players, it's all for nothing if they are unable to have an enjoyable experience. More and more vets are getting bored, or frustrated with the elitism at endgame, and no new players will stick around to replace them.

Lucky for me, my attachment to this game comes and goes, and if it were to vaporize from the face of the earth it probably wouldn't bother me at all. But for some, it would be devastating, and those are the same people pushing newbies away with their self centered attitude. The elitists are only hurting themselves by wanting to keep FFXI the way it used to be.