Length MSQ from all the expansions - it is getting insane

[Nebelheim]

There were a few things in FFXI that helped it achieve that.

Many areas had fairly wide spread of enemy level ranges and often also had NMs and HNMs that were much higher level than the highest level normal enemies. Some cases these NMs and HNMs were actually endgame level wandering around low level areas. It's something I feel the Xenoblade Series actually built upon and improved. However additionally at least originally since I'm not sure if they changed it eventually some time later when they boosted the level cap past 75, enemies were given superior stat scaling to players which is why players would be able to easily solo enemies over their level early on but frequently struggled with enemies below their level solo unless they were built well.

FFXI also had those campaign battles in the past where you had skirmishes with beastmen forces trying to take outposts or allied forces trying to reclaim lost outposts and Besieged in Aht Ugran which the battle in the city was cool on it's own but you could also run into the advancing army before it actually got to the city as well.

Also the activities like Dynamis, Limbus, Einherjar, etc felt like actual raid content which Bahamut Coils and Alexander kind of scratched the surface of before they turned raids into trials set 2.

I think ff14 could draw from all those combat things from ff11 especially the overworld and instanced content. We had eureka and bozja but to me they didn't capture the oldschool ff11 style mmo very well. I would love campaign battles in the overworld or besieged where hordes of monsters invaded uldah and the other city states.