So all I can say is, I’m glad that I sticked with it, there definitely were stretches where I was about to throw the towel, most prominently during the hours of ARR “travel to the sands hideout for the 500th time” during which I made it a fun game to anticipate when and in what order my character and the npcs will nod their heads during the endless cutscenes of circle-talking.

Which brings me to - I recently brought one of my real-life colleagues into the game, but even tho he’s praising the cutesy characters, looks of gear (doh! coming from WoW with paint-on robes) and Zone atmosphere, he’s constantly complaining about sluggish gameplay, lack of skills and boring quests, and all I can do is keep saying stick with it, it will get better.

I feel like FF14 loses a lot of potential players to the first 30 or so levels, alternating two skills on a 2.50 GCD, players that would happily play the game at higher levels and higher content tiers if they knew what the high-level game feels like.

I think developers should consider putting in some “front-loaded” action, to give completely new players a taste of what it looks like later, like a lot of oldschool JRPGs had this going, starting the game in a climax, through a flashback/future vision sort of thing, which then dropped to zero, slowly building up again as the actual game goes.

Cheers!