Is most of FFXIV's failings due to their choice of engine?

[Abriael]

You have no idea what you are talking about, lets take a look at team fortress 2 and Half life 2 episode 2. Both use the same engine, one has much lower poly count and less detailed textures, both were released at the same time. If you bothered reading what I had to say about the player market base you would understand why mmo developers use the low detailed mesh's for their games using unreal engine 3, let me explain it to you again, this is because the largest market doesn't have high end machines, the main limitation of the graphics for games today is the market base, look at most games these days made for the 360/ps3 over the pc, why you ask? because of the market base on the consoles compared to the smaller base on the pc.

LOL. You're comparing two games that are part of two different *genres*, with extremely different requirements for gameplay, character display and environments.
I'm comparing two MMORPGs. Same genre -> comparison works. Different genre -> Apple to oranges.

But again, if you don't even know the difference between "art style" and graphical detail, there's very little to discuss. As of graphics quality (polycount, texture resolution, texture mapping effects and so forth), FXIV obliterates any MMORPG ever built with the UE3.
You can speculate as much as you want about how much the developers limited themselves, but that's just speculation.

When we'll see another engine producing a game as detailed as FFXIV, the we'll talk, at the moment there's none even on the horizon.

Mind you, you're so off base in talking about "art style" that it isn't even funny. The "art style" is exactly the reason for which i'll play Blade & Soul when it'll be released, as I absolutely adore Hyung Tae Kim's art.
But again, that has nothing to do with the engine.

If you are right about the ps3 version of FFXIV due to the limitation of the hardware, I really don't see this game going anywhere. lets look at it like this if FFXIV were released on both console and pc, at the same time. Both were rated 4.0 I believe Square Enix would have canceled the game. The pc release was a market test/beta test to see if Square Enix could get away with releasing the game in the current state. The test showed that the game couldn't float on its name alone and thus the ps3 version delayed for a 2nd release so they can get a new review of the game when the ps3 version launches and get better scores. This will lead to not only a large ps3 player serge but also old and new pc players coming back to see what really has changed over the course of the year or however long it takes to make this game to change from a rushed rated 4.0 of a game, to a polished 8 or 9 rated game. So before you tell me to get my facts straight, you better get yours first.

Lol. I don't need to get any fact straight. What you just wrote is total baseless personal speculation. What I stated is fact. The PS3 version was delayed way before the PC release, and they said clearly that they did so to solve memory issues it had. That's all there's to it. Fact > Speculation.

Oh really, I can tell you now that I have no intention of playing Blade and Soul, Tera on the other hand which tramples this game into the ground both visually and mechanically I will be.

Don't try to make me out to be a hater, that's not to say I'm a fanboy either, I'm just being realistic.

Bolded the obvious contradiction.

Tera has exactly the same flaws Blade and Soul has, it's easily surpassed by FFXIV in every aspect of character definition, texture effects and texture resolution.
It doesn't even get near FFXIV in overall graphics detail, and shading is the only area where it's better. Again, a single aspect doesn't make a whole engine better (especially considering that both engines include that feature, it's just a matter of implementation).

Tera looks nice, but it's nowhere near a miracle graphics-wise. It's usual korean MMO fare.

By the way, I'm such a "fanboy" that I'm going to play *both* Tera and Blade and Soul (and guild Wars 2, and SWTOR, and a couple others on my radar), lol