Quote Originally Posted by Arcell View Post
Well as someone who never played XI, I have no idea what the "merit system" even entails at all. That's the problem with having absolutely no explanation in the OP. Believe it or not some people didn't play XI and have no idea what you're talking about, or maybe it's just me.
Here: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Category:Merit_Points

Long story short, after you reach the level cap, you can still gain "exp," but when you "level," you instead get a merit point, which can be spent to either improve your stats or enhance your abilities.

I didn't play FF11 long enough to get to that point, but a friend of mine who did said that, alongside level syncing (which I have no idea why they didn't implement it in FF14, it was ingenious imo), it made it to where both low-level and high-level players could do things together.