It took me over half a year to be able to internalize and put into words my thoughts on Final Fantasy XIV. The game is extraordinarily difficult to review because it has so much content and it takes months before you are truly able to ascertain what the game even is. At first, my time with the game was great. After the initial honeymoon period however, I began to realize the reason this game and practically every other MMORPG are empirically bad games and not worth anyone's time.
The biggest problem with MMOs can be summarized in very few words-- “People play them.” This alone would not be a problem; however, the majority of people this type of game tends to attract are not normal people. Most of them take the game way, way, too seriously; treating Final Fantasy XIV not as a game but instead as a way of life. I cannot understate how many times I have seen someone unreasonably raging at another player due to a simple disagreement. On the server I played on, there was a free company (commonly called a guild in other games) which would harass anyone who left it, even if the person attempted to leave the company on good terms. Drama queens were a dime a dozen and hardly ever did I witness drama over something which actually mattered-- most of it was over nonsense. Veteran players rarely help newer players, going as far as kicking newer players from their parties and only offering to play more difficult content with them for a price. Granted I have met a few great people and developed a couple long-lasting friendships; however, they were few and far between and most of those people have since quit the game for the same reasons I have.
At it's core, Final Fantasy XIV's combat system is what one would expect from the genre. All skills have a cool-down which follows, preventing one from executing the same skill immediately afterward. Some are on a global cool-down which effects all other globals, while others are off-global and should be weaved between globals. The problem with this type of combat system is it is not particularly deep, and involves little player skill. Essentially, what happens is someone maths-out an optimal rotation of moves for each class and everyone who plays a class executes their moves in exactly the same way. The combat system discourages experimentation or creativity, as anyone who deviates from the mathematically-proven optimal rotation is considered a bad player.
Because the combat system is not skill-based and everyone who plays a class does so in the exact same way, one would think that the barrier of entry into the game's difficult content would be low; however, this couldn't be further from the truth. The end-game content couldn't be more frustratingly difficult for those who do not treat the game as a second job. Ultimately, how one improves their game is through better gear which provides better stats. The player does not improve-- instead the character they are playing become more powerful. Acquiring gear however, will require one to grind the same content repeatedly for months on end. The acquisition of gear is also time-gated, preventing one from acquiring more than a certain amount every week. Due to this, and because after mastering one's rotation the only way a player can improve their game is to acquire better gear, it is essentially an infinite, needlessly drawn out gear grind. To make matters worse, once one has acquired all of the time-gated gear for the classes they are interested in, new gear will be introduced which makes the old gear they had obsolete. Time to grind for months again.
Perhaps the pinnacle of evolution for those who take this game way too seriously are the fan-created leaderboards which display players with the highest damage per second for their class. Keep in mind that all end-game players will play their class in exactly the same way, so the only way to differentiate from others is to game the system-- creating unrealistic party compositions designed to inflate the numbers of a particular player. Certain classes will buff others, for example, Bard buffs mages, Dragoon buffs ranged characters, Machinist buffs Dragoon, etc. Often what you will find is that people are unwilling to be team players, and are instead concerned over their own numbers, as they don't want to have low placement on the leaderboards. What the Final Fantasy XIV community at large fails to realize is that everyone plays their class exactly the same and that all of these numbers are meaningless.
Final Fantasy XIV has no anti-cheat solution in-place, and the game is rampant with cheating. It is a common occurrence to see parties of gold-farming bots-- typically black mages due to their infinite pool of resources repeatedly queueing into instances. It is estimated that around 70% of all gil in the game's economy is generated through nefarious means and sold for real money on black markets. Many a time I have seen bots teleporting around the game world, or invulnerable inside of the game's level geometry as they are repeatedly killing monsters to farm their gil. It has gotten to the point where players have been able to identify and filter out bots in the fan-created server census data, due to bots not having any mounts since they teleport around; however, Square Enix cannot seem to get a handle on this. Player cheating, while less common is also a problem. Certain classes-- especially black mages will benefit from the usage of cheat engine-- the most common hack being to speed up the game's client in order to execute moves faster.
Many of the complaints I have with Final Fantasy XIV could be said of other MMOs. I think the genre as a whole is bad, the core mechanics of the games are bad, and the people who play them in general, are even worse. Take it from someone who wasted a year of his life and regrets a majority of the time he spent with this game-- don't play it. It is a complete waste of time, and your time is far more valuable than to spend on this. I have learned my lesson and will never be playing an MMO again.