Quote Originally Posted by NovaLevossida View Post
To be fair, it's far less that the old crowd bailed and a lot more that SE changed the game into something so vastly different than what the game previously had been before Abyssea. We hadn't really seen an MMO change so drastically since Ultima Online had its Age of Shadows and changed from what it was into something wanted to be Diablo.
The changes to XI weren't nearly as drastic as you make them out to be. Content was more accessible and removed the need for alliances by making each individual character/job vastly more powerful than they were before. A fantastic move, because gathering 18 people for outdated/one-time-only fights took stupid amounts of time, even during NA Prime Time.

The problem that followed was they utterly annihilated all of the old (but still mostly useful content) and it went to Abyssea only until Voidwatch, Legion, Neo-Nyzul Isle and another difficulty tier for Salvage was introduced. And they then proceeded to demolish most of those with Seekers of Adoulin Content which.. isn't as diverse as the days of old. Dynamis, Sky, Sea, HNMs, Appolyon/Temenos, Nyzul Isle, Salvage, ZNMs, Beseiged, Campaign, SCNMs, KCNMs, etc etc.