Genuinely, What am I missing?

[Gurgeh]

What you are (probably) 'not' seeing (and simply won't be able to, and in some cases might never have to:

Is that the game has changed as compared with a lot of very long time veterans used to enjoy
- A 'lot' less individuality between jobs.
- with that a lot less challenge within jobs at 'all' content levels.
- utter destruction of the 'value' underpinning roles, (tank vs healer vs DPS) 'especially' healing (at all levels)
- loss of a confidence of being in a game where the devs care/connect/are listening and will. (no progress on long asked for but always hoped for improvements of every imaginable sort. Unwanted changes, quality of life, glamour/hair, graphics changes, basically EVERY type of feeback seems to be ignored when once XIV players were smug about how we had great devs and WoW didn't.)
- a new sense of vulnerability and almost fear connected to the above
- Less content (longer patch cycles but with the same content)
- much, much, less innovation in new paradigms of content than there once was. (there are exceptions but they are 'rare' exceptions). Once upon a time they introduced totally new content. Now they keep reskinning that same content and expect it to be as popular when it was first landed.
- recent innovations in content have had flaws severe enough so as to upset as many players as they pleased if not more, leading to those potential wins adding up to a loss for far more people than they were wins (Criterion/chaotic/island-sanctuary)
- failure to adequately improve upon those flaws (see worsening of confidence in devs and feedback, the hope that perhaps there never should have been, but was there, is now gone. Thats new)
- new phenomenon of unstable and unhealthy server populations for many types of content, caused by the new functionality of DC travel, which was not accompanied by the necessary support features such as cross-DC party-finder. This has lead to the wholesale and never ending slaughter of social groups as 'raiding' DC favoured by chance alone, parasite and cannibalise the unfavoured DCs. Understand this is continuing state of affairs, equilibrium is impossible (see again dev confidence, and loss of hope)
- the actual change of old playable content to make it more compatible with the newly implemented solo modes of that content. This taking the form of 'streamlining' which has added up to 'boringification' of that content.
- an utter cliff drop nose dive in the quality of all story writing in the game, starting with around Endwalker post. Applies to all MSQ and side quests, role quests, etc....
- material change in the quality of social interactions between players, for reasons which are down to the many causes of dissatisfaction (and I suspect an influx of console players with different expectations of investment in the game and its social opportunities)
- the 'arrival' of these problems is concentrated and new for many players that are long time players (4 years?) but perhaps not veteran, as while the problems have grown slowly over time, it takes a long LONG time to hit end game, and many of these problems only apply once you do hit end game, leading to a short/sharp/shock, and a worse shock now than what was once the case.
- As innovations (surprises to adapt to) have lessened, and the casual game has in the main been made easier in myriad ways, this has led to what was the midcore casual content now only being useful for the needs of 'super' casual players. The game used to have midcore content. There is now almost none to be found in an expansion at all whatsoever. (Casual is anything that does not require scheduling/advanced-preparation/study/etc. Do it on on a whim content at your personal convenience around your life. Midcore means challenge. Midcore casual.)

Is that the community you knew and/or the actual named people in it has changed

- the prevalence of 3rd party addons has exploded.
- glam is no longer relevant the way it once was to many players, affecting the content they participate in. (you don't need to collect anything, yo ucan just use addons to communicate your chosen appearance to other users of that add-on
- There are whole (and large) new communities of types of players with interests, with which the older established types of players are now far less likely to have as much in common with. (adult clubs, ERP, etc.)
- A thinning out of the sprout class and their interests as numbers of new players coming through to end game players declines, and who are becoming more of a minority, and this is exacerbated by the 'new' larger numbers of servers sharing a population that hasn't sustained growth of the same proportion as those numbers of new servers/DCs/Regions.
-social groups used to be cohesive in nature with deep connections. Those cohesive social groups with deep connections have now been replaced with more fleeting less connected groups, as people don't stay subbed, they come and go, and there is an expectation even while new relationships are formed that those will quite only be temporary, affecting how 'new' relationships are now conducted from the outset.