question for current ffxi players

[Shuon]

Now for my question. How much of the game has changed since Chains of Promathya? I remember when I played it was MANDATORY to level as a group past level 15 as the mobs because way too hard to solo unless you were a beastmaster. Is this still the case?

What else has changed since then? I might be tempted to try it.

From my limited experience so far:
- you now can set up a party made up of NPC
- the npc will fill up all the main roles I.e. Healer, tank, dps
- you can start using them at level 5
- at level 5 you get up to 3 npc from your starting city, hence creating a party of 4 characters
- doing some simple quests will allow you to have 4 npc instead of 3, hence giving you a party of 5

The above essentially removes the need to find party members for most content of the game.