1.0 issues was not its over world difficulty. 1.0 issues lay in leveling among its visuals and mechanics. I could solo (as a gladiator) most of the things up to lvl 42. Its issues lay in the bland open world. The lack of things to really do. XP parties... is not a thing to do. It initially came with a you have to log out system. You could only do so many leve's on any given day, XP was so low.... The crafting system was ... terrible. Gathering was .. challenging. The graphics were powerful and yet it was bland and full of tunnels and boxed in areas. The dungeon timers were very short. Most computers cried at it. And that was well before Yoshi and his team took over.

What I did like of 1.0 was exploring it. I ran everywhere when I got a chocobo. EVERYWHERE! On a different chara me and family circumvented the whole so many leve thing by chaining a full party's worth of leves.

I honestly do not see how these 'difficult' things in FFXIV is going to be an issue at all. There is rarely a difficult thing in the game as is.