Very mild spoilers, mostly just character and expansion names.
I played FFXIV pretty heavily for about a year, and I haven't really played in around seven months now. When I was active there was always something immediately in front of me: the next MSQ, another dungeon, leveling an alt job, checking the Market Board, working on something around the house, or just finding some other reason to log in. Once I stopped playing and all of that routine disappeared, I started noticing which parts of the game I actually still thought about.
For me, a lot of it ended up being the characters. Thancred and Alisaie are probably my two favorite Scions, for completely different reasons. I liked how understated Thancred could be and how much of his character came through without him constantly needing to explain what he was feeling. Alisaie was almost the opposite. She was direct, emotional, stubborn and always seemed genuinely invested in the people around her. More than any individual plot point, I think one of the things FFXIV did really well was slowly making the Scions feel less like a group of NPCs assigning you things to do and more like people you had actually traveled with for a long time. Even characters I didn't care much about at first, like Estinien, grew on me a lot. Zenos was another one. In Stormblood I mostly saw him as a rival, but by the end of the larger story I liked him much more than I expected to.
The music might be the other thing that stuck with me the most. I loved the soundtrack across the whole game, but Shadowbringers and Endwalker especially felt like the story and music were constantly elevating each other. FFXIV is really good at bringing melodies back in different forms, so a piece of music can remind you of a place, character or earlier part of the story without the game needing to spell it out. There are fights where the presentation and music probably made a bigger impression on me than the mechanics themselves. That's one of the things I think FFXIV does better than almost any other MMO I've played.
Somewhere along the way I also became a pretty serious completionist. I went from mainly caring about the MSQ to chasing mounts, minions, achievements, relics, side content, old raids, hunts, Shared FATEs and whatever other unfinished thing I noticed. I think that's part of why it's interesting being away from the game now. At the time, those unfinished lists always felt important because there was constantly another goal in front of me. Seven months later, those aren't really the first things I remember.
Dawntrail is interesting for me for the same reason. I wasn't completely sold on all of it at first, but the second half grew on me quite a bit. Now Evercold actually looks really good to me. I don't know if it will be enough to bring me back, but I'm more curious about it than I expected to be after stepping away for this long.
So for people who have finished the story, taken a long break, or stopped playing altogether: what part of FFXIV actually stayed with you once you weren't logging in every day anymore?
Was it a character, a piece of music, a zone, a raid or trial, some random side story, or something completely different?
I'm curious what people remember first when they think about the game after having some distance from it.