Hardcore, easy mode and the XI veteran

[Kiote]

Personally, I think the OP is wrong about almost everything. He heavily discredits himself by saying things like xp grinds grants 3-5k per hour, boss fights required no skill, or that the game was released with no content. Almost all of FFXIs content was very challenging. It required a significantly greater amount of team work than any other MMO every made. While it is true that the massive time sinks did not make it hardcore, the level to which players had to fight strategically was impeccable. There are few MMO that even come close when it comes to strategic fighting. People complain that it was slow, but that only stems from the fact that at a faster pace users would not have been able to compensate for mistakes on the fly.

The hardcore aspect behind FFXI was born from grinding but was in no way central to it. The FFXI grind was there to force player to learn all aspects of there jobs and being able to function effectively regardless of the size of their party.
A half decent xp party in XI, since Rise of the Zilart, would have netted a player easily 7k per hour while an good party would grant 10k. A party of skilled players even prior to the aht urghan expansion were able to easily pull 15k+ per hour in a grind. This was because the grind was specifically designed to morph players into a well oiled fighting machine. Every Job had its role and any combination of tank, healer, support and DD would be able to put up those numbers.

When it comes to end game in XI it did seem pretty easy, to me, after the grind. The leveling process specifically taught player the skills needed to perform in an endgame situation. Most players on the other hand could barely manage the first series of End game fights let alone progress later on. Players who half assed the grind or got power leveled to the top never stood a chance against the sheer power of the End Game Bosses. It was only after years of perfecting and documenting strategies that End Game Bosses started to be defeated regularly. In most MMOs you can have significant deficiencies in your party and still manage to defeat any Mob in the game. IN FFXI if one person made a mistake it could bring down a full alliance. Having that level of difficulty from the grind level up made players dedicate themselves to their role so as not to incur the wrath of their linkshells when it came time to step up. In the end SE actually had to reduce the difficulty of some end game fights because only the most skilled players ever stood a chance of taking them down. Vrtra and Pandemonium Warden had to be nerfed because they were so difficult it took Multiple full alliances working in complete cooperation to bring them down for the first time.

As far as content is concerned, on NA release of FFXI, end game was ready and waiting. Rise of the Zilart brought sky which was more than adequate to supply 75% of the player base for something to aspire to for more than four years. To place that on top of the Three City based quest lines, of which the player could do all three, culminating in a fairly epic test of strength with things like Divine Might and Dynamis. Each subsequent expansion continued to offer multiple years of End Game content.

Considering the complete disregard for obvious facts it is only reasonable to asume the OP just does not know what he's talking about. Especially when you consider he is wrong about the simplest aspects of the game like XP/hr, amount of content, and the level of strategy needed to kill end game bosses.

For me, the worst part about FFXI was the downtime and time sinks.

The worst part about FFXIV is the complete lack of any Content that could possibly be lost.