There was a dedicated hate mob of early XIV players that wanted XI to die because they saw us not moving to their game as the reason it originally flopped and feared about ARR going the same way. However that was a long time ago now, most current XIV players are from WoW and never played XI at all.

XIV is a conduit for new players and relevance in 2023 so it's counter productive to hate it too much, I don't like XIV as a game since it's antithesis of what I like in an mmorpg but it's silly to not see the folly of alienating the XIV community.

The XIV races being designed on the XI races ended up being an asset, just not in the way they originally intended.

Plus both games are financially merged now, so XIV players don't see it as a competitor and indeed many see it as the answer to 14's casual nature.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...or-a-follow-up