Maradon summed it up nicely. I don't think it's possible to make an MMORPG that doesn't have time sink and experience grind elements TO it, but the difference between Everquest and FFXI is that the time sinks can actually be quite entertaining, and they aren't utterly ridiculous (as in, no literally waiting weeks and weeks for a particular spawn).

Also, the classes are BALANCED. Hear that? They're balanced. That's like a balanced budget in EQ...soooooo elusive.

From day one in EQ, a lot of things feel like a "chore." The quests were moronically boring, and largely not worth doing unless the developers made a mistake and the reward was actually decent. Whenever I had to do a quest in Everquest, I literally groaned...as if someone had told me to clean the bathroom.

In Final Fantasy, the quests have CUTSCENES. There's real, honest-to-goodness story behind them, and they are (for the most part) entertaining. In Final Fantasy, the quests and missions are usually worth doing just because they're fun to do, and to watch the impact it has on the story. The rewards are more like an added bonus...and, oh yeah, the developers don't seem to have a sadistic desire to ensure that you never actually gain some sort of PROFIT from quests.

In EQ, even hunting started to become a necessary evil after those few fast starting levels flew by, and the big "slow-down" came on. That rarely happens in FF.

Oh, and there's actually a STORY. Well, I mean a story that 99% of the players DON'T ignore (as they do in EQ) because it's contrived and uninteresting. The world constantly changes, the economy has several "self-balancing" properties that keep inflation and market floods in check, but most importantly...the game isn't a race. Here that? No Paludal Caverns. There's no massive hurl for experience.

The game isn't entirely about experience, and that's all that matters in EQ. It's all that matters in EQ because as far as questing and tradeskills were concerned, it was the only thing half worth doing. Sorry, Sony, but after the first two weeks of "NeverSleep," you truly become "work" and not "play."