Coming from someone who has 300 hours on the game, obtain 2 level 50s classes, and owns an FC with a nice house, I'd have to say the game is worth it from the beginning to end game. It's not worth playing after you beat all the dungeons and bosses, thou.
The graphics are amazing. They are my favorite. I absolutely adore them. They're still a bit cartoonish but is realistic. The effects and particles are just beautiful to look at. Playing as a White Maged, I adored doing Medica 2 just for the flashy flares. The music is outstanding. Stop reading this and go listen to it on Youtube. I absolutely adore all three main city songs. Limsa is my favorite of course!
I love how it's very easy to obtain armour and gil in the game from 1-50. I've never had to farm or worry about having to buy the new level armour when I gain a new level. Most dungeons and crafters can give it to you for free! When you reach end game, you get free materica from quests that can potentially cost up to half a million! I currently have 2 million just from doing nothing but quests. The only disappointing thing is that many of the low level armour look the same and boring. I had a few of my friends that played it have this problem.
I like how easy it is to level up in crafting skills. Seriously, some of these, you can get in less than a day if you have the material. The ones that take longer to get 50 are the gathering skills; however, if you get to 50, you'd be making a ton of money on the market. You'd never have to worry about gill again.
I've played it solo on the main story and level 50. People respect solo players for the most part. Playing it alone almost feels like skyrim, and if you disable the username display, it almost feels great as player models look really detailed! It feels lifelike or just overall presents a good at atmosphere. A ton of max players or just players in general are always nice to new players. I've met really nice people willing to make me jewelry or the relic weapon for free!
The player interaction in this game just so amazing. I want more MMOs to be like this. Building an FC or clan is just soo much fun. I absolutely love the player emotions and how detailed they are. It's a really good social game, and lot of the community is just extremely nice.
However, the game does have problems in my opinion.
Half of the community can be really amazing, calm and kind, but the endgame players can be really big jerks.
If you don't want your self esteem destroyed, please do not play as a tank. Oh my gosh, I hate it when players are jerks to tanks cause they can't do their job right. People just want perfection and speedruns. Lot of the players on end game dungeons just don't interact with each other. Some people can't even take a laugh, and others just plain jerks and just want it their way, as a result forcing everyone to do what they want. It's absolutely terrible when it comes to playing with strangers. It's rare when I player with nice players, but every so often, I get that one jerk who ruins it all.
What's worse is that a ton of the end game dungeons are just farming dungeons for people speed run just to get Tomes. Seriously, my main was White Mage and I was excited do the hard dungeons. I jump into one with strangers, and they just started speedrunning and gathering as many enemies as possible to tank, so they spam AOE attacks. I seroiusly just spend the whole time just pressing my hot key for Cure and Cure 2. CURE CURE CURE CURE. Nothing else. It was seriously boring. What made it worse is when I mess up or they mess up, WHOEVER MESS UP, the healer always got the blame. Very unfriendly for newcomers.
To be specific, Tomestones are these stones you use to trade for high level equipment. But, my gosh. They can take quite a while to obtain and it's ridiculous. People would have to farm and play the SAME dungeon and Raid over and over. Seriously, it could take you a week of grinding just to get a full collection. Maybe even more! It just feels like a chore, and I honestly dislike that about MMOs. One could argue that raids drop high level armour, but the chances of a player getting it are VERY small. Seriously, I actually wasted my life grinding a raid hoping to get Bard armour. After a whole day worth of grinding, I got no Bard drops, and I only got a body part. It was to the point where it was not worth grinding for, specially if you just want a higher iLvl.
I could say lot. There are pro and cons to the game. I would only recommend it if you want to play it for the story and end game. I don't recommend it after end game. It's not worth staying.
Player profile:
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/8409629/
Plus, it's people like us tanks and healers that 
