That's the thing:
It was never about the gameplay. You had to be there. You had to be playing it. This sense of walking into this massive, unforgiving world that just threw you right into the fray.
It was ruthless in how it treated new players and old players alike. Everywhere was a far run filled with peril. The boat to a place where everything could kill you would randomly spawn Pirates that could crap on you and everyone on the boat.
Wanna know what made it fun? That level 75 White Mage who would sit by the boat and raise everyone because we were ALL a community. Bad players with bad items were shunned and not invited to premiere parties. Guys that busted their hump and farmed for the good stuff got invites all the time.
We respected the guys who would teleport without charging your team. When Gil Sellers came in we banded together and fixed ourselves. How? We began trading between each other. High level Craftsman would trade something for something else. I had maxed out Cooking so I would outfit entire Linkshell Statics With +1 Sushi and they would help me with Armor Quests.
Even before that, when I first started the game and was doing woodworking, this Alchemist would sell me his Arrowheads for whole sale price because he was skilling them up. That's how the game worked.
No game I have ever played had that sense of community. Yes, the game was unnecessarily harsh but we fought through it TOGETHER. There was no PVP because FFXI wasn't that kind of game. You didn't want to fight the other player; you wanted to do everything you could to help them.
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Realo won gold at the Sex Olympics with a BROKEN FRIGGIN NECK.-Voltch