Recently came into the ownership of a new laptop. The thing can just barely play XIV (Radeon HD 5650, it was rated decently online but the benchmark seemed to think otherwise), so I set on medium settings overall (Most are default, I turned shadows down a bit). I'm sure I still dip under 30 FPS every now and then, but oh well, you take what you can get. At any rate, I decided to fire up my account and give the game another shot.

Just an idea for those of you with mediocre computers what you'll get to look at if you decide to play this game.
Not too far into playing. I want to focus a bit more on gathering/crafting than on combat since I didn't do that as much my first run with the game. I'll give some general thoughts.
-It's nice they got rid a lot of the UI lag, though there is still some unneeded pauses when I flip through menus and such. Not a big deal, but it's there.
-The con system is still really misleading sometimes. I kinda wish they had the action bar default to you pressing confirm only in active mode- that way, they could've have a small menu for some basic actions like checking and bazaar browsing, like in XI. Some more information from the check system would be nice.
-I like the gathering to an extent, since it's a lot more involving than your typical "click this, get item" thing a lot of MMOs do. However, the messages I get after each attempt don't seem to tell me very much (EX You sense copper ore above where you are mining)- I just seem to get whatever random materials a given level of node will spit out.
-The crafting, too, tries to be more involving, but there's actually 0 skill involved, unlike gathering which needs both luck and skill. I would assume that bold synthesis is the key to making HQ items in case I ever attempt some high level crafts, and rapid synthesis can be used as a last-ditch effort if I'm really far from the finish line with low durability. However, everything seems to go just fine hammering normal synthesis over and over if I want to level, so it's rather dull. I'm not too sure what wait does. I was also a bit disappointed to see that all the crafts had the same minigame when they tried to make logging, mining, and fishing all a slight bit different. Ah well.
Out of the combat classes, I've leveled Gladiator the most, but I've been taking a liking to Pugilist. I'm a bit lost on how I should spread out my stats. I recently found out that apparently my base stats would affect my crafting classes, as well. I've put a ton of points into dexterity, so dunno if I should start changing that around while I'm still relatively low level.
As you can see, I'm mining, so I decided to pick up crafts related to that, namely smithing, goldsmithing, and armorsmith. I also picked up leathercraft leves since there was only 2 for each of those.
I'll stick with it a bit longer. Not sure if I'd be willing to pay for the game monthly when the time comes, though.
EDIT: Being the shallow person I am, I went to the Market Wards, determined to not leave until my character looked spiffy in battle. I managed to get some bronze haubergeon and gauntlets. Unfortunately, I ran out of money after those two purchases so now I look like a dork running around in heavy body armor and gloves with work pants and shoes.
I'm sure I got ripped off, but I don't really care that much at this point.

The armor definately looks nice. Nice that I can wear whatever armor at any level.