I thought the same thing as the OP when I saw that dialogue.

Honestly, this doesn't really feel all that much like FFXI to me. There's obvious FFXI references in the forms of NMs and their drops, but that's just fluff. The core gameplay throughout Eureka doesn't really strike me as much like FFXI at all. Sure, you're killing stuff in an "open world" format, but that's still a bit oxymoronic considering this isn't actually in the open world because it's still a duty/instance. It feels just as much like "FFXI" as Diadem did to me, and I don't think anyone was ever saying Diadem was like FFXI.