Awfully weak story... or is it? [WARNING:SPOILERS]

[Enkidoh]

I have to laugh whenever people raise FFXI as an example of quality storytelling when it took five years for the storyline to truly get going - at the start it was, surprise, surprise, just a bunch of fetch quests til about level 20 when you were finally entrusted with more important matters of state. And even then you couldn't even do the story missions until you spent time killing stuff just to get enough crystals to trade for Mission Rank Points.

Yes, XI has an awesome storyline (at least until the addons ruined it), but for the first five or so quests it was lackluster and handled poorly. FFXIV's story is also very well written, the problem is not the story itself but the execution - as it was decided to have questing give exp, therefore the storyline had to broken up into separate quests in order to facilitate leveling. And that involved stretching the storyline out with filler like the dull fetch quests that eventually led to the Titan fight (arguably the most boring part of the game). But then, a lot of RPGs are like that (including other FF games), so FFXIV is hardly unique in that regard.

Besides, this is just the start of the game's storyline - future patches and expansions will only build on what has been done so far. Once again players are falling into the trap of expecting ten years worth of content at launch - it doesn't work that way.