Quote Originally Posted by MeowyWowie View Post
The 2 most common examples from XI would be Leaping/Bounding boots and Emperor/Empress hairpin. Both took time to obtain, and they lasted you a very, very long time.
No. That's called "Alpha and Omega itemization". That was a sign of very bad game design that incurred a timesink through gearing and was made worse by community expectations. Did you forget that you were considered a gimp THF and a gimp NIN for not having those items?

The means through which to obtain the items were also horrible, as both were non-guaranteed drops from mobs that were heavily camped by everyone, their mother and their army of /anon RNGs. That was not fun. It was not worthwhile. It was a waste of time that reduced the value of almost everything else for those slots that came your way.