Would anyone at all be interested in restarting from scratch* with a fixed party?

[Ultrazen]

It would be awesome, but FF is definitely not the game for it. So much of the game structure is set up to be a roadblock to party leveling. Their history of developing single player content really has its stamp on this game.

Old as it is, Everquest would actually be the best game to do this in, because questing is almost never a hard roadblock to what you can or can't do. It's also a fantastic party based game, where you do really need a party to do a lot of the content. If I had to pick one MMO where having a party was the most rewarding, it would still be EQ by a mile. It's also very forgiving of someone missing a session or two. FF, if you get off the track with one person, even by a day or two, you're pretty much screwed. The content is so rigidly locked behind and to the MSQ that it makes it almost impossible to keep that kind of scheduling up.

Great idea, and something I'd love to do, but not the game for it sadly.

[HyoMinPark]

It would be awesome, but FF is definitely not the game for it. So much of the game structure is set up to be a roadblock to party leveling. Their history of developing single player content really has its stamp on this game.

Not really. Doing the MSQ together is quite easy to do with 1 or 2 other people. You will all level at the same pace. You won’t be level-locked at any point to impede progress because this game barfs experience at players going through the MSQ. Seriously: I’ve been leveling an alt and I’ve avoided any and all exp buffs including rested experience, and it took all that for me to finally hit a level lock in the middle of the pre-Stone Vigil quest chain—and it was only by less than half a level. It’s quite doable. I’ve done it. I went through 2.0, 2.x, and 3.0 with a friend of mine (who made an alt just to level up with me so that I wasn’t doing all that alone), and we managed just fine. We played just about every day for a few hours until I was caught up (patch 3.1 at the time).

The only challenge one would have would be conflicting schedules. Exacerbated when you’re dealing with more than one individual, but it is quite doable. You’d only have to “disband the party” for solo instances, but everything else can be done in a party with very little issue outside of scheduling. Not nearly as impossible as you’re insinuating.