Yeah they are currently advertising XI right in the launcher what with the latest tier of the XI alliance raid being added (albeit it's been out for a while now). I have chatted with a few people who expressed interest or have just started out of curiosity. Lot of people still getting filtered by just installing, setting up account, getting controller to work, figuring out the menus, etc. But there are a handful who make it through.
The biggest thing stopping a lot of people from trying though, in my opinion, is that the free trial for XI is very short (and unavailable if you ever briefly played in the past, no matter how short) and you basically have to commit to a sub long before you have any sort of familiarity with the game. I've talked about this with friends before, I think a neat idea could be having up to like level 50, nation Rank 5, and original+RotZ zones only be free. Hell, maybe even 75 cap if you wanna be really radical. Just impose low gil cap limits, AH limitations, lower craft skillcaps until you sub... etc. Basically taking a page from XIV's free trial.
I dunno, just spitball thoughts I've had for a while based on comments I read on other areas of the net. I'm sure it would get abused some way or another lol.