I won't play this game if it becomes anything like the timesink FF11 was.

You give two pretty extreme options to pick from, there's really no middle ground.

~EXP requirements: I feel leveling is just about the right pace. I don't think it should take 3 months to level one class, considering the Armory system advocates swapping on the fly in dungeons as they're currently set up. (not BC fights such as Ifrit) Gathering and crafting have also had adjustments to make them level up faster.

~More difficult enemies (Party focuses on a single target instead of 4): There still needs to be a combination of both. I don't want to go back to taking 5 minutes to kill a crab in an xp group.

As far as dungeons go, I don't care for the speed run mechanics much because you tend to ignore mobs most of the time. Cutter's Cry did a good job of making trash pulls relevant to proceed through the dungeon (and get chests to go towards the speed run), and more dungeons need to be this way. (if they plan on staying with this mechanic) Aurum Vale, you still skip several of the mobs.

I know people don't like comparisons to WoW around here, but before WotLK expansion and before several nerfs, their dungeons were challenging. Trash groups were mandatory clears because they won't reset until they or you die, and some of them were actually as challenging as some of the bosses themselves. Boss fights were interesting and dynamic, but predictable after a while. (even more so with DBM) I think SE needs to think of a different way besides blasting through a dungeon at full speed, while stacking classes to be efficient, to approach their dungeon design.

Also, to touch on the subject about group efficiency, another thing WoW did well before they homogenized everything was class diversity. There was an actual NEED to bring certain classes based on their abilities to make sure your group had the best synergy. Right now, this is only best conveyed through Combos, which have little effectiveness due to many of the debuff effects being underwhelming, and because people only use 3 classes during dungeon runs. I know it's possible to do a speed run with one of each job, but people are by default going to pick the easiest way to do things. WoW didn't have the flexibility of changing classes on the fly; you had to have a totally separate character leveled up and geared up to do the content you were tackling. There needs to be some incentive to play the class you WANT to play.

~EXP penalty for Death: God no

~Level capped instances (If you want to do content at a lower level you can't blam through it with a 50): I wouldn't mind this too much. I actually liked doing the CoP missions before they nerfed the hell out of them. I just think they need to put in a system to automatically scale your equipment down to the level cap because I hated keeping a lot of different sets of low level gear. God knows I have inventory issues now as it is.

~Return to the basic job/subjob system and Iconic names: Unnecessary. I like what they've done with the armory system so far. My only gripe is how irrelevant classes are once you're at max level and doing group related content. The only one that still has some use is THM.

~More Job utility outside of combat (Whm teles, Blm Warp II, Thf treasure Hunter, ect): Unneeded unless they get rid of the teleport/return system. And TH was pretty much for combat so not sure why that got lumped in there.

~Auction Houses and centralized markets which can be access from a primary city (We don't quite have a Jueno but we will soon I imagine): The wards have evolved a lot and I don't know if I feel a true AH is necessary now. I can only hope some of the current issues will be resolved in 2.0. They're doing some good patchwork in 1.22 with being able to access all wards in every city. They just need to make some UI changes to show more than 20 results so that you can find the HQ items when the NQ items flood them out of the first page. There's probably some other changes I can't think of at the moment that'll make it better as well.

In closing, no, this game doesn't need to revert back to FF11. People that think this way are just nostalgic. While I myself liked many things about FF11, there are many things I didn't like about it too. The plot of this game and its mechanics are what need to make this game stand apart from FF11.