Looking Back: Oct. 2010 to Mar. 2012

[Atoli]

A good test would be if you would recommend to a friend AND you're confident they would be impressed and stick around.

I'm not.
I fail miserably trying to explain why they should leave their current MMO and start playing FFXIV.
The first question I'm confronted with is usually "What does it have my MMORPG doesn't?"
And really, there isn't anything. Sure, it has greater graphics, a more mature community, but that's pretty much all there is. Raids, Dungeons, Bossfights, etc. are pretty much basic MMORPG stuff.
And FFXIV still falls short on other "basic" stuff like having a post system or a world which is not terribly copy-pasted.
So I start to talk about the things which are kind of special in FFXIV; the real storyline most MMOs don't have, the FF feeling, being part of something rapidly changing, playing a MMORPG which doesn't take you by the hand and helps you with every dumb little baby step you make..but at this point, I'm pretty much grasping for straws.

We are biased because we are already used to the broken parts of the game, so much that we barely notice them anymore. We only see how much it changed for the better from what it was at release.
A new player though will see the whole picture. He will not whine about "too less content at R50" but about slow fights, the missing mail system, empty zones, etc.

Still, I sometimes get people to at least try the game; and here is where the biggest problem FFXIV has kicks in:
It's not accessible.
Every MMORPG out there, even boring, tedious asia grinders from Korea, starts off easy, interesting and joyful.
They try to get you hooked before they throw the tedious everyday gameplay at you.
FFXIV though starts off with the most negative parts of gameplay we even have.
The only part you are introduced to are leves; a remnant from the time all you could do were grinding leves everyday.
This has to change.
Explain to the player how leves work, sure, but also show them little quests, a dungeon, some mini boss fight..stuff like that. Show them there is more to this game than grinding leves everyday.
Right now it takes at least R30 (more like R45) to once feel PART of the epic things going on in Eorzea.
Until then, all you ever get treated as is a bystander, often even an unwanted one.

Also, fights as a low lvl character.
Thy are boring as hell; you have 1-3 abilities, it takes up to 30 seconds to build up enough TP to use even ONE, you fight nothing more dangerous than mammals or baby sheep and it takes you a full minute to beat them up?
Exp are way too low too. Since there is nothing you can do before R15, it should be fast and easy to get to this rank. It also gives the player more of a feeling like "I'm being rewarded with new abilities, I can do more, I'm awesome, I like this game."
I don't think leveling as a whole should be faster, actually, it's already way too fast for higher levels, but when you are just starting out it shouldn't feel hard and time consuming to lvl up, especially since you already have to grind before you even hit R10.
I lose most new players in this phase, they never make it to R30 or R45 to enjoy all the beautiful new and interesting content Yoshi-P's team added, they leave way sooner because the game lacks the most important thing of all - accessibility.

[syntaxlies]

Most of the things tanaka told us we would have all seem like they would have been impossible to actually make given the known conditions of the servers. I think he was lying to us. Most likely why he make progression so slow, to buy himself some time.

[KiriA500]

Most of the things tanaka told us we would have all seem like they would have been impossible to actually make given the known conditions of the servers. I think he was lying to us. Most likely why he make progression so slow, to buy himself some time.

I think he was taking the Peter Molyneux method of game development...which is "talk out of your ass about everything your game does."

[AceofRains]

I think the only thing thats truely going to get people out of Thanalan is Ishgard. :/