FFXI requires vast quantities of time to find a party to do anything, and then if you get a bad party you end up losing more EXP than you gain, hooray at 10% loss when you die, AND you can level down. Without a party, it's endless, ineffective solo-grind on identical monsters, because they couldn't even be bothered to palette swap most enemies.
Yes i do agree, there is a timesink, which however does attract some hardcore or more intensive players, its the only MMO that has kept me interested because its that much harder to do things which makes it more fulfilling when you do finish it with your friends. Its a plus or minus.

I like the level down, you cant just kill yourself to reach your homepoint, stupidity is harshly punished too so take that idiots. Bad players these days wont get you killed, just look for another group or make your own or do something else. Its your fault if you lose more exp than you gain if you choose to stay longer than is needed and after you tried helping the situation the best you can.

As for ineffective soloness, thats exactly what i liked about it, i hated RO and some other MMOs that let you solo most of the way through, THATS BORING. I like the way parties are. And pay attention to the monsters, alot of them have good design, and have varying sizes. A huge reason why they dont upgrade alot of them is because there are different DAT files for every monster, adding more will only increase its already huge 6-7GB full of data, inefficient considering the PS2 limitations and PS2's crappy draw rate. And you havent seen new monsters have you..? The ORIGINAL FFXI areas i can understand, but most zilart and chains of promathia areas are astounding. The reason why they dont update the old FFXI's design like the expansions is...why fix something old when you can push for something new..?

As for armor, there has been alot more armor sets lately that are very beautiful in design, the reason why lower levels look the same is because SE stated they want newbs to be seperate from the higher leveled players. If anything they sorta already went against that with new Eisen, Seers, and Baron/Trader's set of gears which look great.

Enjoy having a system with huge customisation with main and sub jobs, but yet you're only accepted with fixed and specific class combos, anything other than that being sidelined because you're "not effective".
Somewhat untrue, different subs for different purposes. It is a little limited, but i feel it is very balanced either way.

In any case, thats all i have to say to Lindy since its well..Lindy and he/she is like that :P Its a good laugh to see how serious the opinion somehow looks like truth. I never played GW, but it has its ups and downs too, i wonder how the expansions will be like and will it be mandatory or not to enjoy the game fully. That would be interesting to see.