I quit playing FFXI right before "treasures of aht urgan" came out. I am considering coming back. I was just curious if any major game improvements have come along since then? I have heard of "lvl sync" but have no clue what it is. I really liked this game . The graphics still hold their own imo, and the lore is awesome, I just do not have the hours to find parties and then lvl. Is it possible now to play this game somewhat casually?

Aht Urghan started the casual aspect of XI. Wings of the Goddess expanded on it. You should be fine. Level Synch makes it so that anyone higher than you can synch down to your level to at least 10. Makes it a ton easier to get parties and easier on a party when that party member levels up out of range of the mobs you're exping on.

Wow if you quit before ToAH then i have to say this is almost a completely different game then when you stopped playing. It would take pages to go into how much has changed. The biggest is now lvls 50+ are done in a competely different place in the new areas and the xp flies like it never did before. The merit point system has become very indepth and there is a lot of fun endgame content to fill your time with. Also there is a lot of new sets of armor you can only get by doing things in the ToAU areas. The main activities would be salvage, assault, einherjar, and nyzule isle. These are all fun and einherjar which wasn't liked at first was made more "available" to people that didn't have the time or desire to do it before.

As far and Wings of the goddess goes the main things i the new jobs and a combat system called campaign. Campaign is when you join one of the three nations armies in the past and go fight all the beastmen hordes attacking the cities and outposts. It was used a bunch when if first came out and now I think people just do it to pass the time when waiting for other things to do. It's sort of like besieged which is ToAU but there are more benefits, it happens a ton more often, and you get a lot more experience for it.

As far as storyline missions go ToAU is complete and all the missions are available but they are still introducing content for the WoTG expansion. I would say though that if you have finished CoP when you played before you will have no trouble with these storyline missions. Who knows though maybe some of the missions from WoTG will be a bit more challenging but good storylines just like SE always likes to give us.

^^   awesome info, I am going to jump back into this gam! I miss having my Taru run around Windust.