Your first statement is a bit brash, and it turns out I was 100% correct in my assumptions.
Your final statement while correct undermines your reason for your response in the first place.
As not only was I correct, via proven by SE (FFXIV did not surpass FFXI until 1 year after I made my "assumptions") but your rebuttal is grounded by simple FFXIV community mantra's.
Just because FFXIV players "say" FFXIV is comparable to WoW, does not make it so. Even Naoki Yoshida said FFXIV did not, and cannot surpass WoW.
Even in that small blip in time where FFXIV started to grow, and WoW started to "fall" FFXIV still did not overcome WoW, and very shortly after, the vast majority of those WoW players simply returned back to WoW.
In the end yes, Wow, FFXI, and FFXIV all still exist, but you were the one who chose to confront my logic, and by Square-Enix themselves, my logic was proven correct. As it has been time and time again. Not only did I properly deduce that XIV had not surpassed XI yet, but I also predicted that FFXIV would suffer a "login queue" issue during the launch of FFXIV's Endwalkers.
Why people insist on arguing against such pure logic is beyond me. It is even funny how Naoki Yoshida said "there is no way even I as the producer could have predicted the surge of players and the login queue issue" when I as a player easily predicted it roughly 1 year prior to the launch of the game.
I know without a shadow of a doubt, had I had the information Yoshida had, and the information I had, I would have known, and even could have prevented the login queue issue myself.
The issue is Square-Enix developers do not play their games, and have fallen completely out of touch with their fanbase, and it is quite the shame, because I believe both games could easily be making x2, x3, x4 the amount of money, if little bit more care and effort were put into them.
Edit: To add, no I do not consider Yoshida boosting a Lalafell to max level, and rewarding the character with all the best gear, then joining a random PF here and there for savage "playing the game." What I mean is actually playing game. Experiencing its flow, and where its shortcomings and strengths are.