Worth returning to?

[Yarly]

If you're returning with friends, maybe.
If you're returning with no one, no.

[rog]

No, ffxi sucks.

[Kazen]

Also, I was under the impression PLD was actually quite useful for Voidwatch?

I've been using my PLD recently for voidwatch and it has been very helpful for the fight overall. It would probably really depend on the PLDs gear though, I know with my pld I have a lot of different gear sets and with some of the more annoying voidwatch fights I've been using my pdt/mdt macros a lot.

[Arlan]

No, ffxi sucks.

Quit the game then.

[rog]

Quit the game then.

But i just came back.

[Storm]

Thanks for the comments, I think I'll leave some of the poorer jobs and work on some of the better in the hope they get updated with awesomeness buffs :-)

[Khajit]

Thanks for the comments, I think I'll leave some of the poorer jobs and work on some of the better in the hope they get updated with awesomeness buffs :-)

once you get started up and if you do the shouts for the lolalliances yourself you could probably get ALL of them up within a week.

Provided you dont suck at things there's technically no logistical reason to leave even a job as weak as sam behind if a person in your group wants to have some fun after everything else has been covered. I'd wait till after you got some atma before screwing around with the weaker jobs vs nms though.

[Saefinn]

Complaints I see people make frequently:

Abyssea means nobody plays other content anymore: given how many people make that complaint, you'd think they're get together and embrace the other content. Instead of complaining, I just look for people interested in teaming up and I do find people.

Abyssea means nobody knows how to play their job: based on the assumption that exping the old fashioned way means people HAVE to learn their jobs (even though they don't, a lot of times you can just stick to the same basic routine from Dunes all the way up to Caederva Mire), heal if you're healer, nuke if you're nuker, dd if you're dd. The reason people don't know their job is because they've not gone out and tried to learn it. If I were to leech a job in Aby, I'd learn it before I teamed up with somebody. I partied with people outside of Abyssea on non-leeched jobs who don't even know what crowd-control is and proceed to panic when a mob links and as soon as I cast 'sleep' they attack the mob thinking we'd have a better chance if everybody got hit or simply leg it and die as it become a lot harder to sleep a mob that's running away from you. So whilst people complain that Abyssea makes people clueless, I would tend to disagree.

The game is no longer a challenge: I can sympathize with complaint a bit, because when you think about it, you can solo a lot of stuff that required a team and a battle-plan before. Now, your level 90 friends can just go, "hey, 'sup" and wipe the NM. I think it's fair in that as the game is less popular and a lot of people have completely the old content already, it's harder to team up. Though there are fights people still shout for. Good gear is a lot easier to get and you don't have to spend weeks on gearing up. But, you still find challenges and not everything is easy as pie. In away the game is a lot more accessible and doesn't cater as much to the elitists, so I don't think it's necessarily that big of a problem, but we all like a good challenge.

I find in my experience I don't struggle to find exp parties, I get along with people and have found some really decent linkshells, I find people who want to participate in old content, do CoP, Zilart, do ToAU, Do WoTG, finish rank missions (though they're pretty much soloable), participate in Assault, Besieged and Campaign. The new content, Abyssea, I find is actually quite fun and I've enjoyed hunting NMs with people there and it requires you to know your job and that can be fun. But how things work in Abyssea is different to the rest of the game, it takes only a little to get the hang of, such as the coloured procs on NMs and the lights system. You have Dom Ops, which can be more insane for exp than a standard exp party (which is already insane) and there's Bastion, the Aby equivalent of campaign, which I am yet to try myself. On top of everything in Aby, there's also Atmas, a key item that can infused as a status effect in Abyssea (provided you have a Lunar Abyssite, there's 3 in total, so you can have 3 atmas at once) and different atma give different effects, for example: 10mp/tick refresh.

On top of all that you have the new content from the latest update. Voidwatch and Grounds of Valor. Voidwatch I haven't tried but Grounds of Valor is like an enhanced version of Fields of Valor, but in dungeons, it can offer random enhancements at the end of a page, e.g. skilling up increase, cure potency increase, attack and accuracy increase and so on. You can get a lot of exp from it and spam the pages, so you don't have to wait until the next game day (like FoV used to be), it has given birth to a new burn party, you have an alliance killing EP-DC mobs near the book and you can be getting 1.5+k exp for every 6 kills from the book, plus gil, plus tabs.

So I think that actually there's still a lot for a returning player? Do you need to come back with a friend? Not really, make some, find a good linkshell and get to know the people there. I joined the game last year as a loner but made friends quickly. The bonus I think for a returning player is that you have a choice, you can level up the old fashioned way, or pretty much skip it with the quick way to exp if you feel you've done it all before and don't need to do it again, bearing in mind, leeches get a lot of aggro from other players, but you'll play the game how you want and it's not up to them.

[Starcade]

Is this game still popular and worth playing again? Does it still have a healthy number of players? If I do play again I plan on buying the steam FFXI pack that's available so I have everything. Any advice on which servers to go for if I decide to return, also are there any trials around? Or did they stop them because of the RMT spam? Also are there any ruined classes since I left? Thanks in advance.

Popular? Depends on your take.

Worth playing again? A flat no.

Minus some major reforms in the arrogances which the playerbase has been able to inflict on what it believes its lessers, this game has been lost to the cheaters. Without Windower, most people believe you're playing on a console.

[Saefinn]

As far as arrogant players go and trolls too, the best course of action is to ignore, if they're doing their job, then it ought not impede on your enjoyment. Though if in a troll party I am more likely to drop out if somebody invites me to do something else. If trolls don't like it, then don't troll.

As far as the game being lost to cheaters, I am actually unsure how - I don't think I've been left at a disadvantage by what I've seen you label as cheaters. You talk about windower, a lot of what windower offers can easily be compensated for:
Recast: simple, /recast "Sublimation"

As for exp, you've got a menu for that, exp/hr, I think that's prolly just there for people who want to decide whether the party is worthy sticking to and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that exp is slow or coming in too small of a packet. As for the distance between you and another player or mob, it's not that difficult to recognise what a bad spot is and roughly where you ought to be standing. Knowing people's TP, lead the skillchains yourself by having a macro for when you're ready, you'll find people will follow, e.g. "/p [Dark Knight] [Skillchain] [Ready!] <tp> TP".

I'm sure if you list through Windower's other features you can find other things that can easily be compensated for. It seems to exist as a matter of convenience more than anything, basically what people consider flaws to the UI.

I've never thought not using Window is an issue and I've never seen a console gamer complain that they're at a disadvantage compared to PC users from their lack of Windower, same for PC users who claim not to use it either. In fact, I prefer playing the game on the console, but don't because WoTG is impossible to get a hold of and I only have the 2007 edition.