Are monsters getting smarter or parties getting dumber?

Ok, so I log onto FFXI yesterday and put on my seek hoping to get level 47 before I log off, and I already have my Search comment up and I'm all ready to fight off all the blind invitations. I waited for a couple of minutes. They didn't come! I was like... what the heck? I felt like a DRG or a low level THF ^^. I'm a PLD and I typically don't have to wait long at all. I stayed around there for a couple hours farming Gobbue Farmers (I got about 4 Tree Cuttings just waiting) and then I just give up. My /anon wasn't up, and I am actually pretty popular with people in my level range, I have partied with lots of people and made good impressions, some people wanted me for their set parties... so yesterday was a weird day for me :P

OK, now for the part I made the thread for :D

As a Paladin, I have put together a little "Revenge List" of monsters I wanted to come back and kill when I was a higher level, among these monsters... Kazham Goblin trains, Kraken, Sea Pirates, Ochu, Sabotender, etc.. :P I decided to go to Qufim island to fight the Kraken and I help a few passing people by killing those annoying Dancing Weapons that spawn in the tunnel. When I get there, it's nighttime, so people are going to probably get aggro from undeads. I run past the Worm spawn area just outside the tunnel and there are no problems there, and I go up to the Ocean to one of the Beastman Banner spawn points where there is usually a Pugil party, and sure enough, their party has a linked Pugil and a dead WHM and everyone is hitting their two hours, so I Provoke the other pugil and play as main healer for this party until their pugil is dead, and then I kill the one that linked.

When I am on my way to the Kraken spawn point, I see a party running from a Banshee. Of course they never stop when you want to help them, and they run all the way to the tunnel before I am able to pull the Banshee off them. I kill it in the tunnel and when I get back, there is carnage. These people somehow aggro'ed three Banshees, some Dancing Weapons, and a whole bunch of Wights and all the parties are just outside the tunnel trying to fight them, and all these Call for Helps are going out. I Provoke one Banshee (thinking that they'll need the most help on these first), Flash another, and Cure III on the third Banshee so I'm fighting three Banshees. It's funny, because their "Banshee is intimidated by Aliza's presence" message is practically spamming the screen, they could hardly hit me. I kill the first one without using my Seraph Blade, so I have 300% TP, and I Auto-Target the next one and instantly hit my Berserk then Seraph Blade, and bring that one down pretty quick, and the third one would have killed me (I had run out of MP at the time) if the other parties hadn't helped me out, and the Blood Sabre's was pissing me off, their Area of Effect drain was hitting like 30 people all at once and healing this Banshee to full, so I pulled it away from the parties and killed it there. When I get back, it looks like the Wights and Dancing Weapons finished them all off, there were a bunch of dead bodies there, and the rest must have all tried to zone. Yeah... it was fun. :P

Monsters aren't getting smarter, its the n00bism virus, we must alliance together and stop this virus

Sometimes theres only so many parties to go around with...even BRD can find that tho its sorta rare.

I dont think you can blame the n00bs. After all at night Qufim is hard to avoid everything. Undead is basically everywhere. And they only had Ghouls do deal with if you lvl in Valkurm, giving you little to go on vs undead mobs and not to mention the sudden mass spawnage of them. So i dont blame them necessarily, they can run or just die there..and getting Raises at those lvls is major hard. The first 30 lvls to me, is training ground, giving you a little bit more experience per lvl til you can call yourself intermediate into the 30-50 lvls. And everyone has went through newb stage in their life, me, you, and even the japanese who had this game longer than us. And even with the best people, things will go wrong. Its those that know better and purposefully screw up and mess things up that are the idiots to me.

Some things cant be helped and we all had to learn the hard way at one stage, but for those things that can and yet do it to screw you up....theres /blist.

hmmm I noticed that a lot of the mobs use more *smart* spells than before at lower level areas. I'm going through leveling lower jobs and I get o.O when a gob uses like Frost on me when it didn't before or the lizzies use Firaga. I honestly do not recall them being able to actively use those before... maybe I was just lucky ...