"Picking attacks from a menu = no thx."
FFXI is different to other FF games, its not turn based, the game plays just like any other massively multiplayer online role playing game.
I am all for pay to play in MMORPG games, I played the legend of mir for a year and realized why paying is such a good idea. In an mmorpg the players are the key, alot of the enemies are very difficult to kill and impossible to solo, so you need friendly players to group with, all the players are in the game to play because they have payed. If the game was free it would be full of people who simply made a character to go around abuseing and pk'ing other people.
Also mmorpgs are huge aconstantly expanding games, it costs the company who made the game alot of money to keep these servers running and that money has to come from somewhere.