Expansion is only temporarily enjoyable. Fails to fix all main flaws.

[Kona_Nightwind]

Show me a game that delivers what you want. I'm going to guess there isn't one, because you'd be playing it. MMO players complain just to complain. This is the best dev team of any MMO I've played. The amount of content they put out is amazing. The only problem is the lack of pvp, which for me is a good thing because I don't have the time.

[Ferocious]

Show me a game that delivers what you want. I'm going to guess there isn't one, because you'd be playing it. MMO players complain just to complain. This is the best dev team of any MMO I've played. The amount of content they put out is amazing. The only problem is the lack of pvp, which for me is a good thing because I don't have the time.

Sure, plenty of examples. Rift (before it went F2P) was everything I described in OP. Amazing character build system, multiple paths to obtain gear, challenging content and expansion launched with three raids. It was a WoW clone like FFXIV, but felt more like its true successor than FFXIV does. Too bad, they ditched the game and made it trash after F2P. Guild Wars 1 is another perfect example of what I described. It had countless character builds that were unique, some of the best expansions ever and content that was perfectly balanced for both casuals/hardcores. For a recent release, Wildstar had everything going for it too and had the followers to make it big, but they screwed up big time with balance issues, defects and awful campaign.

Now you may think FFXIV is still alive because it does something better, but in fact it's mostly popular because of its FF franchise name. Therefore, it also attracts many casuals that prefer questing and crafting over raiding. That's fine, but the issue is with the content balance. Currently only 5% of it is catered towards hardcores. A little more won't hurt to have.

Your first 3 cons are the intentional design direction of the game.

Is that a nice way of saying intentional lazy development?

May as well criticize CoD for not having a diplomacy minigame, or Witcher3 for not having spaceships. Diplomacy can be fun, and spaceships can be fun, but everything has its time and place.

Your examples are comparing apples and oranges. Everything I mentioned indeed has its time and place with FFXIV. I didn't suggest anything out of the ordinary. It is things that improve on its existing features. That's what expansions do. They aren't just more content. They're supposed to improve, bring new features and listen to user feedback to iron out previous flaws. But unfortunately as I have said, it's only more of the same. It feels like one of their content patches except with level cap increased.