Maybe Wings is healthier, but Eden was further from retail than even Nasomi in terms of the 'getting your first 75' aspect of the game. Really takes the fun out of getting a higher level when all I'm doing is running Crawler's Nest, Garlaige Citadel or lower, or boring ass burn parties that are not even supposed to exist. I went over a week into LFP as a 60+, only getting burn or sub 50 invites before finally giving up. They are boring as fuck, and not at all intended by the era's game mechanics. These are game-breaking exploit mechanics. The only parties I could consistently find were burn parties. Nobody will help unless you pay them or are part of your LS's 'in-group' of people who constantly fraternize in Discord. Not sure when you did your first run to 75, but getting my LBs done I ended up having to dish out close to 200k gil this summer.
I'm speaking anecdotally from my experience on Eden. Now no server has enough of a population to offer anything close to a competent authentic classic experience on a fundamental gameplay level, even before you consider some servers' game-breaking mechanics. TL DR: This has been a slow process, but the increased competition in FFXI 'classic' private servers have basically cannibalized their small population base over the last two years or so. Or, hey, an official FFXI classic server would be awesome- but I highly doubt they would do that with FF MSQ Online doing so well still. Here's hoping somehow populations can consolidate somewhere again, this game really does not work on low pops. The competition for a relatively small population base is a really bad thing in an MMO whose mechanics 100% NEED a good size population to function properly. Never thought I'd say this, but the state of FFXI pservers atm makes me miss the days when Nasomi was the only game in town. In the rare event you get a high level party, if you even have high level gear, your combat skills will all be laughable and you'll spend the entire time missing or being resisted. So, instead of getting to explore this huge, awesome world design, you'll hang out in the same 3-5 zones using exploit parties (burns) or just grinding the same few camps, using the same few skills, with no combat/magic skill ups etc., 'til cap. They both also use unlimited sync which will mean if you want to get to lv75 you will probably be leveling primarily in lower level zones, or, on Eden, completely game breaking low level burn parties. Right now the most populated servers, Eden & Wings, both hover somewhere around 400 players(unique IPs). The result is, many people have just decided to give up on the game for the time being- and so the already divided populations dwindle even further.
Getting level cap is extremely tedious in this environment either you have to be very lucky to have a good LS full of helpful people (or be part of the 'in group' that they are willing to help), or more likely you will probably end up having to pay people hard earned gil just to get shit like Limit Break, AF & various other Missions done. Unfortunately the nature of the mechanics in FFXI classic makes playing in low pop servers a completely inauthentic, unenjoyable experience. I would wait until a server consolidates the majority of the player-base again and can have at least(note:more than this would be better) 700-1k unique IPs playing. It's not a great time to play FFXI private servers in my opinion. Most times though I just started my own parties, which is definitely something you can and should do on Eden and Wings as well.
Zitah), which worked but was painfully slow. Other times we manaburned in higher level areas (e.g. Sometimes I got lucky because I live in EU timezone and when the population was low people invited me due to having no better option but I always felt like I needed to apologize. When I leveled BLM on Nasomi (many years ago) I absolutely suffered due to the custom sync limit. With no better options they have to resort to burn parties. BLM is a great example - everyone wants a BLM when doing sky gods but for xp parties BLM is not a good pick (from a selfish point of view) since they'll blow their MP fast and have to rest so getting another melee DPS usually yields better xp/hr. That being said I agree that some jobs suffer because they're not the first or second picks for high level xp parties. People generally will want to limit their own sync range cause being level 75 doesn't mean much if all your skills are only level 20. My main job is RDM and once I hit level 55 I started getting nonstop invites to imperial standing parties, which makes sense cause a high level party with a RDM and BRD can virtually go forever without any downtime.