"Why should I play?" - Your chance to give these boards a positive spin.

[Xatsh]

This would depend on my friend.

If they where a Mainstream fan, one who thought wow was the best mmo and the shining example of what a mmo should be I would tell them to stay as far away as possible from FFXIV. I would actully suggest them to try Rift because they would probably really enjoy it.

If they where a FFXI fan I would make these points.

1) The graphics and character animations are unmatched in the mmo world
2) The story is a typical ff storyline
3) You have 1 character and 1 identity. You can do everything at once.
4) The game has a focus on group play (Groups have an advantage over soloing)
5) Although the game is horribly lacking content look at FFXI's past, if they follow in FFXI's footsteps in a year or 2 there will be more content then we will be able to handle.

Atm I cannot see suggesting this to anyone besides a FFXI fan, because chances are they will quit pretty fast in its current condition.

[Selamis]

1) The graphics and character animations are unmatched in the mmo world

The only problem with this, is because of such high system requirements, it turns away a lot of potential players. I have a few friends that wanted to play it, either in open beta or retail and tried to get it running on their pc's and couldn't even get past the server lobby because as soon as the game tried to load it would just freeze up. Everything is beautiful, I just wish they could figure out a way to make it more accessible to more people before PS3. There's no real point in having such detail if your pc can't even run the game without you dropping a decent amount of cash into a video card/ram/processor. The rest of your assessment though is pretty spot on.