FFXI had an amazing story. It was difficult to piece together at times because of how long progress in levels took to get to each piece of story content as well as how difficult they made it to watch back over the story.

But it was amazing. I found a guy who had compiled and uploaded the story line cutscenes and watched them all on a splurge and specifically caught up on the Aht Urghan story line that I never finished.

That one expansion's storyline alone was over 7 hours of video to watch. 7 hours of MMO cutscene for one expansion, which was still only a fraction of the main story, Zilart, nations rank missions, individual job quests, etc.

The world was vast and tied together very well.


FFXIV has echos (no pun intended) of that. Honestly, having gone back and watched some of the 1.0 cutscenes, it seems that it was closer to the FFXI style... a little more cinematic in delivery and such. However, ARR does keep the same FFXI idea that YOU are the agent of change. YOU are the center of this story. Honestly, that conceit seemed a little silly in FFXI, but also led to you feeling amazing. I find that it works less well in XIV.

I am at least glad that XIV is better than some other MMOs I've played. WoW was great and the depth of the lore was amazing, but you had to dig a lot and the presentation didn't make you feel integral at all. There were story lines that would bring you to tears, but you were so used to "collect 10 bear pelts" type quests that you didn't pay attention when an amazing story was unfolding.
As silly as the idea is, it's really amazing to have yourself working along side the big players in the story and seeing yourself in the cutscenes in FFXI and FFXIV. I'm also glad that you know which bits are main story and which are just filler, though even the filler quests can be pretty interesting.

I've personally found the story arcs for the crafting jobs amazingly fulfilling considering what they are. The main story still hasn't grabbed me, but coming from FFXI and see what they turned into as far as ever deepening story, I have faith that what's going to happen in the future of XIV's story is going to be awe inspiring so I'm paying attention closely now and looking forward to an episodic release of content that lets me drink in a little at a time, digest it, and hunger for more. I'm chomping at the bit for the next chapter in the CT portion of the story.