Kind of have to wonder if you actually read anything I wrote, or just saw it as bashing retail (which it was not) and got upset. I didn't even call the retail community toxic, and that's one of the many words you put into my mouth throughout your entire post. Whether you like it or not, I've played my fair share of retail, I've done most of the content in the game. Nothing that I've said is false. You might want to reread both your post and my own and try to figure out what your point really is. Especially since much of what you said agreed with me.

Retail can be enjoyable, but if you're like me and hadn't played in a long time and came back, you probably wanted to take the opportunity to finish all of the stories.

So I did, and I soloed all of it, with Trusts. It of course was a complete joke. I was already 99 from Abyssea era and missions fights literally took seconds to beat. If I had to have leveled from 1, I probably would've been even more disappointed, since I would've soloed to 99, with Trusts.

I get the point of Trusts. I even admit that I liked them a lot more than I thought I was going to. But all of the content in the game that was added in the first 11 or so years of its life is completely negated of all difficulty with them. I could always not use Trusts and equip lower level items, but I shouldn't be forced to create my own difficulty (and I'd still be soloing), and I don't play FFXI to solo or force difficulty upon myself. I play FFXI to play with others, and because every inch of the game is difficult in one way or another. Or it used to be.

One of the many things that people are nostalgic for in FFXI is finding or creating a party for missions. When people return to FFXI and find that this is no longer a part of the game, it turns them off. The same with leveling.

Again, I understand the point of Trusts. The game is old, and it's hard to find players who need to level or do missions. Old games are very top heavy in terms of player base. Just about all of those folks have been playing forever, and really only have use for the highest tiers of end-game content. Which brings me to the next problem:

Finding people to do stuff with once you're level 99. Not only is the current FFXI community extremely classist, but they don't even let you join MID-GAME content without being geared. And they've been requiring players to have REMA to join groups for the better part of a decade. It's just silly and embarrassing, considering most of the content in the game doesn't require you to be THAT geared at all. I mean they want you to have REMA for capacity point parties and I just can't even begin to explain to you how absolutely and despicably unnecessary that is.

And since it only takes a day to level from 1-99 now and gear rains from the sky, they expect you to have all of the best jobs leveled and ready to go. I appreciate that FFXI allows us to level multiple classes on the same character, but I prefer the old days when people really only had 1 or 2 jobs leveled. I prefer playing with people who go all out on playing their favorite job to the best of its ability and put tons of effort into getting the right equipment for all of their spells, abilities, and weaponskills. Plus, once we hit that Abyssea era where people literally leveled in their sleep and everyone had all the jobs leveled, it meant that they all wanted to lot on EVERYTHING, even if it was for a job they didn't care about or hardly ever touch.

When you do get CP done and get some equipment for yourself and try to do end-game content, you're quickly introduced to what end-game has been like since Abyssea: spawning a boss over and over and over and over and over. Ambuscade is one of the worst things to ever happen to the game. Escha/Gaes Fete is basically just Abyssea 2.0. There's a few other things to do like Vagary, Omen, and Dynamis D, but Vagary groups are uncommon especially when there's no campaign for it (the campaigns are another crappy mechanic), Omen is more common but only for card runs, and Dynamis D just didn't quite entertain me enough.

All of this is just my opinion, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest if someone thinks I just spoke a bunch of hogwash, nor does it bother me if for all of the reasons I dislike the current FFXI someone else loves it for the same reasons. And for the record, FFXI is cheap so there's really no reason not to try all of the content yourself if you haven't. They also have free login campaigns (I think the recent one might already be over?).