This is laughable. BECAUSE I enjoyed the game at launch. Maybe it is not for everyone's cup of tea. FYI for many that whined how horrid the game was and once again if it was so horrid why did many of these people play free for a whole year? People read reviews...they watch demos. They play betas to get the FEEL of the game.
I would have paid the subscription fee at day one. There was TONs of content. It just required you to play every class through to get all the content. If they weaved it into one class to enjoy all the story content I think the complaints might have differed. However, they wanted people to play freely...to embrace the fact that you can be every class. Many players like the idea of I can be whatever class I want. However, many are not committed especially the casual gaming community to invest in all classes so they choose 1 or 2 classes. Therefore, they miss out on a WHOLE LOT of content and then complain about how the game is lacking content.
There are many MMOs that release totally unfinished and start on episodic releases. SEs patches have been to that level. and beyond...
And any MMO player that is half way serious about playing an MMO that is new is that the 1st year is always a year of change and flux of testing the water and seeing where to progress. If you aren't willing to ENJOY THE PROCESS of a new MMO's evolution then you should wait 1.5 years after an MMO is released to play it.
You can't judge a new MMO right out of release. You can't compare an MMO to previous MMOs. They have had time to mature. This genre has huge development time and cost in the millions and millions they need to recoup some costs to further develop.
The whole EMPTY servers thing is a scare tactic is all. So what? If I charge $10 people who wanna play will play. If I charged $5 I'll have more players but still making the same money...the quality of players is degraded. So why do I care if I charge $5 or $10? If my player base at $10 is better then at $5 I'd appeal to the $10 community and make the game greater and greater. Then those that lapsed their subscriptions miss out on the year of content. When I release version 2.0 and the game is ever so much more amazing the solid player base is there. They generating income...whoever else comes on board is bonus...and people will come...if it be only the entire FF11 community that's a success.
I'm sorry but $10..$15 is not that much to pay for a monthly fee. Free to play games that have cash shops cost most players at least $30 a month to play well and keep up with the joneses. In reality anyways most MMO players play for the community and not the game itself. Most people spend a majority of their time in an MMO chatting with friends and guilds...
Ask players around since SE added all the NPC quests and side quest lines...how many people have actually even played them? I know on my server there's a huge population that hasn't even touched a fraction of them...yet here we complain about lack of content.
Lore, mythos, ethos...etc etc...FFXIV is rich in all that. I've read slowly and finely all the lore on lodestone, everything of the quests and NPCs and there's a lot of content.
Sorry if you don't want to pay...the company spent millions upon millions to make the game. As with ANY game you choose to buy it to enjoy it. To hate it or love it. That's all matter of opinion in the end...the company made the product it's their product not yours...you buy what they created and you decide if it's your cup of tea.