Sure FFXI story seemed epic, thats because you had to organize 20 people to come in at certain days to clear extremely hard missions 2 times a week for 3 months just so you could get to some endgame events. And if you missed a session or didnt have time during the week to run and do your other quests leading up to the mission fight you could be left behind.

You could get gear in FFXI that actually made a difference (because of all the different stats and effects on gear). I had max -physical and magic damage gear set on DRK to put on once I grabbed hate, which took a long time to piece together but was very rewarding. This also meant I had to spend 30 minutes whenever I changed jobs to grab my - DMG set, my WS set, my magic burst (+mg dmg ) set, etc. Its true when you got that piece of super rare gear you have been working months for, and completes a set or w/e it seemed epic, but lets get real: "ain't nobody got time for that". Most cant stay in College gamer mode forever.