Leveling is way to fast...

[charlemagne]

Forgive me if this has been said earlier in the thread but I haven't read it all.
I think one of the reasons though not the only reason that levelling was made so easy in this incarnation of the game is because it is after all now just a huge beta test. SE needed a decent amount of people playing endgame in order to test the system out, see what kind of stuff was popular etc etc.

EDIT:
Having now read the whole thread I think I've just moved my position from a "make levelling harder" one to a "do away with it alltogether" one.
Instead of levels how about bringing back ranks? We don't increase hp/mp or stats as we increase in rank, the rank would just signify how far along we are in the process of obtaining all the quested skills for the job. This would allow the people who cba or don't have loads of gametime to do endgame. For those players who want to play only with the experienced or higher calibre players then the rank system would help to distinguish them from the newer ones.