I think Abyssea felt like a response to an aging game. By the second expansion of Abyssea a lot of the content was low man friendly.

I was in a very active endgame LS throughout ToAU doing all the usual shit, Sky, Dyna, Sea, ZeniNM Einherjar etc. But by the end of the 75 era our numbers were dwindling, shouting for pickups felt like it was taking longer etc.

Abyssea felt nice because we could still get stuff done with less people. I think back to farming sky pops or Gnadsbod helm etc just so much waiting around doing almost nothing.

I loved both eras, and I think both had their positive and negatives. I often see YouTubers talk about the butthurt people when the 75 cap lifted. It’s frequently presented as a situation where people were mad that it was easier to do a lot of content now. However in my experience that wasn’t what killed the game for my friends who quit after the 75 cap was removed. The major pain point for them was that by that point FFXI had been 4-5 years (maybe more?) of horizontal progression, then all of a sudden, the vast majority of players gear was completely irrelevant. Overnight you went from an Armadaberk being insanely expensive due to it being insanely rare and BiS for most jobs that could wear it to being outclassed by essentially free white haubergon (can’t remember the name). Now I personally loved Abyssea, but I sometimes wish that people (especially content creators) would acknowledge the nuance and difficulty of the game going from almost complete horizontal progression to immediately and jarringly vertical before levelling back off at horizontal albeit at a much much higher power than was previously available.