I work 8 hours a day, have two dogs, and a wife. Meaning, I need to be able to level up a char or do some form of out of group activity that builds toward getting to group content with friends I have that don't work 8 hrs, have 2 dogs and a wife.

Also, you boast working in retail? How about knowing what the stock markets say? FF, SE and in fact 50% of the gaming industry is imperiled by the economy. I don't want to see a good company with excellent history get thrown away, I've played every ff with the exception of 10-2 and 13-2 so I'm a bit of a fanboy.

Point and fact, if a game is not fun for everyone in some kind of way, it's unsuccessful.

I'll disregard the comment about being easy to solo because that's only the case if you play the DoM classes or brd. The rest, post 1.21 are like pulling teeth at low levels, worse than xi. In xi I could get from 1-20 without reading miss for hours straight.

I want to group, all the time, but reality is if you've got friends a tier ahead of you or levels ahead you can't until you catch up and that's hard with limited game time.