Hmmm... Was FFXI a "better game?" As some have already pointed out, they are different enough to prefer one over the other. It's almost like asking someone to pick their favorite turn-based Final Fantasy game over their favorite action/adventure game; they have different appealing factors. I can't rightly call FFXI a better game, but I will say I enjoyed it more and got more satisfaction out of it.

The reasons I enjoyed it more over XIV can be highlighted in Dzian's post:
Quote Originally Posted by Dzian View Post
so much "yes"
and MicahZerrshia's:
Quote Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia View Post
also "yes"
But I will also not ignore that the game had obvious flaws that XIV tries to actively avoid, which Maeka did point out (even though I'm tempted to pick-apart that post and point-out all the over-exaggerations and fallacies):
Quote Originally Posted by Maeka View Post
some fair points

In my opinion, FFXIV seems to go out of its way to avoid doing what FFXI did as much as possible, for better or worse. I get it, a lot of gameplay that worked in that MMO over 10 years ago can not hold-up today. But if you ask me, I think they go overboard in design and gameplay decisions for XIV that not only totally avoid XI's design; they take it to the other end of the spectrum and it becomes a different kind of problem. Extreme horizontal progression becomes extreme vertical progression. Working towards something for months and months to upwards of a year becomes instant gratification. Having to form bonds with players server-side to accomplish your goals becomes seeing everyone in DF/PF as a brief "means to an end" that you can treat however you want because you'll probably never see them again. Added to the fact that like 75% of this game's "content" is designed with the DF in-mind.

I will say that XI is better in a sense that there was a lot of different endgame activities and content you could do to gear-up your character, and most of said content seen player activity for way longer than just a handful of months; which is more than can be said about XIV. Here in XIV it almost feels like new endgame content is only designed to hold interest for a few weeks, and that's even with weekly lockouts. Then by next patch the next new thing to run ad nauseam is introduced that almost effectively snuffs out the need to run the previous thing unless you were late to the party/want glamour from it. So far only PotD and, to a lesser extent, Eureka subverted that FATE fate of being largely dead after a month (That's probably the real reason they held back HoH and Pagos, otherwise Tsukuyomi EX would have been dead-on-arrival). The other things that don't die after just a month probably have lockouts on them where people could run it once, get what they want, and not touch it until next Tuesday.

So really, you have one that had a significant barrier of entry(IMO) that feels very rewarding versus the other that is incredibly accessible but ultimately shallow. Yet for some reason the middle-ground is largely untouched.