I have to wonder how many of the concerns voiced here could simply be solved with time. I definitely sympathize, drawing upon my experience with FFXI. I came in late and leveling up was hard. It took me ages to even get close to the higher levels and getting groups together for all the quests needed just to do the stuff my friends were doing was nigh impossible.
That wasn't my experience with FFXIV roleplaying, though. I came into the RP scene here relatively late and while I did find it hard to see where I fit in at first, I stuck with it and now I can't imagine myself leaving it for the world. You don't need a relic weapon to roleplay, after all. You don't need to have a high level character or the best gear or a lot of gil to have fun roleplaying. You have to have that stuff for high level content and buying a house, sure, but not only is it easy enough to solo (even in 1.0) but so long as they're still adding jobs and classes people are still going to be leveling up all over the place, and level sync is still going to be an option for playing with other people.
And after some time, these differences will fade, and you'll wonder why you even worried about it to begin with, but that won't happen if you're too afraid to stick with it. Honestly, we're not nearly as far along as people think, mostly due to the fact that a lot of us were busy RPing instead of doing primal runs or working on relic weapons. I seriously doubt it'll be as bad as people are making it out to be, and even worse you'll have less people to roleplay with, and fewer opportunities to make friends.
That wasn't my experience with FFXIV roleplaying, though. I came into the RP scene here relatively late and while I did find it hard to see where I fit in at first, I stuck with it and now I can't imagine myself leaving it for the world. You don't need a relic weapon to roleplay, after all. You don't need to have a high level character or the best gear or a lot of gil to have fun roleplaying. You have to have that stuff for high level content and buying a house, sure, but not only is it easy enough to solo (even in 1.0) but so long as they're still adding jobs and classes people are still going to be leveling up all over the place, and level sync is still going to be an option for playing with other people.
And after some time, these differences will fade, and you'll wonder why you even worried about it to begin with, but that won't happen if you're too afraid to stick with it. Honestly, we're not nearly as far along as people think, mostly due to the fact that a lot of us were busy RPing instead of doing primal runs or working on relic weapons. I seriously doubt it'll be as bad as people are making it out to be, and even worse you'll have less people to roleplay with, and fewer opportunities to make friends.