As with every mmo I've ever played I recently gave in to the pressure from my friends and signed up for FFXIV
I'm trying to look past the surface stuff, the cooldown-based tank/dps/healer combat, the scattered NPCs whose sole reason for existence is to wait for adventurers to float past and run their errands, the endless hordes of aggressive fauna stubbornly ignoring the fact that they should be extinct, the ever-present guild/auction house/flight path analogues that are very conspicuously not called guilds/auction houses/flight paths...
...and I'm having a pretty good time
Since the servers are absolutely overflowing I only have the one character so far, a conjurer who I'm building into a paladin/white mage (most abilities can be used in other classes which is p. cool). Conjurer is really fun due to the cleric stance mechanic, which makes dungeon healing really involved: in cleric stance your healing power is converted into offensive power, so I can toggle that on and off between heals to lay down heavy DPS. Feels good, man.
The aesthetics are probably the strongest point, the costume design and scenery and various spell effects and etc are classic final fantasy. I'm not sure if that will be enough to keep me going once the novelty wears off, but I guess we'll see. I still have the crafting/gathering classes to look forward to, plus I could probably spend another dozen hours saving character designs in the character creator lol