EXP Parties as an option please!

[Maikal]

Not to be rude, but to me this still sounds like a FATE party. It seems like you are looking for certain types of players rather then certain types of activities.

To clarify, I never got to play XI so I'm genuinely interested in what it is that makes EXP parties something different then what we have in the game. So far the only real difference I've seen anyone use is "People talked more". (I can't say this without sounding offensive, sorry about that.) It kinda makes FFXI sound like a really fancy chat room with a combat mini game for when people run out of things to say.

Absolutely no offense taken- I always appreciate a well thought out response.

It would be unfair and dismissive for me to say 'Well, you just should have been there.' ...nostalgia is always funny like that. I'll do my best to explain: It's very different from FATEs in that FATEs have very limited time limits and parameters, where as xp party levelling was very freeform and there were no game mechanics that introduced artificial time/area/level constraints. You were also accompanied by much smaller groups- there were no 24+ player group zerg hordes running from time limited event to time limited event.
Enemies were also much more threatening to lone adventurers. Most of the time currently, a single character can solo a large amount of a FATE all by her/himself. Back then, any more than two or three mobs(or just 1 in XI!) was a death sentence. You actually needed your group to survive in the world. That also helped knit the community together.
I know these things seem small compared to the sweeping changes even after 2.0 landed-the small differences I've detailed really changed the entire feel of early to mid game play.

Also, I agree with you completely that the playerbase I'm interacting with now is very different. I'm lucky enough, however, to have a great group of people within a linkshell that I'm a part of. It's modestly sized, but the people are close and we do most, if not all, new content together. If not for them, I admit that I'd have stopped playing long ago. It's strange to me that lots of people go through the entire game essentially solo by relying only on DF and PF. Why would people like that even bother with an MMO, I wonder?