I played ff11 for so long and enjoyed it, till I was disappointed in game play by ff14. The old graphics in ff11 and everyone sitting around doing nothing because development team took so long to put out anything new led everyone to move to ff14 in first place. Played ff14 for awhile, then was so disenchanted. You login, and have to craft all the time, making the game so boring. At least in ff11 you could at least buy gil online and play game way you wanted, always fighting with the best gear. It was impossible in ff14, always had to do boring things instead of fighting. The other 2 key points were that they took away ability to search for people to fight with like they had in ff11. In ff11 what addicted everyone to that game to begin with was first time getting out in killing fields in sandoria to kill rabbits, and getting invites to join a bunch of people in valkurm dunes. Everyone loved it, they probably got killed trying to get there, but people wanted to play with you, and you would eventually make it there, it was fun. In ff14 you just sit there and noone cares to invite you to anything at any given point, it was boring fast. FF11 key element was joining up in groups so people could play with you, then buying gil , getting some good gear, to continue fighting well with your group so you weren't a downer to your group having undergeared player. Lastly the disenchantment with ff14 was they never let ff11 players continue into the ff14 world. ff14 should have been an addon worlds to ff11, just with better graphics. The games regardless become boring at some point. As with final fantasy 11, when you hit level 75, you sat around with your thumb up your butt for a week just to do some large event like dynamis, lagged all over the place because there was just to many people in the party to be able to play your character properly, especially with lag from foreign servers, they had no north america servers, so you can imagine the latency.
All in all, they should have continued on with ff11, they had good system for inviting people to party, an auction house to buy everything you needed,(even if you bought your gil, cause let's face it who wants to sit there and craft over fighting anyways), ff14 should have been an addon to ff11 with better graphics, killing their way to invite people to groups and auction house, was what made game flop. People did not want to run around for years crafting , they wanted to login with their couple hours, get invited to a party , and enjoy fighting. It was as simple as that.