Quote Originally Posted by Ardeth View Post
I don't think the story is as good as people say it is. It has it's moments and it's certainly made with quality, but it has all the same contrivances and convaluted plot issues that have plagued JRPGs for decades.
When people say the story is good they seem to regularly forget the qualifier "for an MMO", probably because it sounds a lot less impressive considering the competition.

But to bounce off of what Vyrerus has already said, XIV didn't just miss the mark when it comes to portraying the gravity and scale of it's events as those escalated over the years.
It takes little advantage of the strengths of it's own visual medium, video games, in general, the majority of the MSQ is just walking to an NPC and then reading a whole lot of textboxes.