I've done this content in an 8 person party of FC friends, and other friends. The voip made it tolerable.

I've also done this content completely solo for a level.

The content isn't hard. It's easy. Extremely easy. It's boring. It's mind numbing. There's literally nothing in this entire piece of delayed content except for killing mobs. The magia board feels like an after thought -- you set it once, you're done, until you move on. You don't use it to diminish certain attacks, stances, or anything like that.

As a DRK at level 4, I pulled five level 4 mobs and killed them all. It took time, I got my chain going. But it wasn't fun. It wasn't difficult, it was just going through the motions.

It's just mob grinding. For very little reward.

There's no overworld dungeons. There's no sense of exploration to figure out the lore of the area, there are no interesting nooks and crannies to go find.

It's mob training.

I remember mob training from other games, it was never, on its own, fun. It's never been "fun" content. What made it fun was the social aspect, that's it.

As content, on it's own, it's boring, dull, easy, unexciting, mind numbing, and long for very little to gain. Especially when NM's are the only real source of actual rewards from killing everything, and even then, they're just Fate Bosses. I've never encountered a "fun" Fate Boss.

It's a nostalgia piece because of the social memories people have doing it, but that doesn't mean the actual content is good or fun when the only thing that can make it fun is shit talking it in VOIP while doing it.

They could have done a lot with it, there's a metric shitton of crap they could have done with it.

But they did nothing with it.

You can't even change your glamour in it.

You can't even queue for other duties while doing it.

You can't form a PF in the zone itself.