Wildfire Riders

I ended up canceling my order. I feel good about it.

I'm playing. I feel good about it. >_>

Though there are some kinks that very clearly need to be worked out. I'm going to have to save any elaboration for later, since a few days isn't really enough to form a final impression on an MMO (particularly in it's early days), but so far, don't-likes and likes:

Don't like:

-Interface is weird. It's not unusable by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely not as smooth as it could be.
-Gear-repair system is needlessly complicated. Instead of just going to an NPC and throwing a handful of change at them to ensure your equipment is at top durability, you instead have to seek players to keep your items in shape. The 'decay rate' is low, if you keep your gear appropriate for your level, but you actually have to find a leatherworker to get leather armor fixed, smiths for chain and plate, and tailors for cloth. (note: you can go to an NPC to repair, but they can't usually fix it to 100%, and it can get fairly expensive)
-Can't alt-tab out when you're playing full-screen, and playing in windowed mode hits performance bad. Seriously, Squeenix? o_O

Like:

-Just...everything about the world. The setting has a solid feel to it, the environments are gorgeous (Square-Enix, duh), the metaplot progresses nicely as you go, and just exploring is kind of rewarding in itself; there are lots of nice little nooks and crannies with a view to appreciate. It also helps that NPC dialogue is rich, varied, and quite often hilarious. There's just a ton of personality everywhere you look.
-A far cry from the way it was in the Beta, the combat system is smoothly paced and shows elements of highly nuanced strategy (though I've yet to experience anything super-complicated just yet).
-Nice, streamlined quest system that gives great rewards (including XP) and is divided evenly among combat, gathering, and crafting objectives. Most tasks are handed out by specific NPC guilds, and there's little need to go poking around town for individual quest givers (a blessing, given how massive the towns are).
-The character aesthetic. It's subtle, but this is probably one of the best-animated games out there. I spent just five minutes running in a zig-zag and watching the way my character stopped, pivoted, and shifted weight based on motion alone, and looking through the emotes, the animations for many of which are priceless. The attention to detail is simply fantastic.
-Character-building. For all intents and purposes, it's the Job system from FFV, just with different names on stuff. Options are a bit limited now, but promises to expand as development proceeds (all the better).

That's all I got at the moment. I'm sure I'll be able to elaborate further later on.

Also playing, also thoroughly enjoying it. My biggest gripes so far are mostly with myself; my hands are trained to do things the WoW-way, and I am struggling to adjust to new keyboard shortcuts, etc.

Gripes- Emote system is needlessly annoying, and incredibly limited. The text entry field is far too short; my self-authored emotes (not to mention the things I want to say,) require far more than is allowed. There doesn't seem to be a /follow command.

Notifications in FFXIV are far less intrusive; big boxes do not pop up in the middle of the screen, accompanied by special "Pay attention!" sounds... which means I miss party invites, and fail to notice my little "linkpearl" glowing as I run around complaining, "I don't know what to do next!"

Good things- The game is beautiful. Environments, characters, expressions, the way my character turns her head when she is looking at someone else (and angles it to look up or down, as heights dictate) pleases me more than I can express. Macros seem to be pretty easy and straightforward. The meta plots intrigue, and keep me going back to see "what might happen next?"

All in all, I'm having a grand time.... when I'm not complaining about my own ineptitude, or the names on the other PCs I see.

Heh, using a gamepad for this. I set up the controls to pretty much mirror those of FFXIII (which I finished not too long ago, and was thus accustomed to), so I didn't fumble too much. The main problem is the interface itself is just...laggy. For everything, no matter what settings you use and what kind of computer you have. It's an issue that they're bound to fix sooner or later (as it still remains a top complaint), but while it remains, it's bothersome. Not game-breaking, but bothersome.

It is kind of jarring noticing the absence of the things in WoW that you take for granted (obvious prompts, chimes when someone whispers you, etc). This isn't as much a big deal, I suppose. I can even handle the annoyingly short text-entry field, as much as it drives me nuts (I like to ramble on...can't you tell?).

I've figured out, though, what my biggest problem is right now in FFXIV: The economy. Specifically, the lack of tools for it; the things in most MMOs that make the trading, purchasing, and sharing of goods easy. There is no mail, there are no banks (guild or personal), there is no auction house. It's entirely done either by trading things in person, or through 'retainer' characters that you set up yourself to sell goods you collect or create, placing about town as you will (they're thankfully big enough to accommodate this). In theory, this is a great idea (and it completely ruins the usual modus operandi of RMT, which fills me with childish delight), but with a lack of any fuctional ability to search for what specifically you're after, it becomes extremely tedious, going from player-created merchant to merchant, hoping you'll find something resembling what you're after, hoping the price is right--and this is all with the aforementioned interface lag.

What's especially grating here is how intensely focused on the gathering and crafting of goods FFXIV is--or wants to be, anyway. All types of gathering and crafting professions are themselves full-fledged character classes, and the process of these trades much more involved than they are in any other MMO, but the hangups concerning the economy make leveling them and turning a profit a forbidding prospect at best.

To a certain extent, this system can still work--and leads to interesting potential solutions. To give an example: just earlier today the linkshell (guild) I'm in gathered together for an organized 'trade fair'--everyone had their crafting gear equipped, trade-classes got leveled something fierce, tons of goods changed hands, and good times were had.

If this is a regular thing we do (as the leadership intends, at this point) it makes for a nice alternative to blind buying and selling, but it doesn't help for those times you just need to make a quick buck, or need some random sundries, or need an emergency gear repair. I'll even allow that the game devs may have even intended gatherings like that to be had all along, but it isn't always practical. Some kind of search function for retainers, or just an auction house outright, needs to be implemented to make those all-important gatherers and crafters come into their own.

That's my beef, and it is potentially game-breaking, at least for what's obviously supposed to be a significant portion of the game (though by no means all of it). One can hope that the devs clue in on this, and make the necessary additions to the game, even if they have to build it from scratch. It comes down again to one of those things that in other games you take for granted, but unlike the odd interface quibbles, this one actually hurts.

All the rest is just bugs that need fixin'.