Well interesting news about the upcoming release. http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/topics/ffxiv/ Basicly giving incentives to get people to play both.
I played FFXI from pretty much the day it was released in the U.S. up until about a year and a half ago when my son was born. I just don't have time for games I can't drop at a moment's notice. My wife kept her account because she can't emotionally let her character go yet, but she hasn't played in almost as long. For its part, I really enjoyed it. It was never the best looking, or most innovative game, but I met a lot of really great people. My wife actually ran our Linkshell. We had two members of the LS meet and get married. Several members, including myself and my wife, travelled several hundred miles to attend the wedding. As a gift we bought them the official Windurst ring from the Squeenix store. My wife got into the closed beta for XIV about a month and a half ago, and while availability has been spotty, she has been playing a good deal in the last couple of weeks. Without going into detail (which you can easily find all over the net) FFXIV is really just FFXI re-imagined. It is very very pretty. The questing system is a lot more straightforward and fun (and understandable). My second biggest wish was granted when they added a mini map. So to answer your question, I played FFXI and I'm looking forward to getting my feet wet in XIV, but because life happened I probably won't get as deep into it. For me, it's going to be mostly FPS, TPS and offline RPG's from here on out.
