How am I meant to level with a friend now?

[Warp]

Before the level cap raise, there wasn't a whole lot that you could solo and even then, you could only do it with a select few jobs with specific gear, specific stats and specific macros. Again, FFXIV is much much much easier to level in and much faster, if you do it correctly, compared to correctly leveling in FFXI. Remember those leve exploits you mentioned about 14? Yeah, there was an "exploit," as you claim, in XI called summoner burns which is probably what you did to get your levels.

Campaign, Fields of Valour, and not to mention Level sync making it a joke to find others to play with.

All at 75 cap, and this was in 2007-2008.