To be fair, XIV has become a really good game. It's mostly carried by the writing, but they've also done a ton of work to remove the early jank. It is very feasible to play most of the game like a solo rpg should you desire. I'd say FFXIV is the solo FFXI a lot of people want.
I never really thought of XIV as "bad", just not made for me. I played until he end of the first expansion and while I liked the nostalgia dungeons, the music, and the Story itself was good. The endgame gameplay loop was just the same modern retention-based boring nothingburger I've grown bored of in every modern MMO/Live service title. In a way, content in XIV is really quite fun the first time, it plays like a decent single player experience, but falls apart entirely when you enter "grind mode", for me.
I don't get an ounce of dopamine or enjoyment from grinding glorified cosmetic gear with Item level+5 and Stat Number+1 with zero room for build diversity at all and any outlier or excelling classes with unique mechanics or potential beating into line and robbed of their originality in order to keep them balanced.
I do hate XIV, but mostly cause its popularity and success is no doubt what killed XI. Had 2.0 flopped, XI today may be a very different game, alas, it was a major success and RIP our dev team.