Even though I believe this topic has been answered correctly, I will put my input in and say that FFXI was definitely nothing special when it first launched. When the RoZ expansion was added it definitely added more for people to work with, but before that the game was really slow. Prices on everything were outrageous. The leveling, crafting, etc took forever and people hardly wanted to bother with it and pretty much gave up on things after a while. Don't even get me started about those who went to play FFXI on the PS2 back then. It was so much of a hassle it was unbelievable and the phone support sucked. One of the worst aspects of FFXI has always been and still is the PlayOnline phone support. Lastly, in the beginning of FFXI major 5 - 12 hour updates went off every other week, which seriously turned players off. I'm going to go right along by saying no MMORPG is 100% perfect when they first launch. In every major MMORPG, if you take note of it, you'll notice they're constantly changing how things are done and adding new features to attract more members.

FFXIV is simply new and needs more time to flourish. I'm absolutely certain things will start really moving once a few kinks are taken care of. Honestly one of the major things that bothered me about the game, as silly as it may sound, was the inability to change the walk buttons to the number pad and having to look around with the mouse all the time. Things like this you wouldn't think effects how people would perceive the game, but they really do. A simple little fix like that and tons of people would be ecstatic, no joke. The other thing bothering people is the payment method, one option is shady as hell and the other requires you to purchase more "Crysta" then necessary. While you could save the extra and put it towards payment in the next month, some people simply don't enjoy the idea of that because they don't wanna throw down $20 all at once. Why am I rambling on about these things? Because I feel like people should know why this game is seeing so many bad reviews, since the poster wanted to know if FFXI started like this. It did, but the problems weren't all that alike. I've only named a few of the points which have given this game horrid reviews, but no matter how shallow they seem, they're major aspects as to what keeps gamers from playing.