Have I missed the boat?

[Taruranto]

Jesus, it's a theme park mmorpg with instances.

If people could get in FFXI 7 years after its PS2 release, I'm sure you'll be fine here.

[Caraway]

As a few have said, there's plenty of us on Balmung who are taking are time so there's plenty of groups you can get together in that don't require intimate knowledge.

Besides FCs there are at least two Linkshells that accept random folks and their whole point is to help people progress. And if you ever see anyone with a MAD tag (admittedly there's only three of us!) we're always happy to help if you're nice.

[DoctorPepper]

snip

If you're 47 then you have plenty of time to catch up before 2.1. People are still actively doing the 40+ story content and the reason duty finder exists is so that everybody has an equal chance to try content. The shouts you see for geared people are mostly for Speed Runs which you are not capable of until you get some good gear.

My advice to you would be to grind CM 10-15 times through duty finder, if you are not a healer or tank try and make some healer/tank friends to speed up que. Once you get to it, buy some darklight armor (i recommend armor before accessories for the vitality/hp boost) and then start grinding AK and WP regularly to cap out your tomes of mythology each week. Also, once you're able to, unlock the relic weapon quest and start progressing in that as you will need it for things such as bahamut's coil which is currently the hardest endgame content. It is very important to cap out your mythology as a lot of the best in slot armor/accessories come from it and you need 900 mythology to upgrade your relic weapon to +1 when you get it.

[ferretwraith]

As a level 49 on balmung (also took last month off), I will co-sign that the rate some people blasted through the content at was downright discouraging. Friends of friends in my FC were completing their relic weapons 3 weeks after release, including that first week when half the people who bought the game couldn't even log on.