Being that nearly half our LS is EU and our leader is canadian, I'd say he's serious.

Leaving my two cents on this. As a Non-US player, I can quite agree a bit on the sub-par capability thing, and I believe the reasons for that mostly boils down to either lack of communication or the difference in terms of strategy implementation between different time zones, most likely the former.

Majority of the non-English speakers (placing this term to not only refer to our Chinese players, but also other nationalities who do not speak English at all) have difficulty communication with English-speaking ones (especially native ones), or just their preference not to mostly commingle with others and to only participate with people who can understand them instead. Let's face it, there are people on the US as well who prefer to talk to a native American rather than a non-native. Same case with them.

As a result, we have this.

This is just my opinion on the matter, so any feedback would be appreciated.

_________________
A player from the Philippines? Please check the NasomiPH thread here.

Guess t3 - t4 players may notice a compromise in communication barriers, anyone not playing at the t4 level shouldn't exclude non USA players though, they're just as capable up to t3 content, so.... to explain tiers a bit:

Tier 1: Basic Gameplay, casual/exp/some nms
Tier 2: Basic Endgame, sea/sky/dynamis/limbus
Tier 3: Exclusive Endgame, HNMs, dedicated scheduling
Tier 4: Elite Endgame, catered to the highest challenges the game has to offer.

_________________
!!! Surprise !!!
~not a noob~

If I am going to put myself on this Tier List, I am only qualified with Tier 2...

Another thing that needs to be considered on this tier list is in-game knowledge. Not everyone came from retail, and there are a lot of people who started playing FFXI here (e.g., me). This also affect communications as well. How do you expect someone to be effective on an endgame event if they haven't experienced it on the first place?

_________________
A player from the Philippines? Please check the NasomiPH thread here.

Being effective is usually relevant to each person and comes at their own learning curve. For instance a RDM would only need to know when to enfeeb, what enfeebs to use, which subjob to bring, what and when to stun if /drk, to be effective (excluding tank details). The rest of the cure / magic burst / refresh / haste / when to convert / keeping stoneskin and blink up, details would've been picked up in earlier tiers. Most of that foreknowledge can be gathered quickly by checking wikis. The real learning curve will come from sorting on screen information to only see relative information as quickly as they could personally process it, and react accordingly. These are the things that change person to person. RDM #1 may want to see when a trick attack is about to happen in order to predetermine emnity cycling, while RDM #2 may be well enough just watching HP bars in party menu, and would rather leave pt ja's out of chat log to catch mob buffs to dispel faster. 1 isn't nessecarily better than 2, it just depends on what and when they can process the information.

_________________
!!! Surprise !!!
~not a noob~