Actually, yeah; you're right.

It's been a while since XI... I do also miss the community feeling it offered. I too, would use the chat rooms during maintenance -- still keeping in touch with LS and non-LS friends during downtime was nice, and somehow even comforting.

I'd also use it to keep in touch with people via messages and such.

All in all though, adding game content, content IDs and such was a pain in the ass and took too long. It hasn't even seen any major improvements since 2004 (!).

I'm sure they'll add similar features to XIV, though. It would be a plus to keep in touch with people's accounts, rather than their in game characters.