I was having the exact same issue with the character models not loading and I came across a tip that solved my issue.

Go into device manager, find your graphics adapter, go into it's properties, then to the driver tab and choose update driver. When the software update screen appears choose browse my computer for driver software followed by "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer". On the next screen it displays (in my case at least) 3 models. Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000, Intel(R) HD Graphics Family (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM 1.2) and Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. In order to get this to work I used the HD Graphics Family driver and I was able to run XI.

I hope this helps anyone who is having this issue.

Source:
http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/34...est-friends/2/ from Spidermike