Content drought....

[Stanelis]

Yeah, Xi just had a high entry barrier, people like me never made it past level 20, because veterans didn't want to hang out in the dunes, and new people didn't know what to do.

Generally the worst parties in the dune were the ones lead by noobs who though they were hotshots because they had some level 40ish jobs but didn't know what the hell they were doing. They typically went to fight goblins or pugils too early because they were in a hurry.

The content issue in mmos is caused by the casual focus. Devs simply cannot create enough content to keep the non-casuals occupied in a game focusing on the casual playerbase. Example FFXIV would be great for all players in its current design... if the devs released literally 15xs the content every patch (Not financially feasible, and honestly the 15xs mark is not that much of an exaggeration of what it would take).

No, there is a content issues in MMO because companies who run such games nowadays only see these game as a way to sell microtransactions to bored and rich players and do not devote game designer time needed to their games. When you only develop content with poor replayability or try to promote PVP in a game where the gameplay isn't though for this purpose, it is 100 % certain there will be a content issue. And that's not an issue of being "casual" or "hardcore", you can perfectly design casual content with high replayability.