First to briefly reflect on FFXI, it was at it's peak when it had NM/HNM and max competition/drama. However a lot of people don't enjoy that.

The way the system in 1.xx worked was really lame in terms of the competition factor. I always thought instanced would be good but it really leads to overall lack of interaction between different linkshells. It would be nice if every HNM was 21-24 but you could also do it once every 10 days through an NPC in the area. Just a thought but i'm happy to hear it will be back regardless. The change in the claiming system is either going to be awesome or just a disaster imo.