Am I playing the game wrong?

[MagicalChase]

Welcome, it has always been like this! I don't know how you perceived the game in any way other than casual and friendly!
There is challenge for those who want challenge, there is social content for those who want to be social, there is grind for those who want grind.
There is something for everyone, save for that one type of person that wants to be challenged around every corner. I'm afraid FFXIV is not that, and never will- nor should be.

The game population slows down, or "becomes a dead wasteland", because players are encouraged to enjoy other things.
Some play other games, some look beyond the veil of patch:current.x to enjoy the older but still valid content, and some spend their time moping on the FFXIV General forum.

“Friendly “ yet massively passive aggressive, go figure. Anyway this notion that the game was “always this easy” is bogus. An absolute fabrication. Revisionist history. Odds are the people who think the game was always easy were playing the game wrong until they dumbed down the rest of the game. This game used to have character progression that made you want to stay and play the game. Now they nerfed it and there’s no reason to play the game between patched. Yoshi P can spin it as “yeah go on break” and you can eat it up, but an MMO that doesn’t keep its audience is a bad mmo.