Abyssea came shortly before FFXIV was launched, with that they basically added pure oxygen to a burning candle. The idea was to burn through the content and complete the game and have it's userbase emigrate over within a set time frame. It is totally impossible to shut down an MMO even if you want to, you risk angering the playerbase and putting out bad vibes to potential ones on future games. The current system is perfect, milk money out of it giving players everything they want while slowly boring everyone and letting them all complete all their goals easily. Boredom does their work for them, they are even building up XIV slowly to make sure they don't emigrate over too quickly...it's a gradual process.
The sad fact is, when they made FFXIV the playerbase the game was going to get (or at least the majority of it) is FFXI players, they just cannot live side by side. Most MMO players do not want to play more than 1 MMO, no matter how casual they make them, both games are direct competition for each other. As long as XI is a fair success, FFXIV cannot be..one game will canabalise the players from the other.
FFXI is not future proof and has little ability to replace old users quitting due to rl stuff, that's why they would kill off a product that still makes money. It's not about losing customers, it's about making them move to your other title which you hope has a better ability to attract paying customers in the future.
FFXI has 2 years left in it, tops. Even the last listed update is slated as "the last stand" lol

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