1. Requirements for events doesn't make something non casual..god forbid you have to do some work to get what you want <___<

2. The game is sketchy because it's being overhauled for relaunch, but you also have the community to blame. It's hard to get drive when the general community is just so..stupid about certain things (you can only do ifrit with 1WAR, 2 WHM and 5 THM/BLMs!)

3. The only thing they ever contradicted themselves on was the AF gear, which they said would be at least on par with double meld gear, which some pieces are pretty strong in certain regards, it's no where near even a single meld set of gear.

4. Indeed, and with SE's infinite focus on the end-game people, it's not that welcoming to new players sadly, which luckily they said should change come 2.0 if they want this MMO to even be as remotely successful as it's predecessor.

Honestly, it's 1 part SE and 1 part the community that makes this game really sketchy, it's hard to have fun when you're not allowed to have fun, so what if you can level all classes and jobs, there's people out there who enjoys and want to play only a singular class/job and should be allowed to actually do party content since time and time again people have proven you don't need to stack BLM or Barchers for everything, but the general community just doesn't understand that. In FFXI you could bring someone along that only had 1 job and still succeed in content, here people are too afraid to not get an auto-win, which usually means keeping MNK and DRGs out of the mix.

A good LS does change your outlook, but the game also has to be able to stand on a general social level, rather than purely tight knit...you usually get that tightknit part after forming general bonds..which this game makes it near impossible to do.