Collectivist gaming design is totally awesome!
Waiting hours to find a party, then grinding single mobs in a brown cave for hours, and then repeating this process for additional hours does not equate to a good time. Unless you play Beastmaster, in which case you will have more fun in a good singleplayer RPG.

Already happened to me a gazillion times. Still, it's not so bad, I'm told it was much worse before - there are additional perks and stuff for new players now.
@melchiz Isn't that the case with any MMO? I don't know, but maybe it's the community in FFXI that makes parties worthwile - I never felt comfortable in more popular MMOs like GW or WoW.
And there's chocobo races! Chocobo races! With chocobos! Racing! :D

There's a system called Fields of Valor now, which gives you training regimes for bonus EXP/gil/stuff and buffs for kills, along with Level Sync for parties for equal EXP bonuses - mobs can drop temporary special items in chests, EXP bands are rechargable, relatively cheaper (I think), Signet is useful because it ups defense...
Google 'ffxi wiki' or go to Allakhazam.com for more info.

I went there but I have no clue what I'm looking for.

I gave FFXI a shot about a year ago and I couldn't find anyone to play with. The few people I did encounter wouldn't talk to me even just to answer a question, and I couldn't get any friends from elsewhere to sign back up. Even the ones who'd reached the endgame had sworn it off. After several hours dying alone in the forest and fighting with the game's mind-blowingly terrible interface and control scheme - not to mention it is very, very difficult just to look at - I threw in the towel.
I'm all for collectivist game design, but if you make a game that requires grouping, you have to give people ways of finding and joining groups, recognizing that you have an international audience which means varying skill levels, barriers to communication, and so forth. If your game is going to be nearly impossible to solo without foreknowledge of the solo game content, you have got to give players something interesting to do while they are looking for help or even just waiting for anyone else at all to enter the area.
Above all there is no excuse for an old MMO to have empty newbie areas. This problem was solved many years ago, and an empty starter city is glaring proof that the designers aren't interested in in MMOs and don't play them.
FFXI should be the #1 game in the world. It had brand recognition coming out its ass, followed one of the most popular games of all time, and even now offers something you cannot get elsewhere on a console apart from that old EverQuest game for the PS2. That their subscriber base is about 1/3 the sales numbers for FF games that came out ten years before tells me they blew it. It's like they have the same runaway feeling of entitlement that has drawn at best 1/1000 of Tolkien and D&D fans to the MMOs based on those worlds.

Regarding the control scheme, there's no sense playing it on a keyboard - gamepad all the way. It's VERY noticeable.
And I had no real problems finding a group - there's a detailed search system with comments and categories, there's an auto translator with the press of a button, there's lots of NPC's that give out useful info, menial quests, etc. when you want to solo. You can always watch and bet on chocobo races, try your luck at synthesis, sell off crystals and stuff in the auction house - there's lots to do alone - but it's fun to help out others lowlevel like you the most, at least to me.
Weird nobody wanted to help you, I got two linkshell invites and plenty of info from players around me. When you actually join a linkshell, people are so helpful and nice it really feels like a community. 3 of them helped me out several times already through the course of the last few days, mostly by partying.
Really, it's not that bad, I'm pleasantly surprised. I expected the same thing like you experienced, but it just didn't happen.
@Weclock: Fields of Valor, Starter Guide. There's more, but I'm short on time now. :/

wow.. reading on some of the changes, it looks like they really have done a huge marketing job in Japan. I remember when I used to play late in the evening and I had a few friends who I played overseas with.

I decided to take another dive into it.

I need help picking a server..

Was this the game where some group of people fought with one boss some 24h and still couldn't kill it. Some people in that group were literally dropping on their keyboards from exhaution.