The problems XIV has boil down to that SE deliberately threw out everything they'd learned over years of MMO development with XI.
XI was terrible on release too - had a period where they didn't charge for it due to crappiness, just like XIV (still) has now. It just didn't have a simultaneous release, so the only folks who saw that were JP and import players. By the time it hit the US, it was a better game, albeit an old school MMO.
They had to tweak a
lot over the years. As anyone who played XI for a reasonable length of time can tell you, SE was horribly unresponsive as a developer. They're still not great, but the past year has actually seen things like official forums (only what, 8+ years late?), with a test server coming n' so on.
Frankly, had XIV been an HD update of what XI had developed into - probably revising or removing outdated elements - then it would have been well received. Funny enough, their MMOs are almost a mini model of what's wrong with SE today.
For years, XI was kept very stable, yet stagnant - the producers had a plan, and you better like it, as they routinely ignored feedback. When those producers were shuffled off to make XIV, the newer blood took XI in new, largely successful directions. Then
those producers were moved over to XIV to try and fix it, and those folks who replaced them did even more with XI.
Personally, I wasn't pleased with every last change, but you had plenty of things that people were clamoring for
back in 2004 that were finally implemented. It indicates to me that the entire company isn't clueless, but they're being held back by upper management that just doesn't
get it.
Where you'd think XIV would have taken those hard-learned lessons and picked up where XI left off, it effectively jumped itself back to square one. XIV may turn out to be a fine game, after a few more years of tweaks/additions.
Ask anyone that plays WoW for hours a day, none of them are going to tell you how awesome the gameplay is or how fun the combat system is.
Eh, I'd partly disagree there. Mostly, the system are fun enough, they just get old after you spend thousands of hours repeating content. XI's combat system/etc is far more interesting than XIII's.
If you want an "MMO" (Arenanet doesn't classify it as one) that's a lot more focused on gameplay, with no subscription fee, look at Guild Wars. The overall model is similar to PSO - everyone shows up in towns, actual gameplay takes place in instances. Leveling takes less time than many single player RPGs - you can spend far more time collecting all skills, but as you can only equip 8 at a time...it's a limit on flexibility, not strength.
