New player experience is really good, as is the free-trial player experience pretty good, to be honest... But this is only by virtue of the fact that it masks the biggest issue plaguing this game which is patch and content schedule/pipeline.

Even then to be honest, it's going in the direction of... Not too great, seeing as they've demonstrated a willingness to devalue older content, and this is where FFXIV is not really a good MMO by any stretch of the imagination... Now obviously some people like that, e.g., being able to take extensive breaks and coming returning like you've essentially missed nothing whatsoever.

Generally speaking the game just lacks that immersive feel, and the substance behind the content absolutely sucks because player inconvenience cannot happen in any capacity.