The story is good, the world is fun and dangerous to explore. I liked a lot of the dungeons had some puzzle to unlock the way forward. The time sinks like waiting for airships was annoying. The two things that made the game great was the depth and the community. The use of the subjob system opened up tyhe way you could play jobs. This provided the ability for strategy against bosses. It was much more fun than memorizing a set pattern and doing group jump rope like in FFXIV. Modern mmo took away that depth. Then the community, people worked together and helped each other. I don't recall seeing half the problems you see in ffxiv around bad dps and lazy players. I'm sure it happened, but most people I played with were accountable for their play. FFXI was not a game designed to be finished in a week. The one thing I never heard a ffxi player say is "i have nothing to do"