New Beginnings of Final Fantasy XIV’s A Realm Reborn
Final Fantasy XIV begins with a cart ride, and just as in Skyrim it serves as a great method of introduction to the setting and atmosphere in the game. The ingame currency of FFXIV is still called FFXIV Gil without any change.
A calm merchant-cart ride, pleasant conversation, mysterious passengers and a brief violent interruption later, you're suddenly standing out front of a bustling tavern with a single quest marker ahead of you. Down the rabbit hole we fall.
NPCs that will make you want to return just to ask how their day was, even after their questline is over. Not that they'll respond, being NPCs and all, but their depth make the world that much richer. You'll still find one-off sidequest NPCs, but even they are interesting as a result of the writing that goes to great lengths to tie into the setting. It's that main campaign line that shines, however, by pushing the player onward constantly.
The hunting book gives the player specifi monsters to kill for bonus experience, dynamic events that pop up in the wilderness, and leves -- which are small contextless quests players can do for extra experience, gold and loot a limited number of times day. I rarely actively sought out any of these features, but each of them found their way into playthrough naturally in one way or another.
You also have the ability to just swap to a different job after passing a level restriction. Crafting requires swapping to a field worker job, and while that means no crafting on the player's main job, switching between classes is ridiculously fast and painless. All classes even have inventory space for storing armor, separate from bag space.
No matter what you do in the ffxiv game, it is like the real world, you will need to spend money if you want to buy stuff in game, so you need to get yourself a lot of Final Fantasy XIV Gil, then you can buy many game items to make your character stronger.