I think SE's definition of challenge has died. To me CoP was the golden age of MMORPG, the very definition of what it should be. FFXIV is becoming more and more a joke of a game, trying to make everything so easy that even facebook games are starting to be more challenging.

Like you said Xeak, I also loved to go back to help friends do their CoP missions, loved the fact that I was capped and that there was always a challenge waiting. Removing the cap was really a bad decision if you ask me, there are plenty of games that pretends to be MMORPGs out there that already allows you to go steamroll through their content... FFXIV should be aimed for a different crew.