DAMN was the beginning of the game slow as all hell, but thankfully learning everything as I went through levels was easy and fun, and the main quest story lines are pretty decent as well.
One thing I HATE about FFXIV at the moment is the dungeons and the requirement to complete them to progress through the story. If you're familiar with dungeons, you need a tank, a healer, and 2 DPS classes to enter a dungeon (either by duty finder or self-made party).
Unless you're a healer/tank, it's going to take a long time to find a party through duty finder depending on time of day. I've waited in queue for over half an hour as a lancer and I still haven't been able to progress through my story because of it.
Other than that, game is fun.