Just played Final Fantasy XI

[Niqote]

Part of the reason is because in XI your hard won items were valuable for long periods of time.
In XIV almost everything is worthless if given a few months.

You were also forced to help each other in XI if you wanted to get anything completed, this fostered a good community.
In XIV you just sign up and never see the people again. Its super convenient and great for the lack of time we all seem to have these days, but it also means you need to put in real effort to find a piece of community.

XI had a lot of annoying, inconvenient things. But you got through them together and you appreciated the hard work that helpers gave because old content was not a face roll for the veterans (sometimes simple 1% RNG locked you out; looking at you Carbuncle's Ruby).

In XIV when I want to help people do things I am either an unsynched demi-goddess (most of the time), or a teacher willing to sit with the group for hours letting them gain the victory themselves (this is usually reserved for my small community of friends, as they would do so for me.)


Do you want to LFG for 2 hours to LvL for 30mins? Or do you want to Throw yourselves into a guaranteed roulette and come out rewarded instantly?

These are two very different situations and a real sign of the times. /pleasant nostalgia without rose tints

Edit:
Like a few here, I'm a 1.0 player, I've actually never unsubbed. I have taken breaks and tried other MMOs. However all these MMOs are just lacking a lot of things that XIV has, even BDO with its character creation hype proved to be really lacking for variety in the character creation department (basically you can chose 1 of 30 different flavours of the same model).

I can with confidence say that XIV is one of, if not the very best MMO out, flaws and all.