I'm going to wait for official release. It really irks me that even the early release gameplay is under NDA and can't be streamed. What are they afraid of?
In short, because they don't want the FF-neutral, hardcore MMO player to know that the gameplay is awful.
I was an ambivalent-neutral person before trying the game. After reading a few of the complaints here and comparing it to what I'd seen, with regards to combat, I thought they were justified. However, I thought it was something I could tolerate. It didn't appear to be any different than a hybrid of a typical JRPG with the likes of EverQuest or World of Warcraft. Have an even worse fluidity than I suspected, that's not even the reason why I'm writing.
It's Square Enix and their approach to the game - it's their
definition of MMO.
The mess that was getting the game registered and the horrible navigation on their website should have been enough of a warning. Ignoring server drops and access issues, the gameplay is cumbersome. The quests initially force you to sit through and click on bubbles, over and over again until you get the quest which had already been accepted in the first place. Then there's the ridiculous sale system. You know how easy it is to sell stuff in World of Warcraft? Yeah, Square Enix apparently thinks its kosher to keep the EQ-esque sell model where you have to deliberately right click to sell and then use a reverse-intuitive slider to decide and confirm the sale. I think there's a video comparing the sale system of 1.0 and World of Warcraft (1.0 being what they had to take down). There is an obvious improvement from ARR and 1.0, but it's still way too menu oriented.
Did I mention the grinding? Oh, yes. Grinding in a WoW or EQ-esque MMO should be tolerable, understandably not quite as fun as an ARPG like D2 or PoE, but there's little to nothing to look forward to grinding. You can't level reasonably when grinding, like you could in EverQuest or if necessary WoW. It would take a thousand mobs a level lower than yourself just to ding in FFXIV. This grinding model is almost as bad as GW2.
The reason I mention grinding at all, when there are so many quests to do (and you should do them) and FATE events is because the duty system is necessary to proceed at level 9 or so but what happens when it's down? Think you can grind that xp? Not a chance. Additionally, that's what an MMO is built upon: the grind. Kill X, Collect Y...if that isn't fun for you in the game, don't play it because that's 90% of the experience or more that you'll have with it.
I'll add more later, but for now - if you're neutral or ambivalent towards the FF series, this is an MMO you're going to want to avoid. If you absolutely love FF and have played every single variation of the game, including FFXI (the first MMO) then you'll probably like it.
