The game is Final Fantasy XIV. I had a friend wanting me to give it a try, and he bought the standard edition. So my hand was kind of forced. Here’s a screenshot i took of the city i started in, Limsa Lominsa, after it started raining. You can see the tail of my Carbuncle there peaking over the top.
I can understand how people can sink 3,400 hours into it. I alone sank 14 hours into it yesterday. I will say I personally don’t like the idea of paying a subscription for my time after buying the standard edition, but I do understand they need to make income somehow and for live service games like this that is hard without a subscription.
The subscription fee imo is warranted given they release new content every 3 months, which includes voice acting, new dungeons, and new raid content. If it was a monthly sub with nothing released between expansions it wouldn’t be acceptable imo. Highly recommend not having a recurring sub