This game is as hard as you make it out to be. Most people only want to be at the bleeding edge of content & anything else would be a complete waste of time to them.
It's a perspective thing, like anything. What do you consider ffxi? Is it the content that has been released in the last year, or is it the content that has been released since 2002? Most people aren't willing to do something that won't benefit their character in some way, which is around 90% of the content in the game. Once you get past that thinking the game opens up into:
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If you play for loot, then yes, the game has gotten much easier.
If you play to do quests/missions, game has also gotten easier.
If you play to trigger that effect in the brain you got the first year of playtime, now that's a little bit more tricky.
Only about 5 events currently in game that most people will consider doing, however, if you can find a group of open minded people who play ffxi for fun(Fun is defined differently for each person; Drops, Gil, Killing a hard boss that took X-tries, etc.)
If a challenge is what you're looking for, there's an unbelievable treasure trove of 75 content in this game. Level sync your group down to 75, then give AV/PW a try. Gather up a group of 4 friends and try to kill a sky god. Honey Wines are only 150k, lvl sync down to 75 & try to kill faf with 6 people. Challenges are very much still there. Absolutely no reason to be the person who says "I only do 99 cap things, and I only play to get stuff done, because in this game fighting X is different than fighting Y, when in reality it isn't, but I only like playing in the gear treadmill."