Everything is dead?

[HyoMinPark]

You can still be in ARR at level 57 if you buy the complete edition.

My FC pal had to get me to go to SB locations to get him SAM gear as he was still doing HW content, he'd just levelled up a lot.

I was basing my assumption off of the OP saying they’ve literally bum-rushed the story. It’s a logical assumption to assume that they were likely in HW if they were skipping through everything and were level 57.

You are right that normal Dungeon Queues are fast. Almost instant if you play as healer like me. But for the 8 man raids I waited 600+ minutes total for the first one ( in 3 different sittings ) with no luck until a high level carried me like I said previously. The two others I waited about 160 minutes and 200 minutes respectively before a high level felt sorry for me and carried me again both times. Different times, different players carrying.

The raids were: Rhitalyn, Castrum and Prateorium. Basically killing the 3 main baddies and ultima weapon and then that posessed wizard guy pretty much. And I'm pretty sure they were required to progress through the MSQ.

For this, you’d have to be queuing at odd times. I’m on an NA server, and the longest I had to wait for any of these when doing them on my alt was 40-ish minutes when queuing at normal hours. No where near 600. Cape Westwind (Rhitalyn) is present in Trial Roulette, so the Roulette will funnel players queuing for it into your queue. Castrum and Praetorium are part of both Mentor Roulette and MSQ Roulette—people run the latter purely for the insane amount of experience it gives, and I haven’t had to wait longer than 30 minutes for my MSQ Roulette to pop on Aether when I queue during normal hours (i.e., not super late at night or super early in the morning).

These also aren’t classified as “raids” in FFXIV’s terminology: Cape Westwind is a Trial, and Castrum and Praetorium are considered dungeons. The first “raid” you’ll see in ARR is Coil—but it’s not required for MSQ. No content labeled as a raid in this game is mandatory for MSQ progression—24-man raids, 8-man normal mode raids, or 8-man Savage/Ultimate raids.

RP stuff and goofing off sounds fun but that's not close to being possible. Every Duty Finder group is a wham bam thank you mam kind of run there's no skill involved or anything that might pique an interest in anyone and there's no relationships to be formed and the world is dead everywhere.

The people I RP with or goof off with are my friends. Not random individuals from Duty Finder. This is why I suggested you join an Free Company—where you will have the opportunity to make these sorts of connections. That said, I have made friends on other platforms, such as this very forum. My best friend and I actually met on here, and we do just about everything together.

Seems to me there's no meaningful interactions you can have with any other player whatsoever except for the odd high level feeling sorry for your low level ass begging on the streets.

If you don’t attempt to forge these connections and start these interactions with people, then of course they don’t happen. These things don’t just fall into your lap. Like I said, join an FC to attempt to forge these friendships.

You could test your theory by queuing up for Rhitalyn yourself and see. Server and Day of the Week probably plays a role but timezones and languages had nothing to do with it I'm pretty sure.

Your server is listed as a JP server (now that you’ve changed your active character). If you live in an NA or an EU timezone, timezone absolutely plays a factor on how active the JP queues will be—just as it would if you were JP playing on an NA or EU server. Same with languages. You’d best have JP ticked if you’re on a JP server, because most players on the JP servers queue under JP only.

As I said above, I do MSQ Roulette (so, queuing basically for Castrum and Praetorium) a couple times each week for the Roulette EXP. Longest wait I’ve had is 40 minutes.

Sorry, what I mean to say is that I am absolutely 100% certain that timezones and language had nothing to do with it. Because all language boxes were ticked and I've queued both during on and off peak-hours. And the raids were during the weekend no less. that being said server/data centers may be relevant but that's out of my hands.

Not really. You can pay to transfer to a server within your timezone—it’s $18 USD, unless you’re going from a Congested world to a Preferred world, in which it’s free.