FFXIV is a very broad game with a storied history that I'm sure many are aware of so there's a lot to say about the game. While I know XIV is very popular I think this comes down to it being less of an MMO as I've come to know them, benefitting from being more of a theme park single-player focused JRPG with a heaping load of fanservice.

I was around for the original launch of the game and I think it was best described as... a confusing experience. From the insistence on in-universe words and phrases for things, to very unintuitive interfaces for the crafting and gathering systems, combined with a huge lack of tutorials or explanations for how anything actually worked. It made for a very off-putting experience.

So when ARR launched I was eager to give it another go. Of course the result is a much more polished experience and while it does a lot very well such as the crafting mini-games and the fact you can be so independent, I think it does so by eschewing experiences that only an MMO can deliver. It does so in favour of what is fundamentally a single player experience that epitomises the MMO design World of Wacraft popularised. That is to say that for the majority of the game you are playing a single player game where you are the protagonist and everyone else plays the extras and fodder to your personal story.

Since I started playing MMO's back in 2000 the narrative design back then was largely that you are an individual in a fantasy world and often by banding together and co-operating with other players you shape the world and forge your own stories. Be it building and exploring player made worlds in star wars galaxies, or forming vast levelling parties in ragnarok online to fight gods and craft for others, players collective actions guiding the story in matrix online, or the intricate player driven economics and politics of EVE online. The focus was always on players being the shapers of their world and gameplay literally relying on co-operation.

WoW really set a precedent when it created a questing system that allows players to completely solo the game to end-level, with parties and guilds being largely optional albeit encouraged. All of this was heavily structured, built with one solution in mind, and players were expected to fill the slots, perform their role, and earn their loot to share. It stripped away the organic open-ended player-built nature of MMO's of the past and replaced it with a framework where if you perform the role dictated by your class, you get your shiny. And FFXIV really picked this up and perfected it - not that it's inherently a bad thing, knowing exactly how to play your class and what to do in multiplayer events so easily is a boon but it comes at a cost in my opinion.

In FFXIV you have your class, you have your responsibility in the tank/dps/healer trinity, you have your very strict skill rotation to follow for every battle in the entire game that slowly grows in complexity, and if you press your buttons in the right order for long enough you are often assured victory. The real innovation in XIV's combat is taking the WoW raid mechanics and granting them to ordinary mobs. This means occasionally moving out the way of flashing templates on the floor. As is the case with the 'Holy Trinity' combat design anyone can jump in and perform a role but because the game is built around independence you don't 'need' other players other than in the designated 'multiplayer' content like raid bosses and dungeons. Otherwise every class has some amount of healing, damage, and defence that can only be improved on by others joining you but never makes them a necessity like games of the past would have.

So is independence a bad thing? Not at all, but it does kinda undermine the multiplayer component of an MMO and the types of experiences you can have. Yes you will be playing with many other people in the Trials / raid bosses, dungeons, and FATEs, but FFXIV's gameplay is so structured that this is never dynamic. As long as you are following your rotation and avoiding the flashing ground you never actually need to care what anyone else is doing other than doing the same thing. That does make 'playing with others' very easy and fluid as groups can form and dissolve in minutes without any conversation, planning, or tactics - but that interaction of stopping, meeting people, and talking to them is arguably the very essence of multiplayer. When the game auto-groups you, everyone auto-knows what to do, and never has to interact with anyone - sure you technically 'played with others' but only in the very literal sense.

The other half of the game then is the core story and quests which largely centre around the obtuse good vs evil plot that basically all final fantasy games now revolve around, recycling all the most iconic FF characters, names, enemies, and mascots, endless dialogue boxes of badly written anime filler, and plenty of monster grinding. I think a lot of my issues with this boil down to the way that Enix have always handled the FF IP since they merged with Square. The artistic vision of the older games was driven by Yoshitaka Amano's abstract blend of western fantasy tropes with eastern cultural aesthetics and fashion design. Every game had a very west-meets-east style that was incredibly distinct. I'm not anti-anime, but the way that every new FF game and many of the remakes get fed through the anime filter feels like it's actively destroying and ret-conning the artistry that made this series so distinct to begin with.

So in conclusion, the multiplayer is largely single player, the actual multiplayer is shallow, the story is the same 'Summons are out of control, but a Hero of Light™ will thwart the Villain of Darkness™ to save the kingdoms' stock storyline that every modern FF is about. The world is more focused on being a theme park than being believable, the cutscenes are fully stocked with all the anime tropes, the gameplay is simple and repetitive, and it's stocked up with fan service at the expense of having any integrity in its world, premise, or characters.

Is it a good game? Sure, it's insanely popular and you can dress up your character like an anime doll, pose, and take cute pics. Is it a good MMO? You can check a box saying you played with other people and don't have to actually work with, coordinate, or even talk to any of them. Is it fun? Apparently yes for most people. But it's also a big example of how both the FF brand and the MMO genre have been eroded and homogenised to appeal to the broadest demographic possible. It makes sense that its popular, but it got there by getting rid of what made it special.