FINAL FANTASY XIV Online

Locked out haha have been for years now and cant seem to come back to it. everytime i try my password it says its wrong when its not then i have to do a ticket. i change my password to a new one then go to enter it and guess what its wrong again! this is the only game that i cant play due to never being able to get pass the password and ID login due to being locked out or shadowbanned for trying to enter a password i created to then be told its the wrong password. (Note im not hating on the game but the launch process)

TLDR: If you enjoy highschool drama, community circlejerks, boring repetitive content and classes, being a passive-agressive bitch instead of speaking your mind or you really really miss IMVU and Second Life give this game a go, otherwise go play a different MMO and be happy.

Game peaked hard two expansions ago and has been getting worse and worse ever since. They keep sticking to the exact same formula of an underwhelming content patch every 8-9 months without ever innovating with encounter design or anything else. Dungeons are boring as shit (literally every single dungeon past level 50 is a 1:1 copy/paste layout with a different skin and the same 3 boss mechanics on rotation) but you will spend a fuckton of time doing them if you want to level different classes. Not that there is a point to this anymore since they keep homogenizing the classes and making them more braindead and samey every single patch. Raids are great at first until you realize that they too will follow the exact same formula every tier with few things to break up the monotony.

In the end you will be paying for the 1 or 2 actual good fights they release per expansion or to sit there all day with a bunch of other losers jacking off to your hideously modded catgirls. It's really not worth the box price AND monthly subscription they charge (at least other games who do that have the decency to provide more than one major patch a year). Just save your money or go spend it on any other MMO on the market, they will all provide more for you.

As a bonus, the playerbase is insanely cancerous. While they will rarely insult you directly (this is only because they are afraid of getting banned, as the in game moderation in this game actually works quite well, not because of the "great community" these same people keep going on about), they are some of the most insufferable, passive agressive, self-righteous, drama-hungry people I have met in all my time gaming. The best way to describe the community is like a massive highschool class where the only reason the kids aren't at eachothers throats over the tiniest thing is that they are collectively too afraid of the principal watching to actually do anything other than bark. I would unironically rather have some russian WoW player call me the N-word and tell me to kill myself for missing an interrupt than read one word the average FF14 player typed.

Regardless of this the same people that sit there jacking off to their hideously modded catgirls all day will also praise this game to the high heavens because all their social (and sexual) interactions take place in the game and they don't care about any of the issues regarding gameplay or content releases.

When I first picked up Final Fantasy XIV, I was looking for an escape. I felt alone, like I didn’t fit in anywhere, and I wanted something—anything—to fill that space. What I didn’t expect was that this game would not only give me a world to explore but also completely reshape my life in ways I never imagined.

FFXIV has been more than just a game; it’s been a gateway to creativity, connection, and growth. Through it, I’ve explored new creative avenues, from character design to storytelling, and even expanded my skills in ways that have influenced my own projects. It’s also introduced me to people I now consider some of my closest friends—something I didn’t think I would find in an online game.

The community is what truly makes FFXIV special. Whether it’s the tight-knit bonds formed through Free Companies, the shared victories in raids, or the late-night conversations in player housing, this game fosters connections that go beyond the screen. It has given me opportunities to network, collaborate, and be part of something bigger.

For anyone on the fence about trying FFXIV, I can say without hesitation: this game has changed my life for the better. It’s not just an MMO; it’s a world full of stories, friendships, and endless creative inspiration. And for that, I’ll always be grateful.

Dont get me wrong, it was fun while i no-lifed my way through to the end game. It was only doable because i had friends to play with but that is the most important distinction. wiothout them the game is hours of party finder simulator.

The early game is SO boring that friends i've tried to get to join (solo), couldnt make it past the first 10 levels.
which is unfortunate because the end game is where you want to be, but the classes and gameplay are really slow at low levels that you might not make it that far. There's also no indication of what the class/job you choose will look like at the end to sell the wonder of the full rotation.

I also dont know why, but even with the "graphical update" with the Dawntrail DLC, the game still looks like its from 2005.

Regarding endgame balance, I feel the Devs are so out of touch with what the community wants because they insist in keeping it a specific way, having new jobs be overpowered while keeping others irrelevant.

Again, i had fun playing while i did, but i dont feel excited to pick it up again.

I've put many many hours into this game. For new players things are probably okay. You'll enjoy the game ignorant of what you lost. But as a person that's played many different classes over thousands of hours, I can't help but feel saddened for what has been lost. Among classes that ove played the most, such as BLM, SMN, and AST, changes have been made to the classes that feel like they're removing their identity. While I admit that SMN definitely needed work, oversimplification *is* a thing. Black mage was my main, but every single patch, the keep lowering and lowering the skill ceiling. Astrologian has lost a lot of what made the class unique and now it feels like white mage with extra steps. What is the point of having all these different unique classes if you're just gonna keep homogenizing them. I'm not opposed to change, but I am not a fan of taking away identity and uniqueness, so I'm done with this game as the jobs I fell in love with are slowing losing their luster every patch.

New players will most likely find alot of enjoyment and excitement in this game as they will be ignorant of what has been lost.

Will try and make this as precise as I can

Once upon a time I loved this game, look at how many hours I have just to give an idea of how long I have enjoyed it. The story was great, the content was fun and the community was welcoming.

However note the was in the previous sentence.

Nowadays it's become a chore to be on here, everything is time gated, the story is so mediocre as of the most recent update, the jobs are all horribly balanced now, and the content droughts are becoming ridiculous for a game that is a monthly subscription. As of now it's nothing but doing content you have done one hundred times over just for some currency that you can only get so much of a week. Said process making it feel impossible to even try out endgame content, and that is assuming most of the people who do endgame let you in, because if you are certain classes you will just be kicked out.

Really wish I could recommend based on the past, but the current state of the game is just not worth the subscription cost.

I spent many years on the old FF11 back in the day, and FF14 was a really enjoyable upgrade.

But they really need to work on account management. I stopped playing about a year or two ago, and when I tried to return, none of the methods they provided would allow me to retrieve my previous account, meaning I won't have access to my high level white mage that I spent countless hours on.

It's a good game, but they really need to work on how to streamline account retrieval / management. People remember bad service for much longer than when you have good service, and bad experiences spread further and wider than good ones.

Making an account is janky af, kept saying my password/name is wrong, changed it more than 5 times and didn't work. Unfortunatly Wont be playing as I cant even get into my account.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game, but the overall quality just feels like it's been diminishing heavily, and the community seems more toxic than it actually seems, would I recommend this to anyone? Yes, most definitely, but be sure to keep your mouth closed if you wanna bypass any content without getting your account banned.

This game has very interesting and interactive bosses, but a lot of them start to become very samey very fast once you reach the newer expansions, I know they cannot do much more in that department, but I wish there was something to shake it up every now and again, it's like they just rely on spam now more than actually just paying attention.

New pictomancer is just powercrept everything in terms of class.

My favorite game of all time. As an all things fantasy lover, I cannot believe it took me this long to get into it, but I have gained over 600 hours including my free trial time in only 5 months, and I could not think of a better use for my time. The emotions I have felt and the fun I've had I haven't experienced with any other game, let alone another MMO. And as a World of Warcraft kid, I can confidently say that I uninstalled WoW, and stopped my sub the second I finished Heavensward. I have found my game. This is it.

The MSQ is really enjoyable, and the several sets of End of Game Content make the game extra fun to play.

After playing this game for a small amount of time, I find this game pretty fun. I did have a party to play this with, which helped a lot with the enjoyment of the game. Just a very fun time overall and there's a lot of great people playing this game.

We are at a point where the current expansion's story is widely considered the worst its ever been, we're routinely waiting half a year or more for content to be drip fed to us, job diversity is all around awful (they largely all play the same within their own role), and based on the last live letter, they're gonna lobotomize Black Mage.

I love this game but I would never recommend it right now. The developers really need to read player feedback because the game is in an awful state right now and frankly I'd recommend anyone who does play to unsubscribe until Square gets their shit together.

Black mage was already gutted with the release of dawntrail but the 7.2 changes for the job is really not where I want the job to go. These changes make me sad as it was the DPS job I had the most fun with in endwalker.

final fentesy foarteenn is the best gaem to spend your life in grinding while high on crack. great gameplay, music, story and not too expensive each month.

Fun timesink-game with a massive amount of diverse content. Fails at what makes most MMOs great (No fun loot, no incentive to socialize/network, no playstyle expression through builds or customization), excels however through really great storylines as well as very fun to learn and well-crafted combat scenarios all the way from levelling dungeons to endgame raidbosses.

(Obligatory mention of the very big free trial this game has, just try it!)

this is an awesome game to play solo or with friends. the network of players online is great, the people here are great. they have a great community here and I would recommend new players to this game, I was warmly welcomed and helped within 5 minutes when I asked for assistance.

It's a good mmo and at the same time the final nail in the coffin of me every trying a game of that genre again. Just absolutely horrid gameplay with every new expansion you start being an annoying slog as you need to waste hours of your life collecting orbs to be able to move at more than a snails pace. This then forces you to walk through giant worlds with next to nothing in them for most of it. That in itself is a big shame, because while the base game and Stormblood stories are very boring and don't do anything interesting, Heavensward worked really well as a closed off story. I'd love to have experienced more of that in the later expacs, but not with that gameplay.

I have mitigated feelings about this game, but the overall result is positive. Now I have only 20 hours game play, so my opinion will need an update later on.

I like mainly:
- The beautiful animals and races. Even the foes, some are so cute that I feel bad having to kill them! LOL
- The landscapes
- The stories and large choice of different activities, that don't exclude each other so we can do everything.

I dislike mainly:
- The combat concept: if we move, casting is interrupted (!). So, it's either I cast but suffers under foes damages, or I escape fields of damages, but can't cast. That's strange to me. As well that there is no dodging.
- The travel concept: either expensive or taking long time and can be unsafe if we chose to run.
- The map and its markers, for me very confusing. I had to abandon leves, because out of all the markers on the map, I was unable to understand/see where is the target I need to reach.

I would have a lot more to say, but I keep it at the main first impressions out of those 20 hours I did up to now. I recommend the game because it's fun. For the combat concept, I come from other games where it's different and I probably need some time to adapt. For the travelling, maybe that I will discover later that it can be a bit more user friendly. Time will tell.

The story really is a guilty pleasure. Soundtrack Definitely gives that classic final fantasy feeling. The fact you can play this with friends is honestly just a bonus. 55 Hours in and loving it so far.

It's a fun game whether you like to play with people or solo. If you like FF it still has some of the old feels and venues of the old games like the Golden Saucer, just updated graphics and a different story.

I have put almost 5000 hours into this game. I figured it was time to recommend it. If you are looking for a game that will give you everything you need to call it home. Then here it is. The sub is annoying, and sometimes the story is mild af, especially in the beginning.

That being said, I still haven't even done everything in this game and I'm 5k hours in. With plans to maybe beat it all eventually. Get it and welcome home.

Its fun but can be pretty slow sometimes. I would say if your looking for a chill game with lots of time and with occasionally hype fight moments this is for you!

My very first MMO. Very impressed by the depth of the game, there are many layers to it and I think I'll be uncovering them for a long time to come! Server performance is incredible, frames are amazing, extremely happy with the way this game runs and plays.

vry much enjoy, long but entertaining. also love the group of friends i have there as well!

The game is decent but after playing it for hours on end. I can't deal with the launcher of this game anymore. Switching pc or playing from a new location just becomes a nightmare of watching YouTube tutorials just to get the game to launch. Would rather play wow or old school runescape at this point.

After 1,319 hours and a little over a year I have finished the MSQ (and several side-quests XD) of Final Fantasy XIV and I can officially say this is one of if not my favorite games! Final Fantasy XIV was my first ever MMORPG and I went into it kinda hesitant since it was so different then when I normally play but, thanks to a good friend of mine teaching me how to play, it was easy for me to get into it. And because of this friend, I have met amazing people and have been introduced to a really fun and engaging game! Anyways time for the actual review XD

Final Fantasy XIV is a MMORPG with a really deep and entertaining story that is full of very memorable (and not-so-memorable) characters that build up this overwhelmingly thought out and complex world! The story might start off pretty bland (or in my opinion it did) but it pretty quickly pulls you in with specific things that i won't say for spoiler reasons but when specific events start happening, you just have to know what happens next and then soon you find yourself at the end of the first expansion (ARR - A Realm Reborn). Heavensward is the next expansion and has some of the best story telling, pacing, and presentation I have ever seen in any game and it is the peak of this game in my opinion, that's not to say it gets worse, some might argue it does an others may not, I would say it never gets as good as heavensward was but it never gets "bad" per-say. Anyways, this review is getting too long so I'ma go over some other just more side/fun things this game has to offer! The game offers many ways to connect with other players outside of main content like having the Gold Saucer which is like a in-game casino with many mini-games, challenges and board games to play with friends and make new ones! There are also these things called "Fates" which are like, timed world instances that you can do with other players and help each other out, level up, or just do them to kill time. Triple Triad is a really fun, competitive card game that lets you collect hundreds of cards and use them to challenge npc's, friends or compete in tourments. There are many more fun side things to do in this game to kill time when you are just wanting to like, not do the msq XD! Also Final Fantasy XIV doesn't lock to into your class! You can change it at any point and experiment with classes/jobs you might find interesting or fun!
With all these great things in this game, unfortunatly there are some issues I had with it during my play-through. My biggest issue personally is since its a pay-per-month game, some months I couldn't afford it, which made it hard to keep track of parts of the story, not only that, the story is so long, good but long, to the point where its hard to keep track of whats happening/what happened. Albeit that might just be a me issue, but there was parts where I just felt like the story became a huge blob of chaos and unorginisation lol. Another issue with it was some characters where just so like, "basic?" and followed very commonly used tropes/stories which made them very unmemorable and even just annoying at times, like, "ughh this person again??"

But yeah, this is my review about Final Fantasy XIV and what i loved and didn't love about it. I really hope this helps people decide if they want to play this game or not, in the end it has flaws yes, but, I would argue that despite these flaws it is still a amazing, fun and entertaining game through and through! There might have been some stuff I missed I don't know but yeah, again, hope this helps at least someone and if it does I hope you enjoy the game!

I love a good MMO and FFXIV delivers. Great mechanics and graphics.

The main quest is kind of boring for the first bit, especially for healer, but all of the cool later quest/side quest options, as well as the awesome community, really makes up for it. The game is much better with friends, especially dungeons. Cool mechanics and relatively newbie friendly tutorials. Players are quick to help out if you need something. Would recommend to anyone who has the time to get fully invested into a game.

awesome game play with a great story. vary fun mmo with a bunch to do great game

My preferred MMORPG experience. Great story, relaxed gearing system that doesn't demand an inordinate amount of time to get into raiding, fun raids, lots of social features and things to do outside of combat.

A lot of people say the story is incredibly and whatnot but it is a slowburner and Final Fantasy XIV is not a "it gets good after 90 billion hours" game; it's a game that if you do (or don't) know where you're going and what you're doing, you will find something for you almost immediately.

Most of the content is locked behind the main story quest which at the beginning I thought was a bummer, but in all honesty being able to tackle content slowly, patch by patch with only the things available back then, has been a wonderful experience for me.

At the beginning I was turn down by the baby easy difficulty of things, but the more I played and delved into harder and newer content, the more I found myself deeply lost in the mechanics, enjoying my time a lot, and this can happen since the very beginning!

Solo POTD is like THE game's biggest challenge in ARR due to the amount of experience with all the mechanics you need to fully beat the game. It is a true test of knowledge, skill, endurance and composture. I've been attempting it for a while now and it's been great, specially because this kind of content, "deep dungeons", isn't just this one, there are more of these with different scenarios, enemies and whatnot.

The second time I really fell in love with this game tho, was Eureka, which is a mode that if you die, you lose XP and levels and requires communication, teamwork, and a good knowledge of everything. I love it.

There's also a bunch of other stuff that I love, like savage content, how the difficulty differences in dungeons/trials add more attacks and complex mechanics, and hell, even the more casual stuff like the golden saucer content (triple triad, lord of verminion, etc.), THE GLAMOURS, and the random social interactions with strangers.

In all honesty; FFXIV has something for everyone. When I was in the free trial and was locked out of pretty much every social interaction I kinda did not get the fun of it all, but now that I went full trial, I can see myself playing this for multiple years and actually enjoying it rather than playing it out of commitment or any other stupid bs that keeps people hooked.

FFXIV is great and I would say my favorite multiplayer game ever. Definitely recommended, to anyone new (or not) to MMOs. It is a game that has so much to offer that I feel like reviewing it based on specifics can give others the wrong idea that it's just only that kind of content all the time, when it's genuinely really well distributed.

Do know though that most of the really hard and challenging content is optional so you will have to go out of your way to reach that.

This game was really fun before everyone else started playing it and got really weird about it. If I had a time machine I would go back and play this game for the first time again as a person that is sane and loves Final Fantasy XI. Overall, good game. Overoverall, ehh.

i have a few hours in this game and i am not even close to having finished the story (i reached shadowbringer). the story is absolutely fantastic so even just for it alone, i can suggest playing this game!

this game is honestly so much fun and looks great.
the community is incredibly friendly and even though i have not made many new friends in the game yet, it is just great to talk to other people. (me not really making friends is due to social anxiety anyway, the game itself gives a lot of opportunities to actually talk to other people and i feel like most people are always open to chat!)

this game also gives me the opportunity to hang out with friends that live far away, so we can just meet up here.
one day i will invite them into my house but for now, i still need to save up a lot of gil and a lot of luck to get one!

there is no pay to win, only pay to get specific cosmetics or emotes or mounts. just a lot of optional things you don't necessarily need.

please try this game. the free trial is long, so you will already play a lot without even paying anything!
it isn't even expensive either, especially if you go for the entry level (being able to make 8 characters is already a lot).

Do not purchase physical game time cards or risk losing your entire account.

This account system + launcher is the fucking worst. I tried several different paths to try and understand what my ID is (the recovery function doesn't work). The password reset step either opens a weird buggy overlay window in their BS launcher or on the web page gives me a technical error without further description.

Basically, if you ever forget your account credentials for this game there is no coming back because Square Enix never thought it would be necessary to invest into the launcher / account management experience and functions.

Too much of my life has been wasted on this game.

It literally died when it was first released and "brought back to life".

The story is garbage until you get to heavensward, it absolutely peaks at stormblood, drops a bit at endwalker, and with Dawntrail, completely slaughtered it.

The game is fine, but the people that play it make this game an incredibly hard pass for me.

The game is fine for a while. I just wouldn't recommend it since there's hundreds of better games out there.

Final Fantasy XIV seamlessly blends MMO gameplay mechanics with the rich storytelling the series is known for.
The story Places your character central to a compelling narrative filled with intricate characters and evolving plots. While some early gameplay elements have suffered due to simplification and streamlining for newer players to catch up, the game compensates with a vast array of activities, from challenging raids to leisurely pursuits like fishing and home development.

I highly recommend Final Fantasy XIV for those willing to invest the time into its Story Questline.

Game is in decline, Square is refusing to put any money into this game, even though its pretty much whats keeping them afloat at this point, and long standing issues that shouldve been amended years ago are not because either stubbornness (e.g. glams/transmogs still being locked to jobs for no real reason) or "technical reasons" (e.g. there are 20 glam/transmog loadouts for 21 combat jobs...).

Recent content has gotten really formulaic, stale and scarce, the most recent expansion (Dawntrail) had such horrible writing that its not even worth watching the cutscenes.

There is enough good content in the game to be worth playing it (until you reach dawntrail), but the future of this game is looking bleak.

somehow i got screwed when i went from the free service to buying the game and dlc. its been years and i still have not been able to get this issue resolved

I am going out on a limb here but I actually enjoyed Dawntrail so far. I did not enjoy it more than other expansions but it was what I expect and more for an intro to a knew story. And I mean new as it ten years of story had ended in Endwalker and Dawntrail is the start of another ten-ish years. And I have yet to find a reason to not continue playing Final Fantasy 14. This is just an opinion though.

I thought for a long time, if I can recommend FF14 and Dawntrail was a dealbreak in that regard.

Endgame content is lacking. Combat is mushy, server tickrate is pisspoor. It can be fun, sure, but it doesn't stand up to competition of wow or guild wars. And as much as rabid fanbase of this game will defend it with foam at their mouths that it's perfectly balanced and such, if you look to the charts for 0.1 second, you will notice that it is far, FAR from it. To the point, where certain group comps couldn't clear certain content on my memory period.

This bleeds into many other systems: glamour (aka transmog) is a violation of geneva convention, the amount of obsolete systems that clutter the game is just absurd. Like storage being ADDITIONAL subscription fee in already highly-priced sub-based mmo? 1.40£ per retainer per month? Yeh, no.

In many ways, game both expects it's problems to be fixed via modding community and at the same time, holds strict "no mods" policy, at least publicly so. Viera hats where, Yoshi P? Mods do make experience tolerable, and yet it seems SE team is dead-set on keeping eyes and ears shut, and not addressing reasons people use mods to begin with. And yes, we were promised chat bubbles (revolutionary addition in 2025, I know), and even half a year after Dawntrail they are nowhere to be seen.


This leaves us with one thing alone: MSQ. Main story of FF14 has ups and downs. ARR can be a slog, Heavensward is awesome, Stormblood and first third of Shadowbringers can be a slog, latter part and Endwalker are good. But that is the main issue with it: If MSQ sucks, entire game falls apart.
And Dawntrail sucks fucking hard.

Great game if you're trying for the first time. The story is great and community as well.
Unfortunately I just couldn't get through dawntrail....

FFXIV is very beautiful. Very organized and polished.
It feels like a single player game.
One thing that surprised me in this game was the education and patience of the players.
The story is very good, it has an incredible mosaic.
But it uses terrible literary techniques.
Like tonal dissonance, and in addition to that, exhausting interactions on purpose.
For someone who speaks another language natively, even though I am fluent in English,
it is very exhausting to follow the story. Due to the constant delay.
So to solve this, I am simply skipping all the dialogues and watching the history on youtube.

tl/dr: Game is good.

One of, if not, the best stories in any game ever made and on top of that the raiding is the best in any mmo I've played. The community is welcoming and forgiving, and the classes(jobs as they are called in-game) all feel interesting and rewarding to play. The free trial is meme'ed to death for a reason as it is more like a free all you can eat buffet with hundreds, or even upwards of a thousand, hours of game play just in the free "trial" with no limit on game time. My only problem with the game is that no matter how much I try to step away and play other games I have this addiction that can only be sated by Final Fantasy 14.

I genuinely believe this game has the best story in the MMO space, and one of the better stories in gaming in general.

With that said, Square is struggling right now to make this MMO more than just a story game with a co-op raiding scene and some social aspects that haven’t seen any real iterations to their core in almost a decade.

The focus of new Non-Story game content primarily sits in endgame raiding and several patch-long (drip fed updates across several months to a year) closed game systems that have little impact to the rest of the game outside of cosmetics that will no longer see updates once the next expansion releases.

Classes and stats have been homogenized and made mostly inoffensive. In this MMO, there are no builds or managing stats to create a different way to play your class. DPS classes all have the same outcome with little variation. Burst windows that arrive every couple of minutes. Some are more utility based, but still follow the same formula and often aren’t worth bringing for their utility because the name of the game is simply outputting damage. Healers are either primarily healers or shielders, but do both. It still just comes down to damage mitigation, healing, healing over time, and doing damage to provide some damage while continuing to heal. Tanks just need to damage mitigate and not die. This all sounds obvious, but in other MMOs, a single class can fill several roles all in different ways by adjusting how the abilities work and by tuning your stats. This is not a thing in FFXIV.

Gear exists simply to increase your numbers so you deal a bit more damage, have more health, or heal a bit more. They are just stat sticks to make sure your numbers are comparable with the content you are doing. They have no meaningful impact on how you play.

The high level raid and trial encounters are one of four main pillars for content to play once you have finished the several hundred hours of story content the game has. It receives the most love from Square with several new additions in some form every patch and expansion. Most of this content will not be experienced by most players. Optimistic estimations place Savage raid participation at less than 30% of endgame players. There’s a whole additional tier of difficulty even after Savage. Ultimate clear rates seem to be in the single digits.

Granted, it likely takes less manpower to create this content than entire questlines and overhauls to old systems. However, it really demonstrates Square’s priorities when this style of play sees new content sometimes several times in the same several month path cycles, but housing has seen zero major update, iteration, or innovation since it came out like a decade ago AND Square continues to enforce artificial scarcity by limiting available plots for housing.

Next is PvP, which sees updates with maps, cosmetics, and other typical PvP content. I can’t speak on player interaction with PvP, but in the 30 people I’ve met in XIV and spent time with, maybe 1 or 2 spent more than a surface leven amount of time with the PvP.

Next is the Social aspect of the game. This comes in Roleplaying, Trading, Community-led events, Free Company (guilds) Activities, and Housing. These systems, despite carrying the casual part of the playerbase, very rarely see updates, iterations, or innovation. Housing hasn’t seen any meaningful updates in years outside of allowing the insides of houses to be as large as the player wants. Trading is the same as always. Gather and craft for major patches that include new crafted gear and for consumables for new raids every several months. Free Companies got crafting projects in Heavensward, almost 10 years ago and then had one more crafting project added back in Stormblood in 2018. The social aspect of the game, which is the most interacted with pillar, is almost entirely upheld by the community at this point and is augmented with modding that is actually against SE’s terms of service, but won’t ever actually be fought against because the RP community would crumble without it. Square actively refuses to innovate or make these systems more accessible.

The last pillar is the amalgamation of whatever new closed-loop non-evergreen content they release in the post-msq patches. Diadem, which was a gathering/crafting centric event where Square had the community build up a district back in 2020. Some parts of this are still interact-able and is even a great way to level crafters and gatherers in lower levels. Bojza, a wartorn area where you raise reputation, complete public events, gain levels for combat classes, and get unique cosmetics. Island Sanctuary, you gather materials, build up some facilities, and implement production schedules to get some cosmetics. These additions have a couple of problems though.

They are often complex systems that are added to over the course of several patches, so they take a fair bit of resources to build, but after the post-expansion patches cycles they’re a part of are over, they are never revisted.

They effectively exist in their own bubbles and the only stuff that carries to the rest of the game is cosmetics and whatever levels you gain from the ones that provide it. Once you’ve gained the cosmetics you want, the content is done for you and there’s no point in interacting with it again. Island Sanctuary doesn’t use the existing crafting and gathering classes and the crafted items do not leave the island. Even the products of the production schedules are non-tangible items.

Novel experiences like this ARE worthwhile additions to the game, but when they are the *only* new content casual players ever get is content that effectively expires when you get the couple of items you want, there is no meaningful long-terms goals for casual players.

Aside from these pillars, even the story of the game has been stale since the first post-patch of endwalker. Dawntrail was downright awful narratively. Even aside from that, the community has been pointing out lately that the last three main expansion MSQs follow the same structural formula. 6 areas, the last area is all about learning about the past to cope with the present. A final boss you defeat to show the error of their ways. A split path in the second waves of quests for the msq and you have to do both. The problem is Square is seeing people start to get burnt out on doing the same stuff again and again but they REFUSE to change up the formula.

So, why do I not recommend XIV? Despite my hours and the love I have for the story?

Square has been given years of grace and love by a dedicated community only to continue to refuse to innovate and uplift the game past what it has been for years. The cracks in the foundation of the game have just become easier to see now that the story is poor and doesn’t cover it up.

Is it because they’re scared of changing things? Is it because they think they just don’t need to? I don’t know at this point, but FFXIV has a massive problem, and that problem is that they actively refuse to innovate a 10+ year old MMO with dated systems, mechanics, and combat.

Used to play some time ago and want to get back into it with friends. Interface, support, changing password, password loopholes, hard-linking user IDs to Steam are the devil. The people who made this game and design their support want to sacrifice you to the devil. This is the absolute worst and anyone who works for this game and the people who design this support should be ashamed. Shame on them. Shame on them when they lay down to sleep. Shame on them when they wake up.

This game is perfect for my autistic brain. easy to get super sucked into the details and has an amazing storyline. its like 20 games in one but all interconnected and lore heavy. It can be overwhelming if you try everything at once but if you take it slow then this is a game you'll be able to play for the rest of your life.

after playing this game for quite a while I have yet to enjoy the convoluted mess of a story and find the characters to range from boring to annoying. I have not finished the main story but my friends keep telling my I'm almost there. I feel like I am being gas lit and refuse to spend more money.

"It gets good, trust me!! You just have to keep pushing through the boring MSQ! It will pick up! Trust me bro!!!"
Dude, stop. I went all-in, tried my absolute hardest to get through this, and with 300 hours under my belt, I still have nothing to show for it.
This is the most bog-standard RPG experience I have ever played. There's no build diversity, no skill rotation variation, the dungeons feel more like CHECKLISTS than anything else, The devs are firmly against client-side mods, and the combat is so incredibly dated, stale, and uninspired. Everything about this game's core gameplay feels like a complete afterthought, and the story does not even come close to making up for it. How do you continue to justify this??