New To FFXIV Realm RebornFollow

Hello all! Nice to meet you. I didn't see an introduction area to post, so thought I would do so here in general discussion.
A little background information about me....

I have never played FFXIV yet. When I first heard about it, I was excited to try it, until I read the initial player reports and reviews. However, I have recently learned a Realm Reborn may be worth trying out on my shiny new PS4.

Back about a year after FFXI was released I created an account and played for about 4 years or so, on the PS2 at first and later an XBox 360. My character name was Thaddeus a Tarutaru from Windurst on the Shiva server.
I leveled BLM, PLD, BRD, NIN, BST, and RNG to 75. I quit the game before the level cap raise to 99. I also had a few capped out crafts, fishing, leather, cooking, and an avid gardnener.

Since then, I haven't played any mmo's, just a random game here and there, but mostly I have taken a break from gaming. I feel the time has come to return to this hobby for awhile :)
A few things have changed since my gaming hiatus, as in, I now have a family to take care of and other life, family duties aside from gaming. One of my biggest issues with mmo type games is the level of commitment sometimes required for the end game raids and content. I know this is something that cannot entirely be escaped but compared to WoW or FFXI, how much time a week does it require to have a solid avatar in FFXIV?
For example, in FFXI, it felt like a 2nd job. Sometimes I would spend hours, sometimes 40+ a week playing just this one game, but I was involved with a highly active endgame LS, and gil had to be made lol. Is it true that XIV is more "Casual" friendly?
I plan on making an account at beginning of October and buy a 2 month pass for starters.
Can I choose my own server or will one automatically be assigned? What classes/jobs/crafts are highest in demand and what is considered a lol-job, if there is such a thing? I like to be part of a group that is active together and to play in the roles I am most needed, so some advice would be greatly appreciated ;) Thanks all for viewing! Greetz

The more serious you want the endgame to be, the more commitment is required of you. The commitment is not of time per se, but consistency. If you can set time to play for a few hours every, say, Tuesday evening, and then some random hours during the week, I don't see you having problems joining a serious endgame FC. It's nothing like FFXI as far as time commitment is concerned. Depending on what you want to do, it is possible to just take it easy without playing on the cutting edge of raid content. Gil is not nearly as important in this game, it is mostly for vanity purposes (of which there's quite a bit).

To be honest, I would enjoy the ride, it's well done. The midgame dungeons are much better than in WoW for example. Endgame on the other hand... is endgame. No job is loljob as far as performance is concerned. Everyone is on an equal ground, more or less. I think the "rarest" jobs are Monk(Pugilist), Warrior(Marauder) and Scholar/Summoner(Arcanist), so it would make sense there would be slightly more demand for these jobs too.

Edited, Sep 26th 2014 12:15pm by Hyanmen

FFXIV pumps much more content out but the lifecycle is shorter. You are not going to do the same content for 5 years, and so the content is not going to pile up over-time like it did in FFXI. When new (progression) content comes out, old (progression) content is pushed aside. However not in the way that old content immediately becomes useless once new content is introduced, but slowly over-time. SE has made some design choices that give the content a longer lifespan than just three months (the average time between content patches). You can still find it useful to do the contents from the release of the game, for example. But it is also easy to skip them and just do the new contents. Some people feel that they don't have enough stuff to do. It means that, while there is a constant stream of new things implemented, the old things are not as relevant to the current progression cycle and you can only do so many different things at a time (for progression).

Let's just say the progression content is more vertical this time around, but the overall the content is more horizontal and does not revolve as much around progression. Vanity content is pretty fleshed out, crafting and gathering systems are more comprehensive, and PvP also receives some attention. Other stuff like the Golden Saucer are in the works. If you only care about item level, you may find yourself with little to do.