Anyone playing this game? Is it the same 'ol stuff with a facelift or is it worth the time?

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I gave it a go when it hit open Beta. Overall I'd say its not terrible but it doesn't have much to recommend it either.

First and foremost the game is worse for being f2p.

Things you can buy with AD/gold are very inflated price wise... and the stuff you buy with Zen (real money) are expensive too. 16 bucks for a bag, 30 bucks for a mount. No powers respec except with real money (feats can be respec'd with in game currency and they are more like wow talent points, you get enough power options that you can afford a few suboptimal choices).

Crafting also suffers from f2p syndrome basically gated to be a huge time sink. Basically crafting is basically like swtor where you send dude on missions and it takes time to complete. the difference being missions taking multiple hours ( between 4-18) is not uncommon. There are shorter missions for grinding xp while you're actively playing, but they aren't significantly more efficient than some of the better long ones.

Some things I noticed. Class variety is bad, and class balance between those few classes is also bad. Rogue have huge DPS advantages. Great Weapon fighters are largely considered crap. Wizards have some use in AoE/pvp but in high end pve their single target dmg is weak and bosses are completely immune to their control effects.

Healer threat is quite ridiculous. Every boss summons adds mid fight, and those adds will always get on the healer. some of it is the tank's fault but even good tanks lose aggro to healers if the enemies aren't tightly clumped up to be immediately AOE'd down.

Tanking is pretty similar to say Tera where you actively block, but the way their mark (taunt+ double aggro generation vs target) fades if the enemy deals hp dmg to them is kinda frustrating and hard on beginners.

I found the foundry quests ok, but not amazing or anything. And the regular story/gameplay is basically a wow clone and again not anything special.

Honestly I'd probably like it okay if it wasn't a f2p cash grab. But basically what little I found enjoyable ( the relatively active combat and fancy dnd stylings) is simply overshadowed by the devs intentionally making the game fun in the interest of making money. You don't *need* to spend money to play the game fully which is good, but they definitely want to make you take forever to accomplish anything if you don't pay money.

I will mention that you can convert ingame currency to zen so you could in theory at high levels farm enough to buy the cash shop stuff you want with ingame currency. eventually. Anyway the good thing about f2p is that there is nothing stopping you from trying it out yourselves.

Thanks for the review, I was waiting on something like this to decide whether to dive into it or not.
I guess I'll stay away from this one.

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Reading Vurin's review makes me shake my head and wonder why so many people on the Final Fantasy forums cry for 14 not being FTP with cash sales. Seems like the basis of pretty awful games.

I far prefer the b2p( buy to play) model. I think MMOs have a hard time getting an audience with an upfront cost and a subscriptions (although I don't mind it overall). People go "This isn't worth my $15/month" or "I don't want to pay 30-60 bucks to try a game out" and quit. So in the interest of getting an audience in the crowded MMO market I think modern mmos basically have to have a free trial of some sort, and I find the b2p model the least obnoxious of the various revenue models.

For example, I think Guild Wars 2's is probably the best example of how a modern MMO should be. Its a quality game, no subscription fees and while it does have a cash shop it really is nothing but cosmetic items/premium services ( name changes/pvp tournament tokens/appearance re-customization changes etc). They even continue to release free content post launch. By and large the least offensive cash shop I've seen in a b2p/f2p game. I think Secret World does something fairly similar now too but not sure since I never played it. Sure I don't play GW2 anymore but I feel like I got my money's worth and I didn't feel like I was being raped by a cash shop.

Compare to Tera which is f2p, but has a subscription which is all but required to get any rewards from the boring ass daily quests ( the subscription allows you to complete twice as many dailies for twice as much reward each; along with other minor advantages), AND then has a cash shop full of shit like 30 dollar mounts, swimsuits and maid outfits. Furthermore like the SWTOR f2p they also cripple free accounts' access to features they explicitly removed when it went from subs to f2p. Tera at least had the graciousness to not remove any features from its "founders" (I.e. people who had paid for a copy of the game prior to f2p), but going back to swtor after I paid for it at launch I'm shocked at how much shit they removed my access to. Basically when you cripple and alienate new players where's the "fun" to incentivize them into paying money? "Oh Tera has a boring grind and my inventory is tiny and I travel slow.... This makes me want to spend 60 bucks on their cash shop to partially alleviate these annoying flaws!!"

Anyway. long story short I basically hate f2p. I feel devs basically cripple what would otherwise be potentially decent games. I'd rather just pay my 60 bucks and get a game that I either dislike or not on its own but at least complete merits. obviously f2p (and overpriced dlc) makes money or they wouldn't do it, but boy are games and thus gamers worse off as a result.

I could rant more but its pointless and not proving as cathartic as I had hoped when I started typing...
/soapbox