I don't see how FFXI's world is any less "generic" and "boring" if FFXIV's is described that way.

Both games have humans and elves and cat people. It was just as uncreative when FFXI did it.
FFXI's races were designed and put into the game, lots of concept art etc. FFXIV just copy and pasted the races directly over from FFXI (if they copied the race names you could argue they were trying to carry on the world or something, but they were just being lazy). Also it's really sad how all the races have the exact same animations for casting etc, that's really lazy.

I've said it many times but the races in FFXI have vastly more character than FFXIV, all FFXIV races are human races with bits stuck on. FFXI races try to stay in character and are actually different from each other, I've played both games and although FFXIV is pretty I still prefer the how FFXI looks (which is really sad given how old XI is and they still can't better it).