I wouldn't necessarily call myself a veteran, but I did play WoW for years. I also played FFXI for years -- and much more time than I ever did WoW. I can see how WoW led the way for the 'modern' MMO; WoW has become more and more supportive of casual play while also giving a lot of content for hardcore players to become occupied with (you can now do supereasy versions of the raids, or really really difficult ones -- the choice is yours). FFXIV is still a young game, so the content right now is a bit lacking for hardcore players because they've really done it all. As this game becomes older, there will be a lot more content released, and much less 'tweaking' of the game. The addition of a ready check, for example, is something I really wanted and was happy to see added. I'm glad SE incorporated a PF, and the DF system is good but needs work.

One thing I do not like, specifically, about WoW... people who played WoW may recall this: there is a mod called "Deadly Boss Mods." It basically makes any boss 'easy mode' in that game. It tells you exactly what to do in any part of a boss fight. Have a bad debuff? The mod will put up huge text on your screen telling you to run away from the group, and it will even give you an audio clip telling you to "Run away, little girl, run away..." If you have a CHOICE regarding whether or not you want to use this, fine, but many raid leaders back when I last raided seriously (WotLK) would check to see if you had it. DBM had a functionality within it for raid leaders to see who in the raid was running DBM, and even what VERSION they were running. Most mods are supported by Blizzard unless they enable you to cheat in some way, so many players used it. I personally thought having things spoonfed to you made fights too easy, and I enjoy the fact that FFXIV has a lot of mechanics that you really just need to understand.

However... there ARE mods to tell you what is coming and when for FFXIV. These mods are NOT endorsed by SE, and if you are caught using (or even admitting you have used) them, you can get into serious trouble. There are some people who use these mods, but it's not as rampant as DBM were in WoW because SE isn't okay with them. I hope SE never, ever accepts any mods like this because I don't want raid groups to turn into what I saw in WoW. At the same time, there is something about FFXIV that frustrates me just a little bit... almost every fight has a predictable rotation. I literally just memorize the rotation (I guess my mind is good at that) and then I'm a master of the fight. That's it. There's really no reaction time for me. It's just knowing what's coming next.

I want fights with less predictability and more randomness... not unfair randomness (there would need to be some failsafe stopping unfair combinations to occur), but just... something different. As far as raiding, I feel SE did a good job about making fights difficult enough to keep people satisfied. I can't really say I'm a fan of the echo buff, but I knew going into the first coil that SE would eventually make the fights more accessible to other players (because it's a huge part of the storyline)... I just wasn't sure how.