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Oh boy, here we go.... in no particular order
Rappelz, WoW, Runescape, GW2, Black Desert, Blade and Soul, ArcheAge, Dragon Nest, Aura Kingdom, Tree of Savior, FF11, Gloria Victus, ESO, Rift, LotRO, EVE.
These are just the ones I remember, and most of them I didn't play for very long.
I love FF14 because I love the Final Fantasy theme, which is also why FF11 is one of my top favorites as well. I also enjoy the community. I've made a lot of good friends playing this game.
I played Ragnarok Online for about 3 years during college and maybe 2 years after college with a bunch of friends I had made during my tenure there. It wasn't done with the official servers and mostly on various private ones. After that, I went on to play Guild Wars 2 when it was released for about a year or so off and on.
Waaaaay before private RO servers though, I played vanilla Guild Wars before I even graduated high school.
XIV though is probably the longest running MMO I've ever played with going into 5 years now or better.
EverQuest
Dark Age of Camelot
Asheron's Call
EverQuest II
World of Warcraft
Star Wars Galaxies
Vanguard
City of Heroes/Villains
Champions Online
Star Trek Online
FFXIV
and one or two I'm probably forgetting
Most of those games don't let you play more than one class. So I had an army of alts. Although even here you can only play 3 crafting classes since they limited specialists. Games like SWG and EQII have far superior crafting systems, too, because they weren't as heavily reliant on RNG as this game is. Most games don't have something like the MSQ where everyone follows the same base story and must group up to pass certain points. So there was definitely more of a separation between solo, group, and raid playstyles. This game is far more accessible than many MMO predecessors. I don't find that a bad thing, having come from hardcore raiding in EQ where raiding was basically your life. I am much happier to partake of what I want to partake of and ignore what I wish to ignore, but still be able to stay current enough to tackle new content and not fall behind.
Started with FFXI and played that game for years. I've played a bit of WoW, Secret World, Wakfu, TERA, Age of Conan and BDO, but none ever grabbed me like FFXI until FFXIV (ARR) came along.
With XI as my first mmo, I took it as a given that an MMO should have a great story, but apparently I was way off base because most MMO stories suck! FFXIV is the only MMO that's had the visual design, music and especially writing that I've been missing since quitting FFXI.
Hmm. Runescape, City of Heroes, touched in a number of random MMOs I barely remember, FFXI (Which I still want to finish the story in), FFXIV obviously...AQWorlds, I suppose?
I've never been big on the grindfest idea of games, so I can't say that much in regards to FFXIV. It's certainly my favorite of the current MMOs I've touched, mostly because of the story and general fun, but I'll be honest, I'd hop right back into City of Heroes given half the chance.
started with ff11
switched to 14 1.0.
a bit wow (never made it past lv43)
a bit aion
rift
guild wars 2
a bit tera (imo the best non-SE mmo)
stayed at ff14 cause
- it's final fantasy
- controls are great
- graphics are good
- gameplay is engaging
- i can still enjoy it even though my play time is much lower now than it used to be
yeah knew I missed quite a few lol I tend to atleast try out most MMO that seem interesting
Some I missed that were mentioned.
Rift
Star Trek Online
Eden Eternal
FlyFF
Some that came to mind later
Shaiya
Dynasty Warriors Online
Wildstar
Defiance
Rose Online
Darkspore (not sure if you count this as mmo but it was online only and had character development though it was a collection of characters and not ones you built from scratch if I remember right)
Front Mission Online
Definitely still more on this list XD
I have played a little of quite a few, lots of small browser MMOs that I won't mention, and there are some I do not remember.
Eden Eternal
Grand Fantasia (probably my first MMO)
Aura Kingdom (did make it to lv50)
Dragon Nest
Tera
Digimon Masters Online
And of course FFXIV
These are all I can remember and other MMOs I never made it to endgame. FFXIV is probably the easiest MMO to make it to endgame and another I thing I like about it is the wide variety of mounts you can collect without spending real money.
Primary ones I put anything remotely approaching considerable time into, and roughly in the order I played them:
EverQuest (started when Ruins of Kunark was the only expansion)
Final Fantasy XI (Rise of the Zilart)
World of WarCraft (Vanilla)
Eve Online (Don't even know)
Star Wars: The Old Republic (Launch)
Star Trek Online (Beta and for some stupid reason I bought the Lifetime sub... *facepalm*)
Final Fantasy XIV (1.0 from Beta until the servers went down, 2.0 "Alpha" through today)
I've dabbled in countless others for a couple hours or so such as:
That Conan one (ermagerd you guys, nipples! That's a selling point right? Meh...)
Elder Scrolls Online (Candidate for most likely to go back to if I ever actually quit FFXIV)
EverQuest 2 (They gave my Wood elf character's home of Kelethin to the fae... pretty much ragequit over that alone)
Tera, Aion, GW2 were all kinda on the same level of my "Meh" scale
Runscape...
Why am I even listing all of these?
What's kept me hooked to FFXIV is probably a mix of the music, visual aesthetic, being able to play every class/job on a single character, and probably an overall sense of nostalgia in it being one of the last vestiges of a primary Final Fantasy title that's rooted in its more classic fantasy/steam-punk roots vs the more science-fantasy route the series took from 7 onward (for the most part). All of those combine into a unique experience that no other MMORPG seems to nail for my personal tastes. A 6 month sub that comes out to roughly $8/mo doesn't hurt either when you look at the MMOs that have hung on to the subscription model. ;p
I agree with most people's complaints about the repetitive patch pattern, but I still enjoy the MSQ content and such. I just never expect it to last me the full 3+ months between major patches, and embrace the downtime as a chance to catch up on the single player games that tend to get backed up in my collection because of all the grinding I do in FFXIV. I've never been one to try to dive into an MMORPG as my soul game for years straight.
Before ffxiv, I was a long time mabinogi player, stuck around for 8 years!
Aside from that, I've played:
wakfu
secondlife
maplestory