The Edge of the Mists

I've told you that politics changed people to be the worst of them, you know what didn't get worse? World of Warcraft, What have Blizz done to WoW? I can list a few things, don't worry, just follow the number
 

1. Maturing the talent tree
   Talent tree are a bunch of passive and active skills your character will unlock in his/her progress, in the first incarnation each class have three talent tree with a bunch of skill without clear meaning how you can play your class, you can put it so you become so OP or so weak that your character is not needed in every bunch of unforgiving massess of Vanilla WOW, then it become clearer on cataclysm that you supposed to fill this role-based talent tree then you can go to other, which makes cookie cutter talents (if I did this combination of talents this bleeding passive skills will raised my DPS to 100 points) so they scrapped it.
   On the latest talent tree gone is the 50 or some-of-it passive and active skills, instead now you have three choices every 20 level, it become more like: how you want to play your character? favoring single target devastating instant attack or the AOE effect? do you want to make a shielded stand against big dungeon bosses or just received every attack but you can mitigate it by repeated regen? your choice. it's like fiddling your thumb or your other finger in your keyboard, it becomes more of your... playstyle.
2. Polishing the encounters
   It's bad when you have the talents but you don't need it in an encounter/dungeon/raids/stuffs or the mobs has an immunity to it, or the encounter is so punishing you can't actually use your active talents, WoW is making all encounters met the requirements of players of all talents without losing it's originality
3. Scalable content
   Flex Raid, nuff said, hello Guild Wars 2
4. Daily quests vs Encounter-based Timeless Isle
   on the first patches of Mist Blizz made removed the caps of daily quests and added so much of it on every new NPC factions, this become somewhat a put-off for some people, so Blizz (again copied from the Guild Wars 2) make 'dynamic events' in an area which 'combined encounters and discovery', Timeless Isle has one NPC faction: Emperor Shaohao which reputation can be gained in some other ways, whether slaying beasts, NPCs, do dynamic events, slay world bosses (champion events), trading coins which can be gained by almost everything you do at the island, you can also explore the map which sometimes yield treasure chests contained some epics, pets, vanity items, tradable items for NPCs, or just Timeless coins.
   Yes, basically it's just a rip-off from hearts renown and dynamic events on Guild Wars 2 but people like it, and sadly some people will call it an 'innovation', poor them, but nevertheless: Blizz did it and will implement it on their next Xpac: Warlords of Draenor
5. The Lore
   Mists of Pandaria is probably the most optimist and shiny of all expansion, it didn't have such heroic moment like Wrath (Bolvar) or Cata (Thrall) so I called this the best lore of WOW expansion so far but don't take it for me, WOWinsider have it all

Well, my character is now asleep in his 'prototype instanced housing' content (The Tiller faction) in Pandaria, I think I'll wake him up in seven or eight months to kill some orcs :D

Aesthetic and Necessities

Final Fantasy XIV has a number of aesthetic animation on characters, including some gesture and emotes, for example when your character laughing he's actually makes the laughing expression on his face and the appropriate body language, it's a trick taken from Aion and RIFT but FFXIV made it better. Your character head follows an ally or even a mob when targeting it, the legs tilted when on uneven ground, even the death animation is satisfying (other word from frustrating) and I like the fact that when I logoff a character on an inn, he'll make the wake up animation when I login

Of course sleeping in front of the inn can be considered a public offense :P

Another one is the sound: music of Final Fantasy is one single point from being perfect, it's gorgeous and atmospheric, it's rare for some repeated theme can be so familiar and still enjoyable even after a few weeks, Ul'dah Theme for example is different on day and night, creating a feeling that at night your character should be in bed rather than huddling in the nearest market =)), I also have suspicion that the upbeat tempo of Garuda's theme is my downfall since I tend to sync anything, (including my tapping) to a song, I might accidentally push that limit break button too soon =))

On combat however the graphical aesthetics becomes complicated, my longest animated skill "rage of halone" can be a perfect example, it features the character slashing the enemy four times, ended with a flashy groundsmashing animation, it takes like three second from casting to dealing damage, and this is when it becomes a problem, rage of halone is not a channeled skill which means it shouldn't/can't be cancelled, unfortunately your character can move while using this skill which result into an awkwardly sliding animation. Not to mention a controversial issue: unchanneled long timed skills locked the character position which means no matter how far you are from those red circle area, as long as you're still doing animation for that skill (and cast it while inside red area) , you're still gonna get hit

I also returned to WoW several weeks ago for the last raid content: Siege of Orgrimmar, it's also a perfect opportunity to examine my character animations, my warrior is of course instant casting all the way, and the animations are mostly one second and deal instant damage, it doesn't have much animation (almost none actually) but it does the work. It looks like Square is still using the old MMORPG system for positioning (where miss is not based on positioning but your stat) and failed to update/mix it with the new positioning system. On newer MMO like TERA and Guild Wars 2, positioning is everything since battle occurs actively.

the ability lag is also still a hot topic out there, it ranged from the cancelled skills when chaining attacks until the skill becomes completely unaccessible or didn't deal any damage, mostly blaming the animation and lag on server side, I think SE really needs this addressed since they've been completely silent about this issue,

Aesthetic should be necessary but should be carefully cultivated in order not to breaking the immersion of gameplay, other than that SE has put a real effort to creating Eorzea to be full of beautiful things... and characters :D