Firstly, there is a forum for "new players". If you want to ask questions in the future, try to make threads there instead .

I'm wondering if any of you fine folks in the community could clue me in on any changes that have happened to this game since then? Has it improved a lot? Will it improve?
Alright, here's the thing. The game was released in September, but after the first major patches the management team changed, and a lot of people from other projects were reassigned to work on the game. In addition to this, the development process was restarted. The whole process took probably a month or so.

So, fast forward to this day the new development team has been working on the game since January-February. Their main objective at this point in time is to rehaul existing game mechanics and get them up-to-standard. As you could guess, developing these kind of rehauls is a time consuming process, and since the new development structure and plans have only been in place for a few months, the rehauls have not been completed nor implemented as of yet.

So to answer your questions- to this day the game has changed but not by much. The biggest changes are probably the change of development pace (from tri-monthly patches to monthly patches), the addition of the forums and the increased speed of progression. Now, "will it improve"? It has been roughly 2-3 months since the development on the rehauls started, so that means few things:

A) The rehauls will be either completed or partially completed very soon, and can be implemented to the game. That means the next few months will definitely be interesting and pretty much determine whether this game has a chance at this point.

B) The game will look like a construction yard until the rehauls are complete and polished, so it'll take them until the end of the year to finish, probably.

If you want to join in now, well, you will be entertained by the substantial patches but the game will most likely still not be good enough by a mile. What you could do is go check the forums from time to time and see what the patch notes say, and what the community reaction is.

As far as the rehauls, the combat system is getting a rehaul, as well as the class system. Auction House is on the way, as well as a Jumping feature and a "Company" feature which no one knows anything about. Implementing those either completely or partially is the plan for the Spring.

Along with the class system rehaul, the producer has released this picture for the upcoming class-specific equipment:

http://static.finalfantasyxiv.com/to...d05abbe05968ef