You could have more then 8 pets in AoC, a lot more. With FF servers the way they are this can never happen. For those that did play aoc... remember being around a couple lvl 80 necros with all their pets out? lag out even high end PCs. I would much rather have 1 strong pet then 16 little ones, especially when you get multiple necros in the area.

And just because necro was a crappy job in ff5 and mentioned in a few others doesnt make it staple FF material. Doesnt matter if they were in old ones or not, traditional necromancers do NOT fit in FFXIV. The same way RPers roleplaying they were raped do not fit in the world of eorzea(there are ppl who do this). Thats not to say they couldnt make it work, THM have a strong respect for the dead, if anything they would want to destroy undead. So you would have to be a renegade THM to want the dead as slaves.