The new dungeons are a blast, hunting elite monsters is fun and makes people socialize more, Crystal Tower is fun, the new gear looks great, Frontlines....I had low expectations for, but it's one of my favorite things to do. And the story for Crystal Tower, the main scenario, and Tam-Tara are all really well done.
The elite monsters gave a MUCH needed reason to get out in the open world and explore. I just hope in the future, they get a boost of stats to scale based on the number of people around them.