Finally managed to get the game to run, got it updated started and once im logged in I can see the other gamers and NPCs for a short period of time then they dissapear entirely, sometimes they flicker back on screen.
I know this is a known issue and I tried the Fix where you input a new value in the direct 3d reg:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Wine > Direct3D
Add a value called "OffscreenRenderingMode" and set it to "fbo"
I also opened winecfg and set pol.exe to run in vista mode. The bottle ffxi is installed in is a XP bottle I dont know if winecfg will overwrite that or not, but since adding these tweaks the game has been made much much more playable.
This did not help at all infact as soon as I double clicked the FFXI icon to run the game it crashed my mac. I may not be entering the details correctly so if someone could show me step by step or a screeny or another solution they found that works?