The lag is the same as in FFXI if you have a decent connection and you are not nuking your FPS by having the graphics up to high. This is simply due to the servers being in Japan. In XI if you duel boxed you could move 1 character and you would see it on another character like 1-2 secs later. Wasn't considered game breaking then, and didn't stop anyone from enjoying that game the whole time I played it. It has higher latency then region specific games, and unless the internet is changed probably always will. The lag is not engine generated for the most part, if you are getting 60fps you are getting 60 fps it does not matter which engine it is, now FFXIV engine is over taxing and using more resources then it should but that is not the reason for the lag.

And people raging over surplus stage 1 is pure stupid, it would be like people rage quitting in WoW/Rift when your rested bonus worse off because sp dropped by 50%, in fact you can level for 7 days strait 6hrs a day on 1 class before hitting that point. Once again a pointless argument when you sit down and thing about it... Surplus and fatigue are bad in sound only, if you actually analyze how other mmos work you will realize the penalty is alot less in FFXIV (10% with it increasing gradually with each surplus rank) then in most Mainstream games (25-50% drop in xp(sp in ffxiv)all at once in about 30mins of gameplay)

UI I agree it needs to be more refined, but I find the current one completely usable although not the best.