If you think WoW doesn't eat time, you've never been to Molten Core.
Especially when you're starting it. We (40 of us) spent about 7-8 hours in there, and got through 2 of the 7 or 8 bosses.
If you ignore all the bugs, and the playerbase, levels 1-55 in WoW are really really good. At 55, you run out of quests (which is your main source of xp) that you can do. The only ones you have, are in places no one will take you, because you're not 60 yet. (60 being the level cap)
At least this was my experience playing from release.
Then after 55, you kill monsters, alone (usually) till you get to 60. At 60 you run through instances (dungeons) enough times to make you gouge your eyes out, and still be perfectly fine, because you've done it so many freaking times. And for a lot of people, that's it. That's as far as you'll go (aside from the broken battlegrounds). If you're lucky enough to be in a good enough guild (read: large enough), you get to do Molten Core. Which is basically a normal dungeon that requires 40 people to complete. Scheduling this is pure hell. Not to mention that when we started, (and I'm sure the bugs are still there, many months after I quit), the mobs were too large to fit in the rooms, which resulted in line of sight problems (we could attack the mob, but the mob can't attack us, since he's stuck in the ceiling). GM's saw this, and suspended people for weeks. They weren't trying to exploit this bug (well, some of them were), but they got punished because of Blizzard's screw up.
After trudging through that, we finally get to the boss of Molten Core, Ragnaros. He was hard at first, until we realized it was class distribution. Throw a few more rogues in, and boom, we did it. The hardest fight in the game, the last PvE (Player vs. Environment, dungeons and quests and such, not PvP), encounter in the game, and it was solved by the most popular class. They didn't have to be skilled, or uber geared, just as long as they could attack the spawns, it was fine.
And instead of fixing these bugs, or making the encounters challenging, what do they do? Release another 40 person instance (much to everyone's dismay, since they had previously set the limit smaller, to accomodate smaller guilds) fraught with it's own bugs and problems. And of course, for about the first week, the instance is unplayable since everyone is trying to play it. (Think 3 Stooges Syndrome from The Simpsons)
And then there's the battlegrounds, where people do the PvE oriented quests, and AFK to leech faction gain (to buy better/cheaper items) instead of actually PvP-ing. Battlegrounds were also ridden with bugs. Being unable to pick up the flag, bugging out the NPC guards and summons, etc.
FFXI does take a lot more time out of life, but it's also a better game, with longer lasting value, if you ask me anyway.
And the playerbase on WoW servers is just terrible. All the b.net kiddies who maphacked their way through starcraft online, all the dupers from diablo ii, and whatever cheat was favoured in warcraft 3, and do their best to make other's lives miserable, and make a profit from it. You'll almost never find someone who's willing to help without a ridiculous fee.
FFXI is a much deeper, longer lasting game, but the downside is that it takes time. WoW you'll have fun for the 10-20 days it takes to get to 60 (playtime), and then it'll taper off, and you'll reroll characters, trying to have some fun in vain. And then you'll quit.
That's my experience anyway.
