There's several posts on this already, and unfortunately your thread will likely get deleted due to duplication, but in the meantime:

There's no hatred for the PS2 users. There's just never been any precedence set for such an occurrence. And a lot of people are just not very understanding.

If you look at the reality, it's a marvel that SE was/is able to squeeze that much out of the PS2 considering the limitations they have to work under. They've done some amazing things. SE in the meantime has done everything in their power to support all users as fairly as they possibly could. But in a this environment, you're only as good as your weakest member. Even the PS2's that CAN support hard disks and FFXI haven't been manufactured since I think 2004. The entire product line was changed to the 'slim' model.

This being their first venture into the MMO field, they probably didn't anticipate FFXI possessing so much staying power. SE as a company was use to rolling out a new game every year or two, and at the time even MMOs weren't ridiculously popular as they are now, no one anticipated that level of success. MMOs at the time typically had a life of about 2-3 years, then they'd release a new one. Not this decade old behemoth based on one of the most loved RPG franchises in history.

But at it's root, FFXI was probably suppose to fade out. And FFXIV was suppose to be the answer to the question "What's Next". And in the tradition of Final Fantasy they started giving us our "God Mode"; where you could level off HNMs and not worry about limitations, you'd be able to get the "Mega Weapons" and "Ultimate Armor" just like any other FF, and go kill stuff easily, for fun. Abyssea = Omega Cave from FF10, or "The World of Ruin" from FF6, Of the last part of FF7 where you could hunt Emerald, Ruby, Ultima, etc.

Is PS2 hindering FFXI?
Are you still having fun?