If I could interview Yoshida.

[Jennestia]

XI players really have selective memory

Nah, it's more like people jaded from FFXI thinks everything about it was crap, especially those that got hit with Salvage Bans.

Negatives - extremely long cool downs (even if you failed a BC usually had to wait for 2h to reset),

That's why you didn't use strategies that required spamming x 2hrs -- I went through CoP three times in 2004-2006 and never relied on an Astral Flow or Chainspell strategy thus if we failed we didn't have "long cool downs."

Players now do not have patience for doing stuff for hours upon hours

Agreed -- that's why in almost every new MMO people are complaining about content quality because no one wants to do things that take a long time.

I wonder if consumers of ffvii complained as much when ffviii was fairly different experience...

I don't think the difference has set in yet for some ppl.

Quite behind the power curve

No it's mostly MMORPG players that are like that, VIII was a new game the only thing people complained about at the time was leveling was detrimental after going through VII where leveling was the most beneficial lol.

Down the line when kids thought "emo" was an insult or anyone who is psychologically tortured was "emo" they considered the bad thing about VIII was the "emo" game lead.