I had to leave my raid group after we beat P8S. It was run by Ina who used to post here. I had to leave cause my job hours did not mesh well with static hours.
It was a shame, because while we certainly were not week 1 clearing, we were getting it done eventually. Was a little bit irritating though, Ina had gotten into some Ultimate statics during patch lull in late Stormblood / early SHB, so he was showing up to lead having already week 1 cleared, and I could tell our lack of progress was wearing on him a bit. We became a charity static, it sort of felt like. Especially when he started giving up raid days to either give himself a break or to do more Ultimate prog. Real issue there is that even with me or anyone willing to step up to do calls or lead, nobody in the static wanted anyone but Ina to do it, so we just put all prog on hold until we could get Ina again.
But since I was falling out of love with XIV anyway, along with having less time to play in general, it hasn't driven me up the wall or anything.
This is the first expansion for XIV where I wasn't playing the game a crazy high amount across 2 to 3 servers/characters.
In past expansions I had done multiple raid statics, as well as raiding on alts in PUGs super late at night. That time goes to FFXI now and for the past few years here.
It's kind of the funny the difference between XI and XIV for me over the years.
When I got into FFXI I loved it immediately, even with its brutal difficulty. I only stopped because I lost my friend groups and LSes.
I picked up XIV cause of friends from this site, and it took me a while to like it, but once I finally did I was deep dicking it from sun up til sun down. But it has declined in quality in every way I find valuable, so now I'm seriously considering quitting it forever without looking back, something I never considered for XI.