Do you respect or awed by level 50? No?

[Blazer]

In FFXI, everybody is beating Maat. Beating Maat doesn't mean you're elite, just that you know a bit how to play your job and to prepare. Like everybody else.
Having a good equipment in FFXI doesn't mean you are elite. Just that you are super lucky on the drop and the roll against all your "friends" from you HLS.

Not trying to derail the thread (based on my post above this). But it wasn't as simple as hitting a queue button and doing a dungeon to be able to roll against someone. There's a reason only a handful of LS's were even in something like SEA let alone getting drops 1-2 years after CoP came out. There was a big "elite/elitest" player base in FFXI, trust me.

[XNihili]

Not trying to derail the thread (based on my post above this). But it wasn't as simple as hitting a queue button and doing a dungeon to be able to roll against someone. There's a reason only a handful of LS's were even in something like SEA let alone getting drops 1-2 years after CoP came out. There was a big "elite/elitest" player base in FFXI, trust me.

Even my little LS managged to do the big stuff (except training Darter for MPK the other HLS) and we were not elite.
We didn't feel elite and didn't expect to command awe and fear to newbies.
Sure we felt more fulfillment but nothing else.

EDIT: equipment and level don't matter and should not. Deeds do.

[Warlyx]

Not trying to derail the thread (based on my post above this). But it wasn't as simple as hitting a queue button and doing a dungeon to be able to roll against someone. There's a reason only a handful of LS's were even in something like SEA let alone getting drops 1-2 years after CoP came out. There was a big "elite/elitest" player base in FFXI, trust me.

Airship Battle was hard >< , took my static 2 weeks was well worth it ^^ , only a few (non-jp) at that time had sea access

oh and beating maat as RDM has been 1 of the most hard things i did in FFXI .....so frustrating !!!