I'm trying to keep a positive outlook for XIV, but I have to be completely honest with myself when I objectively compare this game and it's features not only to games released recently, but with games that have been out for quite some time.

One of the things I dislike about XIV has to do with zone specific mobs. For example, in XI when I leave San d'Oria, I have rabbits to fight, and some orcs. When I leave Bastok I have worms and some Quadav.. I forget what there is around Windurst.. some small animals and Yagudo.

When I leave any city in XIV, I have marmots and no beastmen.

As small and petty as it may sound, that right there just ripped the immersion away for me. There is no logical connection between the geography of a zone and the mobs found in it.

I can go on and on about other things, but when something as simple as having mobs in a zone that make sense gets overlooked, there really isn't a need to.

In it's current state, the game is not worth my money, if they didn't drop the subscription fee, I would have cancelled after my free month. I honestly don't see the game being worth a monthly fee until they have the first expansion finished and released. That of course assumes that all outstanding gameplay issues are resolved and the game "feels" like it is on par with some of the other games released around the same time.

I have alot of faith in SE, but they ARE under a time crunch now. With Rift enjoying a succesful launch and TOR/GW2 on the horizon, SE really needs to take a serious look at other games and find out how to incorporate what they see into XIV.