wow you are dedicated! For me I lost interest in this MMO pretty fast because of all the fetch quests which were just waaaaaay too much of the game if you ask me. Another nuisance was the fact that you couldn't progress through certain parts of the game (if I remember correctly) until you completed a dungeon but other people also needed to be interested in doing said dungeon if you were ever going to get through it. I recall sitting waiting for nearly an hour at one of them before getting a full group and I was a healer!
My friends who love this game say that the endgame content is amazing but for me there was just far too much running around delivering this or that only to have to trek all the way back from whence you came only to be told to do it again. I don't remember where it was exactly but there was this massive spiraling tower that they made you walk all the way up to the top in order to talk to someone and this was the guy that gave you the fetch quests! So not only did you have to run around to deliver pizzas, but now you have to spend what felt like an eternity to return to the guy that gave it to you in the first place. Urgh!
When I set my eyes on a grind I always follow through. The base game A Realm Reborn is quite a slog, that's true. It gets better in the expansions. Quests are still a bit fetchy but at least you're not going back and forth between the same three NPCs for 30 minutes. The focus shiftes more towards the story as well which has kept me engaged and forgetting everything about the mediocre tasks the quests make me do.
I'm guessing you played this a while back? Dungeon queues shouldn't be much more than 10-15 minutes for any class now. They have something called roulettes which is basically random dungeon finders. Leveling roulettes pairs you up with anyone doing low level story dungeons and there's quite decent rewards for max level players for doing them. They also get scaled down so the dungeon doesn't become a cakewalk.
sounds as though they made some much-needed improvements. I do remember the dungeons being extremely easy as well. Even though I was a healer I had a chance to throw a rock or two even though it wasn't necessary.
I don't even remember how far I made it into the game, I'm guessing about halfway to max level. I don't do MMO's anymore but i was looking the other day and FF still has quite the userbase.
Oh and answer your question, yes, it was quite some time ago, at least 3 years ago.