Mr. Producer simply needs to play FFXI, then we'll have the best of both worlds.
From what I remember reading, he only has experience with WoW.

Do we need FFXIV to become FFXI-2? Not really.
Would it help if FFXIV shared elements that made FFXI so memorable? Definitely.

My near 24,000 hours over 8 years are my testament to how much I value FFXI and it's memories. But if I wanted to play FFXI, I'd simply play FFXI.
I WANT to play FFXIV. I want to play an FFXIV that is better than FFXI.

Those that never played FFXI or gave up on it because of the tremendous time sink will never understand why it's still going strong after 10 years.
But then again, said time sink is what ultimately conflicted with RL and forced me to leave a couple of years ago.

FFXIV is only a few months old, I will patiently wait for it to pick up content and slowly offer greater memories than the ones I had in FFXI. I'm not going anywhere.