Just to be clear, there were loads of things to do solo in FFXI... Crafting, most quests, many missions, fellow NPC, farming, fishing, chocobo raising, chocobo racing, gardening, campaign, besieged, fields of valor, walk of echos (Not quite solo, but behest-like as far as grouping), trial of the magians, even dynamis now can be behest-like...walk in and find a party to join. Stop dissing ffxi, it was an amazing game.

As far as the exp grind in FFXIV, has anyone spent much time with the new system? (BTW, the answer is no because its only been out a day). Hopefully, to ease the minds of those who don't like to feel like they earned their levels, the partying/grinding that 1.18 is pushing now will be much easier than it was in FFXI. As in, maybe you'll have to LFP or shout FP, but you can go out with 2, 3, 4, 8 random classes and still do okay, and building the perfect setup of Tank, DD, Puller, Healer, Support, Magic DD won't be quite as necessary until you're facing the more formidable mission/quest/raid foes/bosses (Hence the jobs coming). So maybe they did bring grinding back, but not to make you look endlessly for the perfect setup, to make joining up and killing stuff together worth it.