Quote Originally Posted by Zumi View Post
[...]Also in FFXI people were very picky about joining parties if you didn't have a reilc/mythic/empyrean weapon you would not be allowed to join the group. .
This part isn't necessarily 100% true. The only time I have seen the demand for "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was towards the end of the life cycle for Voidwatch and when people where shouting for farming groups in Seekers zones. This demand did not come in any other era of the game when I played (I stopped playing within the first few months of Seekers).

The "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was a way to filter out the hundreds of Damage Dealers out there. The "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was not applied to Support Jobs or Healers. It was hard enough to find a Bard or Corsair let alone one with a Relic, Mythic, or Empyrean. Only those career Bards had a relic horn and/or the empyrean harp. Half of the bards and healers in FFXI during end of the Voidwatch era were dual boxed by some Damage Dealer player since they couldn't find a bard or healer within their play time.

The "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" was a result of the availability of the job market rather than Horizontal Progression. If there were an equal amount of Damage Dealers to Support Jobs, then "Relic/Mythic/Empyrean only" could applied to all jobs, but that wasn't the reality. The reality was that there was 30 Damage Dealers to 1 Bard, 1/4 Corsair, 1/4 Scholar, or 1/2 Red Mage (that knew how to play the job as Red Mage not as a "Pink Mage"). In order to get those rare support jobs, party leaders have to make it appealing to them. Since a party leader can't send a job application to each interested DD to see if they are skilled, using gear as the filtering mechanism was the best option. Support jobs had the luxury of being picky because of the demand versus availability. Again, this is not the fault of Horizontal progression, rather it was the result from the availability of the job market.