My original post was not designed to imply that the hardest fights in WoW were somehow easier than the Hardest fights in XI. I was simply pointing out that there is more than one kind of Hard.

FFXI had community vs. community competition just to start most of the fights. Then it had severely overpowered boss skills that had to be diverted or mitigated just to maintain the fight. It also required healers and support to maintain the entire party not just the tank. Damage Dealers had to use the right type of damage at the right time while maintaining a strategic level to enmity. The sacrifice for have such a heavy focus on players ability to maintain there roles or risk the entire party was a lack of multiple Boss mechanics in a single fight. If the boss was moving, you weren't doing it right.

WoW on the other hand very rarely requires players to compete against one another just to start the fight. A group could take substantial losses and continue the fight so long as the tank and main healer survived. By many peoples definition of hard, this makes things a lot easier because it is simply harder to lose. WoW on the other hand implemented a large variety of Boss mechanics that added multiple dimensions to a single fight. Where in FFXI for any single boss every party member only needed to learn a single series of maneuvers, in WoW most bosses require the party to change tactics during the fight. The trade off being, if you Screw up, you can recover.

Both of these games, at there pinnacle, were very hard. The type of hard was simply different. You can enjoy having to learn in depth strategies or you can enjoy having to never make a mistake, but you cannot say that either of these games were easy.

FFXIs community is born out of the grind, however. They did not like things being handed to them. Everything was worked for and Earned. There is a sense, and it's not entirely unjustified, that WoW handed you everything. Nothing in the game require significant effort until endgame.