I had a longer thread typed but phone died and lost it. So I'll address your comparisons and the travel section.

On Travel
This ties into your comparisons a bit, but why? What does having complex movement systems that do nothing but hide loading screens, when you can teleport add to this game. I think it's cool and all but this is an instanced mmo with no actual open world like in the single players(which I'll get to in the next section) you can't walk from Gridania to Uldah without a loading screen despite them being on the same landmass so why would making an airship loading screen be any different, it's nice but just a time waster. If you want airships or ships that do other things outside of move you from city to city or town to town, I'm all for it but no point in that when you can go everywhere in the game with a small gil fee.

On your Comparisons
I don't understand comparing a persistent world to static single player ones. How they function is inherently different. In FFI the game doesn't have entities roaming the world when you aren't there. there is nothing happening to the world once you log off. They can make the way you travese the world, the way quests function the battle system, everything different since they are only creating content for a singular player they aren't restricted by that factor. FFXI doesn't work either. It's a theme park sure but not in the same vein as FFXIV. They don't have similar combat styles like WoW and XIV do. They don't have the same game speed, same gearing system. They are different styles of mmo so systems that may work it don't for us. If you want similar systems you have to look at more contempary examples, like it's main competition WoW or ESO, or GW2, or TERA, etc. Etc. But even then they are all different. Some things inherently don't work. Mythic + for example, people have asked for this content repeatedly but to tailor it for XIV is much more complex. Shit on the devs for the way they make content all you like but when you ask for things you have to look at how they function relative to each other. XIV has to play into it's strengths and change to suit those strengths. XI and XIV aren't similar enough to compare anymore. They can learn from them but direct comparisons like what you did don't work. Especially with that zone argument and chocobo. It's awful. XI is older than XIV it's only natural for it to have more zones. XIV doesn't need chocobo raising outside of racing which is on hold rn. Mounts aren't different enough to warrant such a time waster, and the way you made that section is condensing as hell and not even in a good way, your wow you had to do something to get something doesn't make sense since everything you do nets you something. Most (not all obv.) endeavors are rewarded, do E4S get a 4 seater mount. Run Rathalos EX get a mount. It goes on and on. I don't completely disagree but this thread is bogged down by some pretty weak points tbh