I always find it amusing how "building a community" often translates to getting a group of players and ignoring the rest of the server.

Regardless, I think the reason you're seeing these issues actually stems directly from the reward system of FFXIV.

Getting the big rewards in FFXI took a very long time due to several reasons:

- lock-outs that would put Coil/CT to shame. Nid popped 2 times per week (and I'm being generous here) and only 1 group in the WHOLE server could fight him.
- Getting a relic in the old days took a very long time to do unless you were rich and could buy currency from others.

Because honestly, if you could fight Nid once per week like you can do Coil in FFXIV, FFXI's endgame would have been PUG content too.