This update is entitled, "So I Tried FFXIV Yet Again And It Finally Stuck".
I've been playing FFXIV for like a month now (granted, about two weeks of that I was away from my computer but during that time I really missed it). This is a game I had tried to get into twice before in the past with disastrous (ditched it at level 20) and cataclysmic (ditched it upon leaving the starter city) results. So, what's changed?
Frankly, I'm not sure. That's because I can't say with certainty that the leveling curve hasn't been tweaked to make it a little easier on the player, or whether I just took a better path through content. Unlike previous tries, this time I started out with a strong DPS class (Thaumaturge, aka Black Mage) and, once I had unlocked the abilities I wanted, only then started working on my main class Conjurer (aka White Mage), which means that leveling the slower, less bursty healer had a bonus to exp.
But that's not all. Dungeons have now been buffed in exp to the point where it's actually worth it to queue for them for leveling (eg, a 20-30 min low-level dungeon might give you a level's worth of exp even without the duty roulette bonus), instead of being stuck grinding FATEs to accomplish that purpose. The rest of the content wasn't nerfed in return, so FATEs and (to an extent) Leves continue to be decent options. However, on this run, simply doing dungeons as they came up and going along with the main quest, along with a few FATEs but only as they came up, was more than enough to keep me leveling and well above the level requirements of the Main Scenario Quests all the way through ARR and into the expansion, Heavenward.
But most importantly, the biggest plus for me was that I finally endured the game long enough to make it through the "kiddie" dungeons and into the more challenging ones (imo, starting from Haukke Manor onwards). The difference between the design philosophy between the two is huge. Whereas kiddie dungeons are packed with endless batches of trash mobs along roll-your-eyes corridors, later dungeons throw away with the idea of attrition by adding less, but more difficult, encounters. Don't get me wrong, most of it means higher damage or more AOEs, but at least there's less spamming abilities and more necessity of using cooldowns and dodging. Furthermore, bosses start getting unique mechanics to look out for and FFXIV does a pretty good job of keeping you on your toes, as pretty much all boss encounters (pretty much 3 to a dungeon) have their own gimmick. They're not terribly hard but they add a certain amount of tension to running them, and since even low-level content can (and will be) run by higher leveled players by syncing, they're always dangerous (ie, no having your tank sit on AOEs because his equipment can just soak it) - though high level equipment is still better synced than appropriate level ones and so your run will still go faster, just not braindead faster.
It's the philosophy and execution behind these dungeons that's got me hooked. I'm leveling my second class now, Astrologian (healer but with a randomy card mechanic behind them) with ease due to the main class level bonus exp and the buffed exp from dungeons, which I'll run a few times a day. It's also important to have an FC if you're, like me, way behind on game knowledge as updates have brought in a lot of complex crap you'll likely have no idea about and it's also nice being able to run a dungeon with good players every now and then.
The bad? Main story quests are retarded shit. SPOILER ALERT. By the time you're level 21 you've already killed your first primal and are branded a godkiller, which is something no one else in the realm can boast about, and still (all the way up to 50) you're sent on important missions such as collect the fucking dinner for the party or go talk to the secretary and find out why she's sad. As long as you make sure to visit these quests sparingly, in between of area quests and dungeons and shit, they'll be manageable. Just make sure not to leave them too far behind as a lot of content is gated behind main scenario quests and you'll need them to access your Grand Company, mount, certain dungeons, etc. They're not the worst I've ever seen but they're certainly not anything you might want to do twice (and thankfully, FFXIV has a pretty good one-character-does-all system). Also, nowadays you might want to shell out for Heavensward since it brings new abilities for all classes and one new class for each of the trinity, plus everyone's playing it.
TL;DR
Good: If you can stomach a few hours of kiddie tutorials, game has awesome dungeons with real difficulty, which tends to scale favorably upwards as you level. Mechanics also become more interesting as you get more abilities (duh, but still). Leveling has been made easier. Game is still alive. A shitload of shit to do. It's still pretty by today's standards.
Bad: Still requires base game + subscription + expansion if you don't want to be that guy that can't run endgame content with their FC because they're cheap. The thick of main story quests are awful, with exceptions you can count on a hand that's been in a sawmill accident.
Ugly: The voice acting, ffs. It's certainly some of the worst shit I've heard and, if you're used to the already low standard of SWTOR, you might want to skip dialogue as fast as you can read it. It's a pity too, since the game can boast, at times, some of the most creatively and better expressed *written* dialogue I've seen in a game.