Commitment issues

[Magistrella]

To the ones bashing the OP over XI

you're wrong, RoZ released 11 month after XI release (16th of may '02) in JP (April 17th '03). At that point everything up to The Hall of the Gods was out (pre-sky area) July the 17th exactly 3 month after, they opened up sky, so 14 month in the game.
XI released in US at the 28th of october '03 (PC) and in the EU at the 17th September '04 (PC) - PS2 release (US only) was the 23rd of March '04. All three dates mark the Release date of RoZ in those regions.
CoP was finally released international at September 21st with EU getting a headstart at September 17th 2004 - That is 16 Month after XI was officially released and marked the second Expansion. Finally at the 24th of February 2005 Al'Taieu, or sea, was opened or: 21 month after XI release

At 3.0 official release we were at month 21 in ARR

So... please, get your facts straight when indeed the OP is right when he writes:

after all in this part of XI's life cycle you had dynamis, sky / sea, HNM's.

On Topic:

I feel you, and it feels like a revamped 2.x without a good crafting/gathering system at this point. But until im capped 60 in all classes ill be fine. The grind keeps my brain from realizing that i dont like the weekly caps ^^

[Eekiki]

To the ones bashing the OP over XI

you're wrong

XI's development cycle != XIV's development cycle. Expansion packs were more prevalent back in the early aughts because internet speeds were slower, so offering big content updates via patches was less viable.

[Magistrella]

XI's development cycle != XIV's development cycle. Expansion packs were more prevalent back in the early aughts because internet speeds were slower, so offering big content updates via patches was less viable.

Every huge maintenance following the first RoZ and CoP release had you download several hundred MB depending how many Areas where added. You really should look at a zone/content release time-line of XI. Original Release Size for FFXI: 1CD POL and Tetra Master 3CDs XI 1CD RoZ 2CDs CoP, with a maximum of 700MB of compressed data per Disc. The Game with RoZ and CoP installed and patched was about 8 GB (now the game is at 11-12GB +POL Data depending if you have both or only one client language installed). I dont know how good the compression was back then but i remember downloading for around 2-3 hours the first installation, thats around 2-3.5GB with my connection.

And on the point of Internet Speed:
In 2004 (CoP Release) 72% of JP households had an ADSL Connection
I Personally have still the same connection as back then - i live in a very rural area with 3MB/s too, the first wide spread released DSL connections released in 2001 in Germany. And we were, and still are, far behind Japan.

[Kaedan]

Bunch of pointless and useless dates

The amount of time that passed between release and Zilart is irrelevant. Development cycle =/= Development time.

Heavensward is the first expansion for FFXIV and it raised the level cap to 60. At the exact same stage of development, FFXI wasn't even available in the US. And at the time of the first expansion for the Japanese only version of FFXI, the only endgame content was Dynamis and Sky.

The version of the game that non-Japanese regions finally got was a heavily updated Rise of the Zilart.

What RotZ did to FFXI is exactly what HW did to FFXIV... it trivialized the endgame of the original FFXI. Now HW has Alex Normal, Alex Savage, 3 end-game dungeons, 3 endgame trials and 2-3 options for current end-game gear. Actually FAR more than RotZ had at it's launch.

So no, the OP is quite wrong.

[Eekiki]

And at the time of the first expansion for the Japanese only version of FFXI, the only endgame content was Dynamis and Sky.

Dynamis and Sky were both added with RotZ. Pre-Zilart FFXI had a level cap of 50 and the Shadow Lord was the end of the main story. "Endgame" was only a few BCNM fights.

Which proves the OP wrong even more.