Here's a quick summary of my experience with the game, bulleted for your convenience.

  • This is the first MMO I've really played. Previously I had tried some other ones (and really disliked them) but for negligible amounts of time; to the extent that when creating my character for FFXIV I didn't understand the concept of the tank/dps/healer and didn't understand that I was selecting a class with responsibilities other than "beat stuff up."

  • Nevertheless, I found people to be most helpful and friendly while I was playing through for the first time.

  • I've found the community to be 99% nice people. There are certainly those with egos, and they sometimes require a bit of delicate handling. Some players can't handle receiving tips from others and get aggressive when offered advice. If you're up front about any noob-ness, and more importantly be willing to take tips when offered, you won't have any problems with nasty people.

  • Optimising your performance in the game feels really strategy-heavy. I've made countless adjustments to the stuff I do, after initially thinking "nah, that's a stupid idea."

  • A lot of the endgame content is very heavily scripted fighting, so it relies a whole lot on player skill and execution skill, rather than random number generators. This is both a problem and a boon for people with lag. Playing from New Zealand, I have a nasty amount of lag but the scripted nature of the content has allowed me to learn and execute fights 300-400ms ahead of time, right up to the very last tier of content.

  • Joining a free company (a guild) will make your game experience infinitely more enjoyable. Our FC is full of cool people!

  • Audio and visuals are AMAZING.

  • The story is a bit more thinly spread than other FFs as you'd expect, but it's still rich and feels very "Final Fantasyish," and I'm hungering for more patches and more story.

  • I can't speak for other MMOs, but I love the progression of gear in this game. I'm constantly saving the various currencies to buy each tier of gear, and completing the higher-level content for more gear. We have a few options for each tier of gear and with the latest patch we've seen the number of options fan out a lot more. Additionally there are avenues for gear upgrades, with more coming in the next patch.

  • tl;dr - I thought I'd get bored of this within days, but I love this game and can't stop playing it and have made some great friends through it.