Originally Posted by
Greatguardian
EXP is significantly easier to get now. But you can safely ignore people who want to tell you most of the jobs are worthless. Most jobs are right about where they've always been, some getting nerfed (SAM, DRK, RDM, SCH), others getting buffed (NIN, THF, BLM, WHM).
If you're a casual player and you're coming back to a linkshell, or still know people who play, you will be fairly well off and can probably get to level 90 and start working on your armor and missions and such in a couple of days. If you don't have any contacts.... well, I highly recommend attempting to make some via community websites! It is much more efficient than trying to meet people in-game, or join shout groups/shout linkshells, and you are more likely to end up with a quality group.
If you played in 2008, I'm not sure exactly what trials you're referring to. If you mean Fields of Valor (the little books in EXP zones where you get exp/gil/tabs for killing a set number of monsters?), they have continued it and expanded on it to include Dungeon mobs for level 90 players.
Some of the best armor and weapons in the game are no longer bought on the auction house or dropped by world spawn HNM, this is the biggest difference I think you'll see. There is a new system called "Trials of the Magians" which allows you to steadily progress towards a custom weapon. It can be tedious, but it is free and the rewards can be powerful. There is a new class of Ultimate weapon called "Empyreans" which are also created via Trials of the Magians, each of which having their own "Empyrean WS" which are, generally, extremely powerful. Because the WS are so strong, there is a subset of Trial weapons which are significantly easier than full Empyreans to finish and simply give the player access to the WS, without any of the Aftermath or added effects.
If you want to know job tiers, you have both inside and outside Abyssea to look at.
Inside Abyssea:
God Tier: NIN, WAR, MNK, BLM, WHM
High Tier: THF, BLU, BRD
Mid Tier: DRG, PUP, COR, RNG, DNC, BST, RDM,
Crap Tier: SAM, DRK, SMN, PLD, SCH
Outside Abyssea:
God Tier: WAR, MNK, SAM, NIN, WHM, RDM, BLM, BRD, DRG
High Tier: COR, THF, DNC, SCH, DRK
Mid/Crap Tiers: PUP, RNG, BLU, SMN, PLD, BST
Want a solid DD that will pretty much always be useful? WAR or MNK have been safe bets since forever, and are very sturdy jobs. Want a solid mage? WHM and BRD will never be plentiful enough. Given that EXP is so easy to come by, it's really not difficult these days to take up a job to 90 for the heck of it, or to use in specific content.
Is the game still popular? I think so. There are enough people still playing to do most all content with. I highly recommend trying to find a group of competent, intelligent people to make friends with and do things with though. Most smart players completely ignore the shout channel these days, so utilizing pickup groups generally means getting people who don't know what the Cure spell does.
Does it have a healthy number of players? Depends on the server. A few of them were recently merged and actually have too many players on them right now. Some are famous for being total drama/retard-fests. Others are more quiet. I could give you a basic recommendation if you have a preference. Some people prefer highly populated servers, others prefer really loud servers, etc. Personally, I prefer my quiet, relatively mature server that leaves me alone.
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