Upgraded texture pack?

[Atomic_Skull]

I'd be concerned about heavy use of high resolution textures slowing the game down too much, since it doesn't use your video card at all and does everything on the CPU

It doesn't do everything on the CPU, it just only uses DirectX 8 functions. If it was software rendering then it wouldn't need T&L, wouldn't use DTX1 texture compression, and it wouldn't use Shader Model 1.0 (disable any of those things and FFXI will not run) In fact it would not need a 3D card at all and could run on an old S3 VGA card.

All nonsense. they're basically the same, how can they have less "character" than before? the only substantial difference is the Roegadyn do not have tails. If anything they have more character simply because the models are much more well done, all body features look more polished in general.

No they are not the same, they do NOT have as much character as the originals. Mithras are CAT people, with black cat noses and feline markings and facial features that are reminiscent of a cat. Miqo'te are merely human women with cat ears and tails. Mithras are depicted as fierce huntresses in both the game backstory and in their animations. Miqo'te's appearance and animations are annoying moeblob bullshit.

I've said it many times but the races in FFXI have vastly more character than FFXIV, all FFXIV races are human races with bits stuck on. FFXI races try to stay in character and are actually different from each other, I've played both games and although FFXIV is pretty I still prefer the how FFXI looks.

This.