I will start my saying that I really like this game, and was a LONG TIME player of EQ1.

The biggest difference I notice between the two games is not that its "too easy" to get gear in FFXIV, its that there aren't enough gear-slots. In EQ, the raids and dungeons are SIGNIFICANTLY easier from a skill point-of-view. Even the raid content in the harder expansions was more dependent on your tank having enough AC and HP to take a max swing from Overlord Mata Muram than any sort of skill by the players. But in EQ you had, 2 earrings, 2 rings, 2 wrists, arms, hands, chest, legs, boots, shoulders, belt, neck, face, head, back, primary/secondary weapon, ranged, and later on you had charms and powersources. That's about 21/22 slots of armor, compared to FFXIV's 11/12.

Armor was just as hard if not a little harder to get in EQ, so you really did NOT have a homogenization of gear that you see in FFXIV - you kind of took the gear you could get. If you raided for 3 months, the chances that you would be fully raid geared would be pretty slim, and you would have had to quest or group for your other slots, depending on how much time you wanted to spend and what you wanted to pursue.

I'm currently digging FFXIV right now because I have much less time to play than I did when I was really into EQ, and it allows me to have competitive gear nonetheless. However, after doing nearly 170 FATEs without seeing a single Atma drop, I feel that my chance to get an Atma/Animus/Novus weapon is passed, and I will need to make do with other things in the interim. I'm a little bummed because I did all the Epic 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 (was guild first for some of them!) in EQ, but I'm getting very unlucky and don't really have a good shot at obtaining any of the new relics while they are relevant.