What is FFXIV lacking?

[Nero]

After watching that video, and seeing all the little things that made FFXI feel like a living breathing world, FFXIV just isn't up to par now, all I see in FFXIV copy and pasted scenery and camps, It feels dead, especially with barely anyone playing anymore on my server. I log in and nothing is moving, everything and everyone is just standing there, kinda dead looking. Meh I'm getting to the point where I don't even wanna log in anymore, nothing to do, there's no point in even exploring, all the caves look the same, and everything is just bleh -_-

Copy Paste?.. Did you ever play any MMO? Or even Offline Games? Scenery is ALWAYS copy-pasted... in FFXI its way more than it is in FFXIV.. So whats your point?

[Seif]

Xi has a lot more depth and story to the areas. XIV has just generic forest and 3 generic plains in different shades. In my view XI is just a lot more beautiful game than XIV not graphically but visually.

[Dreamer]

I think the biggest thing contributing to the lack of atmosphere is that the world simply doesn't feel finished. There's massive lack of points of interest, and even those that are there are just...props. Like those 2-d scenery backdrops used in B-movies. Go to any of the hamlets. They all have about 6-8 NPCs with small snippets of dialogue and NOTHING else. Plenty of them mention goods that that town makes, but I've yet to find a single store at any of them. A few buildings, but none of them can be entered. Docks that serve no purpose. Not a sub-quest in sight.

You see this in other places as well. I've did a little bit of exploring, and for the most part, there's simply nothing to really explore in the game. What little can be found is simply placeholders for future stuff - NPCs guarding areas you can't access yet and similar.

People complain about this and that about the game, but the real problem is that it was released WAY before it was ready, and SE was arrogant enough to think that the media would simply give them a pass on selling customers an unfinished game. So now, they're trying to play catchup while at the same time doing a 180 in terms of PR so that they can try to regain customer confidence after their blunder.

[C56]

Copy Paste?.. Did you ever play any MMO? Or even Offline Games? Scenery is ALWAYS copy-pasted... in FFXI its way more than it is in FFXIV.. So whats your point?

There is an acceptable level of copy and pasting, but FFXIV takes it to an extreme, as shown in the videos below. Honestly, FFXI has more detail and more verity so the copy and pasted stuff isn't as noticeable, FFXIV just uses the same patches of terrain over and over and doesn't use much variety so it's very noticeable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La9nLBfH44c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OODPo9fzk0Q

There using a much better engine to design FFXIV, so I would hope they could provide a better environment to play in, not the crap I just showed -_-