Final Fantasy 14 has come a long way, from the tumultuous times of 1.0, to its revival in a Realm Reborn, and to the massive player-count boom we experienced during Shadowbringers. Along the way we have had numerous updates for QoL, and player experience. The main story is now (mostly) playable solo all the way to current content allowing even players who prefer single-player experiences to experience Eorzea and the wider regions of the world with us, the UI constantly gets great QoL improvements that make it look and feel better for the average user, and with Dawntrail the improvements to textures and lighting mean the world will look better than it ever has and we are getting dual dye channels which has been an desire of the community for eons.


That leaves the question, where does our home fail to stand out compared to the other MMOs in the space that would ostensibly prove to be Final Fantasy XIV's competition? My argument is that it is in one of the most critical areas for engaging with new players, the creation of our Warriors of Light. There are nearly more MMOs than there are stars, and some more recent titles are basically 3d model makers with a game attached (looking at you BDO) so to keep this conversation concise and fair I will focus primarily on WoW and GW2 as they are two of the larger games in the space in a similar(ish) age to FF.