I have been solo upgrading these past few days after returning. Now, I'm not a raider, not even a party player. I'm also terrible at making friends so I'm alone. Before, I just did whatever I found doable solo, or easy enough that my derps in a group won't cost them the run. Now I'm just going full solo to entertain myself for an hour or so every off day. I also love trying new classes so that's part of my time share. Anyway, that's me in this game in a nutshell and may be the reason why I think the way I think about this.
Also https://bnstree.com/character/na/Zoroki
I burst for around 1.1 mill and can maintain 700-800k on my main. Before, I was on the 300-500k group, so I consider this an upgrade. And this is not by just holding rmb on simple mode. This is by having at least an initial rotation and minding things other than my attack number, like checking and using the buffs my weapon and accessories give to my skills (though I'm the first to admit my crit and mystic are still stupid low). Anyway, I consider myself on the lazy side despite this. I also don't consider myself among the "average" of player dps. But I at least am not at fresh-off-story numbers.
I think if I party up and maybe do low tier raids (which I have never done because I'm so much of a lazy and unskilled sob that I myself do not want to hold anybody back), I may get to maybe 1.5 to maybe 2 mill dps. But.... why interest myself in it all? Why struggle to catch up when every 3 weeks we get a new row of upgrades only the highest of whales and those who are fed through a tube can pay or no-life themselves into, and by the time the "rest" (casuals and mid tier bunch) can reach those levels, nobody cares because a year had already passed? I mean, even though I did these recent upgrades, according to the dungeon guide, my character is only at Throne of oblivion and Brood Chamber tier. How old is that already?
Anyway, I feel that by now, it is accepted within the MMO folk that to be relevant you either go full whale (and have at least $10,000 ready for it no kidding), or go into a combination of grind and pay. The old free grind way seems to be on it's way out, and players are not doing enough to put it back into the relevance status it should be to make f2p games actually live up to their name, because free players ceased to be a boon to company profits long ago, now that they are not really required to promote a game, and the game doesn't need their grinding to feed the whales anymore.