I just did my first dungeon "Sar-something" and it was fun. Took 15 minutes for the duty finder to set me up, but I did some FATEs in the meantime. It was fun, we never came close to dying and even though only one of us had done the dungeon before, everything ran pretty smoothly (except I stumbled with the controls a few times by accidentally switching my hotbar). Boss was fun. Epic music, too! I had to be the tank, which I don't really like being, but yay, I didn't mess up! Best of all, no cries of "WTF are u doin ya n00b?!". Everyone was polite and good-natured, so that was good.

Overall, playing the beta has been a blast so far. One thing that became immediatly apparent upon starting out was that there was a whole lot more to do. Lots of quests, at least for the first ten levels, after that they became more sparse, but still, I never was lost for anything to do like I was in 1.x. This is largely because of the FATEs. FATEs are awesome. They're quite diverse, give good exp and are fun to do, mostly. The ease of getting in and out of them is a good plus. They definately were a good addition to the game.

The game's also simply gorgeous, with lots of great visuals. A lot of times I was reminded of FF XII, which is of course a good thing. Linsa reminded me of the Phon Coast somewhat, while Ul'duah gave a Dalmasca / Giza Plain feeling. Enemy design is pretty fun too, though I do miss something spectacular like a T.Rex or something so far, like you had in XII at the start. But I guess that's normal for low levels and stuff. I noticed they used the mantis design from XII, too. Good stuff overal.

Best of all, though, is the storyline. During my run through World of Warcraft, even though I did practically every quest there was to do across the three continents and Outland, I never at any point felt invested in the story. The closest it came was during the Cataclysm quests, but even then the storyline just wasn't as focussed or told that well. It didn't help that the conclusion for every damn storyline could only be seen in elitist raids, I really regretted not being able to have a go at Deathwing.

XIV does it much better in that regard, as expected of a FF game. We even have actual cutscenes! You feel invested in the story, because they make it feel like your character and his/her actions actually matter and mean something. You're not just a random character caught up in events by accident, you're a major player in the story and at times even the focus of it. I really liked that, and I can't wait to see how it develops further. The only criticism I could offer so far is that it seems to slow down after lv 15, and the focus shifts from quests to dungeons. I don't know if it's because of the beta or not, but even so, it's not that horrible or anything, since dungeons seem to be pretty accessible so far. Granted, I've only gone through one, but still, duty finder helps with that. I'm sure the end-game content will be tough, but I'm sure by that point the story will have drawn me in so much to actually make me want to learn how to do those raids and stuff.

Last thing I'll mention is that level sync is a great and smart idea. It helps keeping things challenging, even at higher levels.