Quote Originally Posted by kindar1 View Post
1) I am a firm believer in paying for a game once.
Although there is a subscription, at this point, when you buy the game you are paying for 5 games worth of story or more, so even a 5 month subscription would be nothing compared to what I've paid for the individual expansions over the years, which are each a whole game's worth of content in Square Enix's view.

2) I despise being forced to play with other people to do the interesting stuff a MMO offers. I am not a social person in real-life, and I am not one in virtual-life either.
Yet you stream on twitch, a platform that allows you to be social with others. A lot of people are shy about being social and MMOs aim to help pull them out of that slowly, starting with solo play.

And he added FFXIV allowed dungeons to be run with NPCs instead of players.
This is true up until level 59 and they are working on making the rest able to be done with NPCs. It may take 2 or 3 patches more for the remainder to support NPCs. Starting at level 50, there are some 8-person trials that require players, but it will match them with you, they won't talk to you and they'll just complete the trial with you usually. They don't really care about mistakes or deaths because it's designed to be easy for the story and in the unlikely event everyone dies, they will just do it again and probably be alright.

I am playing an Archer and I will go through the MSQ from Gridania. Unlike my first start, where I scattered myself all over the place, the MSQ will be the driving force behind everything I do. One of the aspect I want to study is how/if the MSQ guides me to join crafts or even the archer’s guild, since I have no memory of HOW I ended up starting on the Archer’s progression quest.
The MSQ will guide you to the Archer's guild if you chose an Archer at the start. The rest of the Archer story is in your hands. It's a blue sidequest chain that will continue every 5 levels (it says in the chatbox when you level up when a new one is available). It doesn't make you do crafting at all, that's optional, but there are good side stories for all of the battle and crafting classes, and there are a lot of classes.

Aside from being fetchquests, the sidequests do add to the experience of the story by getting to know the residents and their problems in each area, but there are too many expansion's worth of story for most people to bother with them anymore.