To each their own, I simply do not think its fair to act as though all of the people thinking of switching, or have decided to switch, are ignoring the fact its from SE and its a MMO. I think everyone is well aware of what FFXIV is, who is making it, and about the game itself. Its just to me, it looks promising, the team in charge of it seem to be doing some of the things we have asked for, part of which is releasing info about things in game without us having to hunt it down, or making things like quests more simple and fun, rather than talking to every NPC in the zone they give till I find the right one. SE also seems to be giving it more support right now than FFXI, when FFXI started it was doing well in my opinion, do not get me wrong it had flaws, but they worked on it hard and fixed what needed it I think, but as time has went on they have done less and less for it. I have no doubt FFXIV will be the same way, they are starting with it now, its going to be decent at start, its real start was a failure, but now its been fixed up a bit, and over time I am sure they will support it less and less, eventually not at all, as is the life of an aging MMO unless treated properly.

FFXI has hit a bad spot, changing producers a few times in a couple years, conflicting design ideas implemented, a player base who uses every exploit the creators give them to beat content earlier than it was meant to, its really brought the game down. No matter what, if FFXI falls right now I will always blame the players for it in a way because we did jump the gun on Delve, destroyed their design idea, and did irreversible damage to the game in how they imagined us doing it. At the same time, SE failed on their delivery, as they created the gapping hole for us to walk through and seize that exploit to win early.

I will not let my FFXI experience effect my purchase of FFXIV except for the Abyssea era, and possible what came somewhat after. The producer that is currently on FFXIV from my understanding is the same one from that era of this game, so the best way to judge it would be by what he did while he was in that seat. To me, that's good, and directs me to buy it, and even if it comes from SE as a company, I love most their games, even if FFXI is a black mark in a way, it means very little to me. Saying that FFXI did bad at times through to the end, is one thing, but I could list off a hundred people who said FFXIII was bad, yet still buy many other SE and FF titles, even if they are of the same genre and brand.

Basically what I am saying I guess is that in my opinion, its Final Fantasy, its a MMO, and its SE, but its a different team and its a single game that went sort of astray, if they had 3 MMOs and all were like FFXI, I would agree, stay off of FFXIV till they can prove its not the same, or stay away in general, but its not really, so I wont act that way myself.