These are observations I have made on Unicorn server during the last, roughly, 4 months:
Overall, I have observed a huge drop in player knowledge and ability. I do not know if this is contained only on Unicorn, but more and more I am running across RDMs who don't/won't enfeeb, haste or refresh; PLDs who only voke or perform an enmity generating JA when they lose hate, but not as an effort to prevent that from happening; THFs who won't use or simply don't understand SATA and who show up to a pt claiming to not have ranged so they do not have to pull; endgame BLMs who do not have /rdm and refuse to level it favoring /nin instead from their days soloing/duoing to 75 and who are also missing basic spells; the list could go on to include almost every job available to us at this time.
Every single party I've had in the last month has had at least one person with an underleveled subjob, and quite a few have included multiple people in this position. When I say underleveled, I do not mean the ocassional 62PLD/30WAR that we've all run across from time to time, but I am referring to job combos like 58THF/12NIN.
Yesterday's typically full, popular camp locations have quickly become today's wastelands, save for a few FOVers. Valkurm, at this time, has 10 people in zone, no parties; Qufim Island is currently populated with 19 characters, only one party.
Are these observations conveying a general state of the entire game at this time, or is this lackluster, carefree attidude contained to Unicorn only?
What drastic, and even non-drastic, changes have you observed on your server recently that is altering the landscape of what we were accustomed to while playing FFXI?