How good is the game engine of FFXIV?

[Shurrikhan]

Name an MMO that does, and you've got an MMO that made sacrifices elsewhere to get that part to work, or one that runs poorly.

BDO, B&S, Moonlight Blade. Within the year, you'll probably see a couple more. Only the first bogs noticeably in its cities -- far more packed than XIV's -- and no more on my comp than XIV does. Each has certain areas of poor optimization, but the characters are not it.

So unless you're saying that spending time on an in-depth character creator specifically sapped resources from optimization polish for waterfalls or the like, and that saving a few more frames in viewing the latter is worth so much more...