I'll throw in my 2 cents here (First post on these forums, long time lurker)...
I played FFXI for over a year, and WoW for about 2 months.. also tried CoH & Guild Wars during that time too...
IMHO, EQ2 is the best thing going. I wasn't too thrilled by it at launch, played for my free month and went back to FFXI.
I think EQ2, especially after the last combat revamp, has the perfect balance of what I'm looking for. It's challenging, so rewards feel like rewards (unlike WoW), but the challenge isn't can you sit in front of your computer for 18 hours while you put together the perfect group, etc in FFXI.
As for your major reasons:
FFXI:
Pros:
-Community - had the best community of any MMO I've ever played. I actually went back to FFXI after quiting awhile because I missed this
-Equipment - smaller selection than EQ2, but more variety on appearence
-Storyline - Missions had a great storyline (but, the con of that below)
Subclass system/changing jobs - Although it was a major timesink, it did help populate all levels with people to group with it.
Cons:
-Painful time sinks
-very long quests for minimal rewards
-technical ineptitude of network admins
-NO community involvement from Square itself
-basically felt like a second job level 40+
-10% xp loss for death (I actually quit my last time when I lost 20,000 xp in one week)
-You spend 8 hours doing a mission to get a piece of the storyline, which was great - and then you grind for 2-4 weeks on crabs, pugils, spiders, whatever for the next piece. By then, you've forgotten the previous piece
EQ2:
Pros:
-Can log in for an hour and still feel like I accomplished something (even if its a little something - in FFXI I couldn't even get to a fishing hole in an hour most of the time)
-Timesinks are least painful I've seen in an MMO
-Great community involvement via official forums from Sony
-Better variety in gear than FFXI, although appearences could use more variety
-Faster, more engaging combat than FFXI
-It's everQUEST - You can get quite a few levels by just doing quests. It really just hides the grind. But, at least you feel like you are doing something other than sitting in a corner slapping crabs for 8 hours.
Cons:
Community: I know Sony was hoping that DoF was going to boost population, I haven't seen that so far. Seems about the same. They really need to bit the bullet and consolidate some servers. Also, I'm not sure if it's because of the design of the game or not, but not nearly as much conversation goes on in EQ2 as FFXI had.