It's not the rewards, it's the system in place. (It's bugged as well.)
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I'm currently in the process of updating FFXI with a separate account w/14-day free trial just to fiddle with it a tad. Going to have my mind blown tonight seeing Lv 99s running around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LMl3IuF_is
The fellow here has also been giving me feedback about the game, as he is currently playing himself as well. Was surprised to hear that WAR/SAM with G-axe is more a thing now than WAR/NIN DW.
Ive been playing XI on and off again since early spring 2012 after a break from it when XIV came out. Honestly it's changed a lot but for the better. linkshells no longer require your soul and most heavy camped nm/HNM have been turned to popable. Dynamis is soloable and with a few month hard work you can call yourself a relic holder(and do the work solo!). Emperyan relics are actually doable now too. My husband made his almace within a month with two friends of ours and now is working on kannagai. A lot more is solo-able or small groupable and people gather in jeuno to seek events. The nice thing is the game can still be challenging and abysseas actually pretty fun now that im over the original rage of everyone being high leveled.
Ive totally fell in love with beastmater, the new merit weaponskills are reallllyyyy nice some of the gear is like dzzammmnnnn...(and actually good looking now) They made ele stave's a synergy meld that allows you to make them into one staff called a prism staff, you can now delivery box rare/unique gear and seals to mules on your account and there's these noobie/lowbie exp alliances off books that allow people to level low to 99 so its not so hard to do. If you were a cook im telling you jug pets and pet food. thats where the money is^.- or soloing dyna and selling currency... or selling brews. Either way though different from the FFXI i used to know its taken better steps forward, not backwards as I had feared it did.
I've been having the itch to jump back into FFXI but my time is so limited. It seems I did quit the same time as the OP. Since we don't know exactly when 2.0 is coming, I've been replaying some other FF titles to refresh my old memory. Started with 7 and plan to keep going until it does come out.
As far as I'm concerned, FFXI is too expensive for what it is in the MMO market of today. Even if I have fond memories of FFXI, there is no way I'm going back on it unless it goes Free-to-Play. FFXI is more costly than what FFXIV will cost me (Legacy)... I'll try SWTOR, GW2, Tera, Rift, PSO2, and many more before paying too much per month for an old MMO.