Still playing FFXI now people do spend the majority of time in Jeuno. SE expanded the shout channel to all 4 zones of jeuno and its called /yell. So you see shouts in any Jeuno zone. Pick ups for VW and Abyssea and exp form in Jeuno all day long. But now with that live shout monitoring thing on ffxiah http://www.ffxiah.com/shouts people can not even be logged in the game and if they see a shout they are interested in they can log in and send the guy a tell.

The thing about FFXI was there wasn't any hard content in the game at all. Everything was really easy or impossible see AV (until the level cap raise). However people did stuff with linkshells because people wanted to control the drops, play with their friends, or gear out people in the same group in hopes of getting gear themself. Now in current FFXI we have Abyssea and Voidwatch where people pug stuff like crazy. You see shouts all the time for AF3 seal farming in abyssea and 18 man VW groups forming in Jeuno all day about.

Not sure SE is the type of company that makes really hard content where only less then 1% of the playerbase can even finish like Blizzard does in WoW with heroic hard mode raids.