Thing is that people who played XI were expecting XIV to be similar in the sense that, yes, it did take forever to get something to max level. But the false sense of achievement was greater. You felt like you accomplished something, which, in my opinion XIV does not deliver. Same goes for camping that NM because you WANTED to, no one held a gun to any persons head and said that they HAD to have leaping boots or an emp pin. But when you got them you had a sense of accomplishment whether or not you really knew it. Most people would say that they were just glad they were done camping that NM... but really think about it.

Now to all the people who are saying that if you like XI so much go back to it. I say to those people, if you want a casual game go f***ing play WoW or Rift and leave Final Fantasy to what it is. In comparison playing FFVII (I'm using 7 cause everyone seems to think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread...) AVERAGE playtime was 40-50 hours. That being said, do you really think that doing what little quests there are as far as main storyline and leveling 1 class/job to 50 takes 40-50 hours? Maybe, if you don't use anima, read every line of dialog, and have an hour long seizure in there from time to time.

Now, I'm fully aware that that game is single player and certain factors do come into play such as waiting for a party invite, constant server maintenence, and other excuses of the sort. But, the problem is that "Final Fantasy" is stamped on the title screen of this game, which, pulling from the way the games were through 13 iterations with some sequels that shall not be mentioned, is synonymous with hours upon hours of gameplay and story depth. The story may not be the greatest but at least there was one with information holding it all together and throwing the player into the story to make them feel as they are involved. XIV does none of that.

tl,dr Shortened Version. This is Final Fantasy, if you want something casual, go play something else.