The new player experience and how FFXIV fails as an MMO.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

I haven't been able to recommend this game in good faith to friends since the Stormblood era. These days, it's simply too much story to expect the average casual player to go through to be able to play the content their friends are playing. And aside from that, although the narrative quality itself is generally quite strong, the presentation is horribly stilted and dated; much of the writing uses gratingly flowery language; the amount of filler is nearly unbearable at times; and because skill acquisition is SO heavily back-loaded, the first couple hundred hours of combat are uninteresting to anyone who's played a faster-paced, tab-target MMO before. The open world is lifeless, reducing the new player experience almost entirely to just walking around alone, watching cutscenes, and clicking through dialog boxes.

They should've made the [edit: non-current] MSQ optional three expansions ago. Meanwhile, in GW2, if you want, you can often get the first two expansions and a max-level boost for $12 total during a sale. Both I and my guildmates have had several friends hop in and come raiding with us on day one, have a blast, and end up getting really into the game. I'm sure people get their friends hooked on FFXIV all the time, to be fair, but it really has to be the right kind of person, at this point.