Some thoughts, Maybe an honest review....not flattering really.

[Cycloptichorn]

-"Handing" an item to an NPC is gimmicky and the appeal wears off after about 5 quests

This is necessary, due to the ability to hand in HQ versions of the item for extra bonuses. Hard to believe you've spent any significant time crafting without figuring this out.

And it's not as if it's that difficult. The NPC says 'oh, you have my stuff?' The window auto-pops open, you right click on the grey box in the window, put in your item and hit the okay button. I don't see what's so time consuming about that, I spam leves some days and it takes no time whatsoever to turn them in...

-Quest text should be grouped with the rewards window

IE, you want to be able to skip it quicker. Please, don't suggest things that ruin the game for those who like the story....

[TrystWildkey]

Hello, White Knight Tryst here.

I have to say, I can see where the OP is coming from and he does make some valid points.

Long post here, but that's because I'm responding to the OP's points, which were many.

Race Choice and different stats: I too have a problem with this. This would work better if you had one character per class, that way you could choose a race with stats that enhanced your chosen class in the way you want. When you can be every class on a single character, stat differences are restricting. For example, I love playing Lalafell, but Lalafell generally have stats that are best for mage classes, and I do not like playing mage classes. So I have to make a choice between looking the way I want or having stats that enhance the classes I like to play. I was a little bit pacified when they said that the stats wouldn't make much difference at level 50, but if that's the case, why keep the racial stat bonuses?

Handing an item to an NPC. I agree that it's gimmicky and that it can be irritating after a while. However, it's a minor point that doesn't bother me too much. If it bothers the OP, I can understand that.

Quests have always been difficult to make interesting. So I can sympathize here as well.

Pirate speak, yeah, it's really hard to read. It does add great flavor to Limsa, and I wouldn't totally give it up, but maybe a little less thoroughly pirate would help.

Quest text grouped with the reward window. I really agree with this. It makes it easier for those players who really don't like to read through all the crap. (if they want to play that way, I have no argument with them) But, for those of us that do like to read the text, I think it would be great to have the entire quest text in the quest box in your journal. That way, if i forgot some point of lore or background, I can go back and read it in its entirety. I think this could be a good feature for both types of players. (Also, it's easier to read text in the bigger quest window than to keep hitting confirm to get more text when conversing directly with the npc.)

The background noises, I have to grin at this one. Yeah, they took a lot of time and care with making the world sound real, but I can understand why that would feel intrusive to some. My advice is to adjust the level of background noise. It helps

Combat being slow and clunky - Hmm, I kinda agree with you, but I kinda disagree. It's weird. Sometimes the combat seems too fast for me and I'm overwhelmed, this is usually when there are multiple mobs to be managed. But, on solo play when I'm not tanking, it does seem clunky and unresponsive, or maybe just not fluid. Either way, I think it does seem a little unfinished/rushed.

The defensive stats and the quest markers I can't really comment on as I don't have an opinion.

The GM presence (or lack thereof) - I can totally understand why this is frustrating, but I can also understand that SE is probably stretched to their limits right now managing the rocky launch, the bug reports, the forum screaming, the upcoming patch and everything else. I've decided to be patient about it and report what I see. I really don't want to give these lower life forms any sort of power to ruin the game for me.

The lack of uniqueness in play style/apperance and the cross-class skills are tied together in my mind - yeah, I kinda agree with this too. There isn't enough variety in the end-game gear. Your job is good at one thing and one thing only, so you're going to enhance the only stat that matters. To be perfectly honest, I blame the players for this. Back when Yoshi took over, we had the original class system that allowed you to totally customize your character. I think this was a fantastic idea, but that it was poorly executed. Then the 'fans' clamored for a traditional job system and making their roles more specific for that job. Hence the current mix of classes/jobs. I hate it. I hate it with a burning passion because I was going to cross-class skills to make my own Dark Knight. I totally blame the players for this one because it's what they wanted, and now that they've got it they clamor for a way to make themselves unique. Grrrrr ><

The leveling options and end game content - I'm willing to be patient here as well. I can see your frustration and understand why you feel that way. But, I'm willing to give them some leeway with regard to this as the game is newly re-released. This is also why I'm taking my time in leveling up. I know that there's not a lot of end game stuff, and that what there is has been infested with toxic players. I'm actively trying to avoid this by leveling my crafting classes and slowly going through the main storyline. I'm also aware of the limited quests for leveling, so I've split those up per class. I'm leveling thaumaturge via Uldah side quests, arcanist by Limsa side quests and conjurer through Gridania side quests. The rest I'm going through occasionally for FATE and dungeon content. I've also toyed with the idea of taking up fishing, just to give myself more variety when adventuring. Doing FATE's to level up archer? Oh, look, a body of water, let's do some fishing while we're here. Basically I'm stretching my time and content to make the most of it and delay end game until at least patch 2.1

tl;dr - I agree with a lot of the OP's points, but choose to deal with them creatively because I want to enjoy the game. It suits my more casual playing style, but I agree that it's not to everyone's taste.

[TheRac25]

While some of those points are reasonable, comparing this game's content to WoW and Rift which have been out for years is complete nonsense and for this you lost credibility.

you lost credibility when you suggest that a current product be compared against the competitions product 9 years in the past

[Hawklaser]

you lost credibility when you suggest that a current product be compared against the competitions product 9 years in the past

You loose credibility when you don't realize that different aspects require different comparison points. A 1 month old game's content needs to be compared to other games similar time period. Features can be compared to the current environment of games, and the funny thing about most of the features being complained about are fluff and vanity ones and therefore not essential to having a successful game at launch. As if you have nothing but fluff and vanity content at launch it almost assures a flop. Those complaining XIV doesn't have as much content to do as other MMO's need to take a step back and realize that the games they are comparing it to, if they were released at the exact same time as XIV, they would of had very comparable amounts of content.