Ah, FFXI. I feel like sharing my experience.
4-5 years ago when I played this first, I had fun primarily because it's an FF game I haven't played, the gameplay reminded me of FFXII which I adored and, most importantly, I had a great community that brought me in (The good old FFRadio crew, R.I.P. Tebian). However, even then it was very unfriendly to beginners.
As far as I could tell (and I started in San'Doria) the game was clearly designed in the beginning that you should grind in one area, proceed to the next and so on. From what I saw (and from what people themselves told me) the EXP was really slow but there would always be people naturally progressing the game in each area. When I joined, these starting areas (I'm talking about the forest, the huge meadow part and the desert after it) were pretty much empty. Instead people mostly grinded in some cave. If not in the cave, then it was some dungeon below San'Doria (if I remember correctly). Even the starting towns themselves weren't full of people, but the main, central town (Juno, was it?) had a lot.
All of this is understandable since even then it was around 10 years old. I actually wanted to explore the game as "vanilla" as possible, not cutting shortcuts, naturally going through the story (which I was VERY interested in) and the main campaign. And I DID have a degree of fun soloing, but walking around so many of these areas was almost like going through Pompeii - glorius, empty areas where you imagine all the activity and buzz that used to be there, but now you're pretty much on your own, just listening to the wind that used to carry the chatter. I think I beat all the San'Doria quests and was well on my way to get a Chocobo but didn't renew the subscription.
I'd like to try again at some point, especially since the game may not be operational in the next few years, but I imagine it's even more barren now, isn't it? Considering people tackle mostly expansion stuff.
