Lore, FFXI or FFXIV

[CyrilLucifer]

I do not believe in comparing which is objectively better, but I do feel that some have stronger suits.

The God-meta is completely crazy in XI, and possibly even inconsistent within itself with the introduction of Hades in Seekers of Adoulin. By virtue of having some form of sanity (so far), XIV wins here.

I felt a lot more immersed in the world of XI. This likely comes for two reasons:
1. The style of MMO. XI's expansive world doesn't really lend itself well to modern MMOs.
2. Less hand-holding, so you had to go around talking to NPCs and putting together clues for what/where you're supposed to look for. Of course, this borders on absolutely stupid at times when you have to go somewhere completely on the other side of the world for a side quest with no information on where to go, how to pop a monster, and sometimes even how to kill it.

I am a firm believer that ToAU is one of the best newly introduced lore-intensive expansions in a MMO. A lot of the time with Expansions, as was the problem with Heavensward (and Seekers of Adoulin), an area sounds much more interesting and appealing before you visit it due to the mystery. You fill in the blanks in your head and therefore have an amplified picture of it that the "real deal" almost never matches up to. ToAU broke that rule completely.

I'm also fully convinced that XI's BLU is the most interesting class, lore-wise, in the entire series. There's a cutscene in there where you have to hunt down an insane colleague and, when you find him, he's walking on the roof with his spine shattered and a broken neck turning into a soulflayer. ****'s crazy.

So far, XI has done multiverse better than XIV, despite XIV canonically having one. This isn't really a fair comparison yet, though, because XI had a full expansion, three mini-expansions, and two battle systems (Dynamis, Provenance) detailing some of these multiverses. In XIV we've no elaboration at all because we've barely had the fact that they exist confirmed. I vote "give it time" for this one, it's impossible to make a judgement.
(though honestly, unless we get to face a tainted AU version of ourselves in battle, it's going to be hard to top XI here, and even then it probably won't; if there's one thing XI did extremely well, it was multiverses).

I'm fond of Primals over Avatars in just about every way and I feel like they're more developed on the lore-scale in general. The same goes with magic in XIV. However, I'd put the XI summoning of Fenrir right up there with XIV Bahamut in terms of lore impact, because it led to some incredible side stories and characters.

On the subject of Bahamut. . .
The biggest difference in lore between modern XIV and XI is that the "world changing" event happened very recently, vs 20 years in the past. It's basically just whichever you prefer here, however I will say that the original XIV (not ARR) handled the Calamity much better than WotG did. While WotG was extremely interesting on the meta and multiverse scale (and XIV will be taking cues from it, if Yoshi is to be believed), what it was actually supposed to focus on - the war - was handled miserably.

On the subject of more ancient history, I find the Zilart far more interesting than the Allag, but I do love just about everything on the War of the Magi. Tie.