LOL! See that helps xD.
There were AoE's? o.o... See, I couldn't even tell. I didn't understand much of what was going on in the battles you showed, other than the obvious. You and the monster attack each other and you die-but-don't-die (Oo). Since I don't know how strong enemies you can defeat are supposed to be, and how strong those monsters were compared to you, I can only judge on what I see but have no concept of whether you are just bad or the monsters are too strong.You don't need to know how to play gw2 to see what is going on, if you have played ffxiv you can easily understand since it's similar. I'm not dodging the AOE's, my play style includes standing around while button mashing, at one point you can see me standing around doing nohing since I'm hitting attacks that haven't cooled down yet, I failed both mission one by dying and one by moving too far away from the cargo and attacking a wolf instead of the krait.
See now? It really can make a difference. And for me, personally, it is a lot more difficult to fully understand what is going on because each MMO works on vast sets of abilities and gameplay and most of them vary a great deal. Only thing I take on myself for this video is that I think it was boring (because it was an MMO and didn't look too exciting) and didn't really try to study much of what was going on other than the obvious mentioned above.
I really don't hope my answer is gonna start some sort of major discussion, so I'm only answering because you ask.And I don't know why you say "I see why it is free to play" it almost sound like you are saying that in a negative way, what do you mean?
You could say I mean it in a negative way, yes. Not in a scornfull way, but there isn't much positive about it. I just feel the game doesn't look like something you'd need money to fund. The technical quality level isn't very high. Not that it is LOW, per say, but it definitely doesn't look like a game that has the money behind it to enhance, fix and evolve itself beyond the scale of a regular game.
I'm sure it's more fun to play and look at if you're actually playing it, and besides 15 minutes is way too little to fully judge an entire MMO, so I am just going by the smoothness, the visuals and the seemingly unrefined details apparant in the video.
I am hoping my words won't be overly analyzed and "disproved" as it is my opinion and I take MMOs in general into account. Not simply XIV, since comparing those 2 would be downright unfair either way xD.