Originally Posted by
Colt47
That was the point, though. Not everyone was capable of beating COP pre-nerf, so they moved on to do other things, like crafting, leveling jobs, and just having a good time. The content of CoP was originally level capped at levels that were not at end game status, so it was possible to keep advancing in some way without having to necessarily go through CoP. Right now all the hard content is at end game, so we are forced to complete it to advance our characters. That is why FFXI was more casual even though it had harder content.