As a previous FFXI player, I cannot bring myself to go back to that game.

It was truely too time consuming to get things done there.
No matter if it was just waiting for group in town, or gathering enough people to actually do something.
And this is coming from a person that led a low man Dynamis group for years when the level cap was 75 - we still needed a minimum 6 people to do any zone somewhat efficiently and had to gather 13 people for Shadow NMs in glacier and 17 people for animated shield. Not to mention the 3 day downtime between each dynamis runs. Here, going through DF and PF makes it much easier.
Nor was it that "fun" competing for land kings hours per day or farming sky/sea drops vs RMT. And having to work through the tier system of sky/sea/einherjar sometimes takes weeks to get to the top level.
I enjoy the casual pace of FFXIV, but it is not for you, you don't have to stay.

FFXI is still supported for people like you, I'm sure it is a wonderful game that I spent 10 years on, but I just can't bring myself back to it with the latest Seekers expansion.
FFXIV should not be a FFXI clone as it is marketed as a more casual game.