[Neomage]

I started playing in 2004 and JUST hit 75 several weeks ago. Granted, I am an exception and hate the level grind, I have seen a lot of players go from 1-75 in under a month. It depends on your speed and time.

As far as endgame, you will NEVER run out of stuff to do. Ever. As of now, nobody has actually killed Absolute Virtue in a fair fight, so even if you do everything else(very, very unlikely, even for the players who get to 75 in under a month), you can still have him kill you over and over.

Aside from that, endgame falls into several general areas:

1) Dynamis: Perhaps the easiest endgame activity to gain access, as you only need level 65 and some gil, it is also one of the most time consuming. Not so much due to difficulty, but due to the horrid droprates, meaning you will be doing the same exact thing over and over and over again. Still, something that can keep you occupied.

2) Assault: This is the second easiest to obtain access to, and is much more fair. You earn set rewards based on how many assaults you do, not a random roll of the dice. You do this, and you will ALWAYS get SOMETHING out of it.

3) Sky: This involves first getting to a certain point in the Zilart missions. First, you have to get rank six in any of the three nations, this opens up a new portal to the Zilart mission line. The national missions themselves continue up to rank 10, but these are somewhat independent. This is possibly the third hardest endgame event to get access to. While, like dynamis, this runs on the random loot system, the droprates are much, much better, and much fairer. Takes place in the zone of Tu'Lia

4) Sea. To get Sea access you much finish most of the Promathia missions. While they can be started at level thirty, you will not normally get access to sea until, at the very earliest 70(Much more likely 75). Unlike other events in FFXI that simply take up a lot of time, the Promathia mission line is HARD. I mean, really, really hard. I know people with over ten jobs at level 75, and still don't have sea access because they can't beat the missions. They keep getting killed and losing over and over again. However, it is not impossible, as many players, myself included, have beaten the mission line.

Unfortunately Sea itself, is like Sky and Dynamis combined. Lots of prepetory work and bad droprates(though not quite as bad as Dynamis). The rewards themselves are not excellent, but are good and definately unique, you will not get anything like them anywhere else. This is also were you will find the Absolute Virtue that I mentioned above.

There is a lot of other stuff like Salvage, Enjarhar, and N. Isle that I have personally had no or little experience on, so I can not comment. But needless to say, there is more then enough stuff to keep you occupied.