This is not a good arguing point. You disregard the fact that FFXI is a 12 year old game now, and that people have moved onto the more WoW-like FFXIV instead. FFXI is in the unique position of having a newer game in the franchise outdating it. Same thing happened to Ragnarok Online, as well as EverQuest.
Despite this fact, people are usually arguing from a point of nostalgia, because FFXI of 2002~2009 offered a much more unique experience that revolved around a battle system that was mostly based on auto attacks. They also had the NM system which was highly competitive. It terms of pure gameplay, FFXI was easy to get into but had a high skill gap when it came to recovering from wipes, as well as exceptionally heavy gear/equipment requirements (before gear syncing) in level capped areas. Outside of that, the game was very easy to play, you waited for 100 TP, spammed WS as DPS. No flank or back attack checks unless you were THF, /THF or BLU. If healing, you throw on what minor debuffs you could, and spammed a simple healing macro. If tank, you stuffed your abilities full of enmity bonus equipment and mashed a macro, or had the THF Trick Attack a large chunk of enmity onto you.
Game was hard to progress if you were virtually friendless or couldn't plan runs (or boss fights) well. Game was also sorely based on how well you could mitigate one-shot and severe attacks (hence why NIN was so good) and/or how efficiently you could recover from wipes. From there it was pick the job of the month/year to do max DPS. There was really no skill outside of that. Game was heavily gear based and your "skill" directly related to how well geared you could get your jobs for both auto attack DPS/Weapon Skills/Healing/Nuking/Tanking. FFXI also had a good deal more events that was based on how many people you could bring to your alliance (Dynamis, Limbus, HNMs, Einherjar, Skirmish). In most of these events, only numbers mattered -- there were no tight DPS checks unless it was a final boss, and even those weren't very tight (unless it was Dynamis Lord or Odin).
The good thing about FFXIV is that, despite what people will complain and cry about, making friends is not enough. You have to intricately learn how your role performs so you can contribute to your party (esp. as DPS). You also have to learn the various patterns of instanced fights so you can effectively dodge telegraphed attacks. There's very little handholding for these fights unless you are rolling with very over geared people. Fights require some semblance of knowledge and [dodging] skill.