For this one I would just point to FFXIV (And WoW, and DDO, and many other MMOs), which briefly shows the status icon and name of effect visually on the players/monsters when they happen. This way you can look at the graphics and get basically the same information as looking at the log. It's not inherently better or worse than using the chat log, but it is good for those who prefer looking at the graphics over the text.

Obviously that would be harder to implement in FFXI, though as I suggested, an existing system could be leveraged for that purpose. Visual indicators serve a simple purpose- it's just an alternative to the chat log. The reason I specifically went for the doom counter is because the game most likely doesn't show you the countdowns because it would spam the log too heavily. But using a visual indicator gets around this problem.