To me there is no atmosphere.

Death is meaningless so I don't care about my character. Creatures don't feel scary because of this and exploring new areas doesn't have tension because there's nothing to lookout for. Why would I want to explore only 4 zones anyway? There is absolutely nothing worth seeing in the environments.

Quests don't have storyline or a very badly written fetch text that isn't even needed to read because you're just expected to follow the markers like a vegetable. When you complete them there is no music or cutscenes like XI has and it doesn't build fame. NPCs feel like empty shells because of this.

The main storyline isn't any better because it's so detached from anything else that I have no idea what's going on there. I've done the main storyline missions months apart because apparently I had to be rank 30 to just basically watch people talk?!

There's little and big things SE could do to fix this but nothing of the sort is coming or even planned.