aaaah gustaberg welcomes you to the game when you begin from Bastok city. It is a very soothing melody, even I began in another city and loved to go there leveling my new jobs, because of the music and the sights.
FFXI just got old, the fighting system is just old. Back in the day there wasn't a lot of mmo's to choose. I played it for a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery very long time from first expansion till last though never finished it.
The game requires a part of your life and soul to be able to play endgame. And probably young FF14 players are reticent to play a game that plays waaaay slower than 14s and requires a huge amount of time only to go to A to B. To level crafting or fishing skills required a huge amount of time as well. There was a loooot of grinding in many ways. I played a bit last year and now you can level alone with npcs helping you (carrying you i'd say) But you loose the feeling we had back in the day cooperating with your party members to understand how the game works, how to level up together etcetc, but it's understandable, though there's still a good amount of people playing retail, those won't be around for level up jobs, since they did that already many many years ago. So basically now, untill you reach max level and gear yourself, you are basically alone in an mmo world. The Story is great though.
there's oldschool mmo players that prefers this kind of game play and dislike the new kind of mmo gameplay like 14s and viceversa, that's why is hard to find the player that plays/played both (i'm 1 of them)