I've plyed my fair share of FF titles and FFXI for a good while, this is what I have to say:

During developement the devs said they were going for similar races to FFXI simply to cater to FFXI players, this was said in an interview a long time ago. Everything else in the game was developed from a different team trying to stray away from FFXI while keeping it familiar so that those who enjoyed FFXI could feel at home when playing FFXIV.

The developement team didn't want to recreate FFXI or make an FFXI-2, which is why they didn't go with the same class/job system as FFXI, nor did they use the same leveling system as FFXI. Too many people from FFXI ended up coming and they had to completely change the way people gained SP. We were supposed to gain SP the same way you gained Weapon Skill Levels in FFXI, the entire game was supposed to be based around Weapon skilling and not simply leveling up a class. You were supposed to create your own type of character who could do what you wanted him to do, not become a simple class and be immediately labeled.

If you think that Airships, Chocobos, Moogles, Eidolons (Summons, or Guardian Forces as refered in FFVIII) are similar to FFXI, well yes they are, but they are also in all FF titles which is just something tied into the franchise.

Also, the developers didn't want to connect both FFXI and FFXIV, they wanted to make them different after the racial similarities, the world is not Vana'diel, it's Hydaelyn, and the continent we are playing on is Eorzea. And currently we can only play in parts of the free lands of Eorzea known as Aldenard. <-- It's all written on the map ingame if you read carefully.

The developers did plan on making an Auction House, Limsa Lomensa, Ul'dah, and Gridania all have a dedicated area for it, it's just not activated yet. Some NPC's make mention of the area being an Auction House at the entrance of the areas dedicated.

The Levequest system was ment to make grinding less boring, allowing you to make your grind into a small quest with rewards. You are supposed to either choose to solo it with fewer rewards to to increase the difficulty and levelink for greater rewards (Party Play). Leve NMs and World NMs were planned from the beginning, just not added in right away hoping for the fatigue system to slow down players so that the inhouse testing could better refine the battles with NMs.

In trying to please the FFXI crowd by making the races similar seems to be the true downfall of this game. That link alone made many players complain that it wasn't FFXI-2 and that they wanted an FFXI-2 so SE is slowly making it into FFXI-2 instead of staying on course and developing on their foundations for their new IP which is what all FF##'s are. They are not sequels unless stated directly keeping the same numbers in the title.

The stamina bar is already gone, which was a main thing alot of FFXI players did not like, I enjoyed it, it added dept to battles, you had to manage your stamina, HP, MP, and TP. It made the game active, more action oriented, which is what alot of people who have been playing MMO's for the last 15 years are looking for. FFXIV was the first one to attempt making a jump towards an action MMO style. Now we can only look forward to TERA and Blade&Soul... Or some crap ass F2P Korean garbage floating around the net with low budget. Some people want to sit down and play some games, we're not watching TV, we're not listening to the radio, we're here to play games, when you are playing a board game with someone you don't stray away to do homework or fade out to do something else, you fucking play the game. Saying that auto-attac is a good thing because you could do other stuff is terrible, it means the game was actually engaging enough to deserve your full attention and to some people, that makes for a REALLY BORING GAME if it's all we have to do.

Anyways, after my wall of text I feel like FFXI players who want this to be closer to FFXI are actually doing more damage to the game than those who are enjoying what it is or was.

To those who think FFXIV feels like it could be an expansion to FFXI, read the lore, read the way the world began:they are different. FF games used to be all about that.

I was excited to play a new game that was different from FFXI, that was my high point, now seeing that alot of FFXI players actually are pushing this game into being an FFXI-2, it's slowly making me fear the future.

If you want to play FFXI, then go play FFXI and hope that one day they do actually make an FFXI-2 for you. for the rest of us their's FFXIV.